Thank you for trying to help and all, but is there need to be so curt? I did see; that's why I specified final version.
You may think I'm bitch, but my answer is "yes, I have to be so curt". I shall explain, not that it will do any good. When people make up their minds about someone, they hardly change.
9/10 times, people here ask for things without checking previous pages. If you reply nicely, they will then be bolder and ask you to EITHER re-up for them OR copy and paste the link from the previous pages for them. Their reasons for asking this of the people who bother to reply nicely? Well, they claim that they haven't the time to search all the previous pages, OR it's too troublesome for them to do so, OR they did so and found nothing.
So telling people this to their face in the briskest way possible is the most logical course of action to let know that people who help ARE NOT pushovers who will give them everything on a silver platter.
This applies to real life as well. Pretend you are a lowly adjunct professor with a reputation for being nice and soft, and that grades are always negotiable with you. So if a student gets 65/100, you are willing to round it up to 70/10 and so on when the kids ask you. So you have that reputation of being an easy marker and the department likes you for it because it makes them look good for churning out students with good marks all the time. One day, your student failed a test because he did not fill in any answers. The only thing he wrote on that test sheet was his name. Naturally, he fails. But he goes to you and asks for a minimum B+. You tell him nicely that you can't do that because he handed in a blank sheet. He sees you're nice and thinks you're a softie and tries to pressure you for marks, after all you always round up marks when people ask you. You tell him that it's impossible to round up his marks for this in this instance because he had no marks to round up. He kicks up a fuss and takes this to the dept and they ask you to give in to him because you have done this before, and warn you that YOU have set the precedence for this and you WILL continue doing this if you know what's good for you because the department's reputation of coughing up students who always do well is at stake.
But if you are curt from the beginning and never negotiate marks and make it clear to anyone who tries to ask for an increase in grades that it's impossible because if they didn't study/handed in a blank sheet, they would fail or not do well, then they would never pull the rubbish of the boy in the example.
