Teaching how to fish is not considered abusive. Slapping people with a fish is.

You did not teach the asker how to fish. Your comment consisted solely of:

1. The slap: a pair of links to generic advice which you were too lazy to even put in a proper sentence, let alone customize to the situation at hand. This is quite rude: you're going out of your way to leave a comment (if you wanted to expend a minimum of energy, you could have stuck to voting), but not so much out of your way to address the particular situation.

   To add injury to insult, only one of the links is applicable, but it's dubious whether it's relevant. You cannot tell that the asker has done no research: they may well have done research and found nothing (and in this case, finding nothing is the plausible outcome of doing a reasonable amount of research). There is indeed no attempt, but an attempt is not required, does not necessarily make the question easier to answer, and usually leads to less useful answers because the answers have to cover what's wrong with the attempt which may not be on the path to solving the problem.

2. A wrong teaching: you asked whether the asker had consulted the man page. Consulting the manual is a good idea, but answers are not always easy to understand, so the fact that the answer is in the manual does not always make the question a bad question. It depends how easy it is to find the answer. But in any case, here, the answer is not in the man page. So if you think you're teaching someone to fish by pointing them to a pond which doesn't host any fish, you're doing it wrong.

I could have downvoted the question and just left, or simply ignored it in the first place. Instead I provided hints about what I think was lacking, without any prospect of gaining reputation out of it. As a result I'm bashed as if being destructive in some way.

Given that you didn't have any constructive advice, you should have ignored the question. Some of your generic advice would have been valuable if it had been applicable. If you don't want to spend the time checking whether your advice is applicable, just move on, or at least clearly indicate what you aren't sure of. If you'd left a comment like

tar has options to deal with compressed archives, have you checked the manual?

then the most likely outcome would have been a couple of upvotes on your comment, and perhaps a reply like “The manual says that these options don't work when updating of concatenating.”.

Is pointing out the shortcomings of a mediocre question seriously considered abusive here?

It certainly isn't. As long as they're real shortcomings.

Teaching how to fish is not considered abusive. Slapping people with a fish is.

You did not teach the asker how to fish. Your comment consisted solely of:

1. The slap: a pair of links to generic advice which you were too lazy to even put in a proper sentence, let alone customize to the situation at hand. This is quite rude: you're going out of your way to leave a comment (if you wanted to expend a minimum of energy, you could have stuck to voting), but not so much out of your way to address the particular situation.

   To add injury to insult, only one of the links is applicable, but it's dubious whether it's relevant. You cannot tell that the asker has done no research: they may well have done research and found nothing (and in this case, finding nothing is the plausible outcome of doing a reasonable amount of research). There is indeed no attempt, but an attempt is not required, does not necessarily make the question easier to answer, and usually leads to less useful answers because the answers have to cover what's wrong with the attempt which may not be on the path to solving the problem.

2. A wrong teaching: you asked whether the asker had consulted the man page. Consulting the manual is a good idea, but answers are not always easy to understand, so the fact that the answer is in the manual does not always make the question a bad question. It depends how easy it is to find the answer. But in any case, here, the answer is not in the man page. So if you think you're teaching someone to fish by pointing them to a pond which doesn't host any fish, you're doing it wrong.

I could have downvoted the question and just left, or simply ignored it in the first place. Instead I provided hints about what I think was lacking, without any prospect of gaining reputation out of it. As a result I'm bashed as if being destructive in some way.

Given that you didn't have any constructive advice, you should have ignored the question. Some of your generic advice would have been valuable if it had been applicable. If you don't want to spend the time checking whether your advice is applicable, just move on, or at least clearly indicate what you aren't sure of. If you'd left a comment like

tar has options to deal with compressed archives, have you checked the manual?

then the most likely outcome would have been a couple of upvotes on your comment, and perhaps a reply like “The manual says that these options don't work when updating or concatenating.”.

Is pointing out the shortcomings of a mediocre question seriously considered abusive here?

It certainly isn't. As long as they're real shortcomings.

Teaching how to fish is not considered abusive. Slapping people with a fish is.

You did not teach the asker how to fish. Your comment consisted solely of:

1. The slap: a pair of links to generic advice which you were too lazy to even put in a proper sentence, let alone customize to the situation at hand. This is quite rude: you're going out of your way to leave a comment (if you wanted to keep expend a minimum of energy, you could have stuck to voting), but not so much out of your way to address the particular situation.

   To add injury to insult, only one of the links is applicable, but it's dubious whether it's relevant. You cannot tell that the asker has done no research: they may well have done research and found nothing (and in this case, finding nothing is the plausible outcome of doing a reasonable amount of research). There is indeed no attempt, but an attempt is not required, does not necessarily make the question easier to answer, and usually leads to less useful answers because the answers have to cover what's wrong with the attempt which may not be on the path to solving the problem.

2. A wrong teaching: you asked whether the asker had consulted the man page. Consulting the manual is a good idea, but answers are not always easy to understand, so the fact that the answer is in the manual does not always make the question a bad question. It depends how easy it is to find the answer. But in any case, here, the answer is not in the man page. So if you think you're teaching someone to fix by pointing them to a pond which doesn't host any fish, you're doing it wrong.

I could have downvoted the question and just left, or simply ignored it in the first place. Instead I provided hints about what I think was lacking, without any prospect of gaining reputation out of it. As a result I'm bashed as if being destructive in some way.

Given that you didn't have any constructive advice, you should have ignored the question. Some of your generic advice would have been valuable if it had been applicable. If you don't want to spend the time checking whether your advice is applicable, just move on, or at least clearly indicate what you aren't sure of. If you'd left a comment like

tar has options to deal with compressed archives, have you checked the manual?

then the most likely outcome would have been a couple of upvotes on your comment, and perhaps a reply like “The manual says that these options don't work when updating of concatenating.”.

Is pointing out the shortcomings of a mediocre question seriously considered abusive here?

It certainly isn't. As long as they're real shortcomings.

Teaching how to fish is not considered abusive. Slapping people with a fish is.

You did not teach the asker how to fish. Your comment consisted solely of:

1. The slap: a pair of links to generic advice which you were too lazy to even put in a proper sentence, let alone customize to the situation at hand. This is quite rude: you're going out of your way to leave a comment (if you wanted to expend a minimum of energy, you could have stuck to voting), but not so much out of your way to address the particular situation.

   To add injury to insult, only one of the links is applicable, but it's dubious whether it's relevant. You cannot tell that the asker has done no research: they may well have done research and found nothing (and in this case, finding nothing is the plausible outcome of doing a reasonable amount of research). There is indeed no attempt, but an attempt is not required, does not necessarily make the question easier to answer, and usually leads to less useful answers because the answers have to cover what's wrong with the attempt which may not be on the path to solving the problem.

2. A wrong teaching: you asked whether the asker had consulted the man page. Consulting the manual is a good idea, but answers are not always easy to understand, so the fact that the answer is in the manual does not always make the question a bad question. It depends how easy it is to find the answer. But in any case, here, the answer is not in the man page. So if you think you're teaching someone to fish by pointing them to a pond which doesn't host any fish, you're doing it wrong.

I could have downvoted the question and just left, or simply ignored it in the first place. Instead I provided hints about what I think was lacking, without any prospect of gaining reputation out of it. As a result I'm bashed as if being destructive in some way.

Given that you didn't have any constructive advice, you should have ignored the question. Some of your generic advice would have been valuable if it had been applicable. If you don't want to spend the time checking whether your advice is applicable, just move on, or at least clearly indicate what you aren't sure of. If you'd left a comment like

tar has options to deal with compressed archives, have you checked the manual?

then the most likely outcome would have been a couple of upvotes on your comment, and perhaps a reply like “The manual says that these options don't work when updating of concatenating.”.

Is pointing out the shortcomings of a mediocre question seriously considered abusive here?

It certainly isn't. As long as they're real shortcomings.