I have quite a few pet peeves, like people who don't search, people who post without first reading the thread they're posting to.... Among them is when people expect you to buy an entire album just to hear a single song or track, or think you can easily get hold of some obscure or out-of-print recording. Furthermore, I don't care for the way many artists perform, so once I'd gotten a tune, words and chords, I'd be unlikely to listen to most of these albums ever again. Should I have to buy some album of pretentious renditions just to hear how a public domain work (or a work those performers didn't write) goes? Particularly when I don't yet know if the song is even worth bothering with? Preposterous. Even with $1 track downloads, the expense can easily get prohibitive.

I do think that a lot of people are lazy about requesting chords: many requests I've seen are for basic three-chord songs, and those anyone should be able to figure out just through experimenting with the chords they know (and perhaps a capo). Nearly all of us are equipped with a detector that says "Yep, that's right," "Nope, but close," "Nope, that's not it" or "Whoa, that's really not it!" Exercising that faculty is the only way you learn.

If that doesn't suffice, the next recourse should be googling the net (including searching past threads here). All too often, people ask for chords when they've already been posted and a simple search would find them. If the chords aren't in the right key, all you need is a simple transposition chart--a ten-second search should turn up plenty of those. As with any endeavor, a certain level of expertise should be expected, and those without it should get private tutoring rather than expecting others to indulge them or hand-feed them from a silver plate.

I also don't believe in indulging computer newbies. Yes, everyone started at the beginning sometime, but no one is without computer-literate friends, and a person should have some minimum competence with computers, search engines and FAQ-finding before they start bothering others with their posts. Lack of preparation and sheer laziness should not be condoned, even by silent endorsement.

So I'd have to know for which song the chords were requested before weighing in on whether I think the reaction was inappropriate. Probably it was at least an overreaction, but sometimes folks deserve being told off. And sometimes you just hit someone's pet peeve, so they're lashing out not at the individual poster as much as at a galling, repetitive situation. That, too, deserves some indulgence.