I make a practice when I'm with a group of goodhearted amateurs who don't have a lot of time behind the nut of yelling chords out in the middle of a song even tho' it disrupts the lyrics a bit. Depends on the nature of the group and the event. Ithink there are many folks out there who learned a few chords, but who are either through inexperience (see Peter's marvelous post above) or authoritarian learning trauma (don't get me started) believe they have to be told the musical steps. Some student musicians never get to the "create" end of the spectrum at all, because they are drilled into reading it only, and get the idea they have to get a map before they're allowed to go anywhere. I weep for them. I think these are the two sources of "Does anyone know the chords to Red River Valley?".

I strongly urge all more experienced hands to treat such requests with kindly forebearance. I recently took the trouble to send the three chords (you know which three) to "Blow Ye Winds" (well, there's a second in there also)to a nice guy out in the wilderness who had dropped a request on a thread and never came back. He answered the email within an hour and was purely delighted that he had gotten the help, because the song had been haunting him for months. Now he's going to practice the prescribed three chords and get some joy out of it. Well worth the small trouble of sending him an email.