As taken from the [the most upvoted answer here][1]. > If the treatment has not been unfair, telling them to take it > somewhere else on the network only moves crap around for other sites > to deal with. Only if we're dealing with an edge case which is > off-topic on the current site, but good and on-topic on an other, > should you advise them to take it somewhere else. And if you do, > always make sure you know that it's good for the other site, and > advise them to read through the help center to establish that for > themselves. And the most upvoted comment. > What's unfair about downvoting someone for not doing any research, > which is explicitly mentioned on the downvote arrow? Your premise is > flawed. Another flawed premise is that we should cater to everybody > and that a SE goal is to be "friendly" - it's not, SE sites are > expected to be useful, and possibly non-offensive, but "friendly" is > not an objectively measurable thing. I'd say the commenters told OP > that the question is crap in a friendly way, what more do you want? Which seems to fit here perfectly. The user asked how to save a text file in linux, without stating what editor he used. And then proceeded to loose his temper within minutes of getting a response. Personally I would have [linked him to the first google hit][2], flagged to close as low quality and never looked back. And [while this question has been linked][3] I think the comment on it `Rule 2: don't migrate endless trails of duplicates` might be a better fit here. As you can see from the first google hit, it's not exactly hard to come by information. On a personal level though, this looks like a person who's just following a guide to do something that he has no idea how to do, got stuck and frustrated and is now reaching at straws. While I feel sorry for him, I wouldn't in any way consider him `in good standing`. [1]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/285989/is-advising-unfairly-treated-newbies-to-use-other-se-sites-okay [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11828270/how-to-exit-the-vim-editor [3]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/91446/276684