Edit Change: Hmmm, I think I should just drop it for now.
Yes, everybody do this please.
Sorry Footkerchief, but I rather want to address this...
It's not my intention to start a flame war, so I hope this is taken in the spirit in which I mean it. Shoku, I hope you read this after you cool down, not before.
People don't visit this forum with the same frequency as everyone else. There are clearly some people who almost live on this forum, others who may visit once or twice a year, and everyone else, who will fall somewhere in between. Fact is, that information for DF isn't the most organised, and particularly, anything in this thread is likely lost to anyone who doesn't visit more than once a day. I've been trying to come here once a day to catch up, but I still manage to miss most of what is discussed in this thread, since I simply don't have the time to read it all. Shoku, you yourself say that you are always playing catch up with this thread, so it shouldn't be hard to imagine the difficulty of keeping up if you were to visit less often than you currently do. It soon becomes impossible to keep up with absolutely everything.
There happens to be another forum I'm involved with, where despite having much information stickied, as well as a reasonably decent FAQ, we still have the same questions being asked quite often. Sometimes it's obvious that it's pure laziness on the part of the person posting, and in such a situation, little mercy is shown. However, much of the time, it's more a case of their lack of familiarity with our forum (or forums in general,) inability to do a proper search, difficulty in understanding the information which has been given (particularly for people with English as a second language,) etc. The regulars groan, but fortunately, they're mostly pretty tolerant. It
is possible to genuinely not see a link that says 'FAQ', and most people are suitably embarrassed when it's pointed out to them.
What's my point? It seems that some people are assuming that anyone asking something common, which apparently has been asked and answered many times in this thread, must be lazy for not knowing the answer already. But not everyone will have read all 600 pages in this thread, nor should it be considered reasonable to expect them to do so. I would hope it's clear that that's nothing to do with laziness. On the subject of hearing a term and knowing what it means: I've heard the term 'caste' mentioned here myself - it was mentioned in conversation in much the way I've just mentioned it. I.e. lacking an accompanied explanation of what it is. I didn't know what it referred to until this conversation. So it's far from unlikely that a casual reader may have heard of a term yet not know what it means.
Summing up, I'd humbly suggest that showing a little more tolerance to commonly asked questions might be a good thing.