Nobody, least of all me, is saying people should work for free. But not being paid to do something you don't want to do is a reason to go do something else, not hang around and be a hostile, superior dick about it, alienating the users.

The answerers are just as much users as the questioners - possibly in fact more as they are the ones spending time whilst the askers often (especially the poor ones) just ask a question and then go away.

Unfortunately the SO management want money and so want the fly away askers more than the answerers who provide the benefit of the site.

> However the answerers on So are not paid. Why should tyhy waste their time on a user who has not shown they have put any effort in and asks a question that they have already answered several times before?

This is kind of a weird sentiment to put forth, because other sites namely Quora actually do pay their Answerer's. An acquintance of mine was at one time a top "Question Answerer" on Quora and got some kind of compensation for their work.

So this is not the Question-Asker's problem. This is the problem of Stack Overflow and the people answering the questions.