I find myself agreeing with both of you. You're right that having articles like this makes the tools more accessible and understandable to those that use both resources. However, it seems that most people don't use both resources. Many rely only on these sorts of articles and don't RTFM. There is a lot of power in many *nix tools that people could benefit from but don't realize it because they don't even skim over the manual.
It wasn't that long ago that it was common for people read the manuals of the things they used to get the best bang for their buck, so to speak. Now, the world is filled with quick-starts and use-specific guides, because people don't have the time to research all the things they use.
It's this aversion to a little studying of the tools of our trade that I think blueflow and myself are against.
If you know you want a SOCKS proxy and just need to know the correct option name, the man pages are great. If you have no idea what a SOCKS proxy is, why you might want it, or even that ssh can solve this problem for you, then there's no chance you'd even think to look at the man pages for ssh and ssh_config, and if you did, you still wouldn't really know what the bits about SOCKS proxy meant for you and your problems.
It's not like this article's existence will prevent people from reading the man pages. On the contrary, this article serves an entirely different purpose. I can read it on my phone, learn about something new, and then when I'm back at my workstation, I can look up the new concept in the man pages to figure out how I can integrate it into my own workflow.
I'm struggling with understanding the motivation behind your post here. Please reconsider the value of this sort of article in combination with the value of man pages.