Whilst I understand and agree with you DFC, possibly another cause for such queries from relatively inexperienced pilots is simply the fact that Pprune (and other forums) are there, and people get used to asking before looking around to gather the necessary information.
The danger in doing that is, as you say, that they may pick up incorrect, even potentially dangerous or misleading info from well-meaning but misinformed posters.
The solution? Maybe forums should have a specific set of links to official information available as a maintained service.... and then we would all have to discipline ourselves to refer such questions to those links in the first instance.
Trouble is, there are so many links to so many sources of official information... so round we go again, then people who ask the questions want the local knowledge from the local users, because it apparaently condenses what they want to know....
round n round n round n ...... we go !
