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Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Then tomorrow, he'll ask for another fish. And you give it to him then too, so he comes back the next day. And the next. And at some point it's no longer fun for you to give him fish, so you don't, but someone else does. And other people see that this is where the fish are given away, so they congregate here with their fish requests, and meanwhile everyone who actually respects their time and wants to do something to help these fishless souls that's less ephemeral finds that their fishing dojo has been overrun with fish-flingers and their hungry clients.

There are so many places on the internet where help vampires can beg for help and empathetic marks can feed them. The value of a Q&A site, as distinct from a Reddit or a Discord or a Facebook group, is putting in the extra effort to build a resource that is valuable for more than one person at a time. Both askers and answerers should buy into this mission, or they're not doing Q&A; they're doing help forum.

Expecting askers to do some research before posting a question is a vital part of how they demonstrate that they buy into this mission. We should not encourage lazy askers because they lead to degrading a Q&A site into a copy of r/eli5. If you want r/eli5, go to r/eli5, and spend all your days there. This place should be different.

As for where the line for ‘minimum effort’ should be drawn, I expect that to be decided on a community-by-community basis. But I think drawing it all the way at ‘no effort required’ means you're surrendering the fundamental thing that makes Q&A sites a good idea.