To add to my previous reply:
On the one hand, It may be the case that some members of these boards have done a lot of searches but don't refer to them and so get aggrieved by reminders to this effect; on the other hand, what they have already done may be irrelevant to an expert who can easily answer the question without taking a school-masterly attitude towards the supposedly recalcitrant pupil by requiring him to show his homework.
My idea is this: When a new post appears like, for example, this:
I can't get the installer to recognize the wireless dongle blablabla; I've done a lot of searches but come up with nothing..it works perfectly in Ubuntu...
Rather than just ignoring the post or telling them in no uncertain terms to read the documentation on the assumption that they've not already done so, simply report the post to a forum moderator who could immediately check this. Then a standard reminder could be posted, or sent automatically to their email address, which would say something like this:
Thank you for your recent forum post.
Subject: Wireless Dongle not working in Debian stretch.
To help other forum members to assist you, please give details of any attempts you have made to solve the problem.
I think such a mechanism would obviate the urge some members feel to continually refer to this requirement, which is has been satisfactorily dealt with in
Absent Minded's
Please Read: What we expect you to have already done post, thus being able to focus on the issues themselves.
"Please accept my resignation. I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member".—Groucho Marx