I read that not being precise in the wording of the title helps to dramatize things. By being inaccurate - that is the essence dramatization.
I do not hate all guides - I got a whole tonne of knowledge from the internet. Of course, I process these data and come out with new ones of my own, which I write about and share.
The guides I hate, fall into one or both of the following categories - guides that are written based on second-hand knowledge, and guides that are written by noobs.
You'll be surprised, after reading this post, that if you look around the web you can find a huge number of guides that belong to these two categories.
First, guides that are based on second-hand knowledge.
What are second-hand, or secondary knowledge/info/sources? Those are information that you get from somewhere else, as opposed to info that you get or confirm on your own, which is called first-hand knowledge.
What is wrong with second-hand knowledge? Information dilution and accuracy issues.
You got your info from somewhere. At best you can only repeat 100% of whatever information that is written if you didn't add any of your own. Chances are, you don't get the full 100%.
So if your guide is only going to be less informative and more inaccurate than wherever you got it from, why bother wasting bandwidth and the time of poor suckers who were lured into reading it because they needed genuine help on the topic while you spammed your "guide" on forums as if they are your personal webpages? Just link them to a proper guide instead of taking credit! Oh yes, credit, you didn't get the info on your own so credit where necessary.
Next, guides that are written by noobs.
Recall the definition of newbies - those new in a certain area, and noobs, those that plain suck and think they are pro and hence refuse to learn.
Newbies will never write a guide because they do not think they are good enough. If they think they are good enough but are actually not, they are noobs. Hence noob guides are all written by... erm... noobs.
No need much explanation for this - the guide just sucks.
There is a saying however, that game guides are written by people who get pwned so much that instead of enjoying the game by laughing evilly killing others they find more joy in sharing their unconfirmed theories (read - secondary knowledge) on how to play well. This goes in line with the saying - "Those who can't do, teach".
I'm not against more basic, less detailed guides, because there is always a need for teachers. And having taught before I understand first-hand that you need to teach at the level of the student. For example, getting the guy doing your university mathematics tutorials to teach primary school is impossible. Not that he/she does a good job teaching 20-year-olds either, but you get the idea.
But guides that are WRONG because the author is a noob just pisses me off.
So as you might have realized by now, noob and second-hand guides often overlap.
Oh yes I found a good forum thread on "Those who can't do, teach". I'll extract out the various versions of the saying.
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