[lordgrenville]

Strongly disagree. The point of SO is for experts to answer questions. They've learned things the hard way and would like to help others do better. They're not being paid. As such, telling the questioner that their whole approach is wrong is appropriate and even preferable.

From what I've heard Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky had different views on this and Spolsky's more tolerant, "no such thing as a stupid question" approach won out within the company, but is less popular among the people who write answers.