I agree, completely with this order, but when I went to the archives recently via the link on the website, I found them intollerably slow, and it crashed my browser twice. So I posted here without full searching. Also, keep in mind that web/archive searching is hit or miss. A person may search and still not find what is there. Even with the exact same search, the milage may vary since one does not typically read every post available on a google search, but usually one attempts to ignore ones that appear to be in the wrong language, or from a source that looks likely to be off topic. What looks off topic or is the wrong language, will vary for different people. And the tolerance for reading irrelevant hits will vary so that an answer that is the 15th hit, some people may never get to...I disagree, there is a clear distinction - asking a question without having read the docs shouldn't seem valid to a newbie. I agree that a lot of these concepts are not obvious, and a lot of the documentation is lacking - that's why this list is essential. However, the order of learing should be docs -> list archive -> post question; not the inverse.
That said, I do agree that some posts recently do seem to have not read ANY of the relevant parts of the website. I have noted that many such posts appear to be from people for whom English appears not to be their original language, and I suspect that this is because they find it particularly hard to find things on a web site written in a language they only partly understand. I sometimes have trouble finding stuff, and english is the only language I am capable of communicating in without lots of pantomimes and infinite patience.
So, web pointers are probably in order for those people... The rest should RTFM or STFW... I wouldn't wish archive searching on anyone at the moment though.
-Gus
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