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Not to mention asking us to get an instant messenger to contact YOU so that we can answer your questions is pretty back-asswards. You're already contacting us here... why should be jump through hoops to contact you when you've already established contact? That just makes things harder for us.
Lest the real reason for public question-and-answer be lost, here it is: having it public makes the answers available others in a similar situation, and opens them to correction by others. Asking for private help means that the answers definitely won't benefit anyone else.
Unfortunately, making it public opens it to trolling by certain people. The best that can be said is that the only truely stupid people are those who think that asking basic questions is stupid. Even a totally clueless person asking questions will eventually become clueful; it only matters where a person is headed, not where he is at the moment.