[pacala]

In historical context, RTFM was often times unhelpful.

* The manual was accessible via a set of arcane commands, if it was at all accessible. Poor usability and lack of good search was common. Remembering the incantations required for accessing the manual was a task in itself, which left very little brain space for the actual task.

* The manual was usually a mere list of API calls, with little in the way of big picture explanations, usage examples or tutorials. There was no widespread internet content and search to supplant the paucity of the manual.

* The person asking the question had a task accomplished by combining several parts in the manual. RTFM translated to: read the equivalent of 200 print pages, filter out the 197 pages irrelevant to your task, but keep enough of them to grok the big picture, then aggregate the remaining 3 into a working incantation. And better get it right, or else a stream of cryptic and undocumented errors will come your way.

My suspicion is that RTFM wielding persons often times didn't know on top of their heads how to solve the task either, and were too caught up in protecting their expert status image to admit so. RTFM, you lazy intellectually challenged person vs. I dunno, try RTM.