Artful Codger,

I tend to agree with your "peeves" in your first paragraph but the rest of your post shows a lack of understanding - even intolerance for the newcomer.

You have clearly forgotten your early struggles with an instrument or a computer or you would not be saying what you did. You clearly do not understand the anxiety or lack of confidence of a newcomer, especially an adult newcomer to something; computers, a musical instrument or anything. Often newcomers to something have a fear of failure which makes them anxious and reluctant to try something for fear they get it wrong and nothing is more likely to put them off completely than the "Go figure it out yourself, you idle sod" type of post that Jim Dixon was quite rightly criticising. Your post suggests that underlying attitude.

My daughter once had a maths teacher who told me at a parents evening at her school "No genuine query from a child is ever trivial to them". Implicit in that statement, of course, is that we should always treat their questions seriously even if they seem trivial to us. That is an attitude I took on board in my own professional life and it is one which I think we should adopt to apparently trivial queries to Mudcat unless there is clear evidence to the contrary.

Figuring out chords to a song purely aurally is a non-trivial task and takes time and experience to learn. Newcomers need encouragement and a little help along the way by giving them chords. Maybe even they have had a go and want confirmation that what they have done is right. We don't know, so we shouldn't criticise unless we are in full possession of the facts. Because I play a melody instrument, I don't think I could figure out the chords to even a basic three chord song aurally, though I can usually make a fair attempt if I have the dots.

I know a good many computer newcomers and I know how anxious they get and it takes time to learn all the little tricks about searching. Searching on line for something is a non-trivial task in my view and it often surprisingly difficult to find exactly what you are after even if you are experienced. How often have you ploughed through all the things you mentioned and still not ended up with the information you were seeking?

I think the OP was absolutely right. More tolerance is needed, especially of newcomers. We don't want to put them off.