Yeah I totally agree -- I find no end of amusement how a large portion of answers in #vim are simple :he $ANSWER. For a couple reasons actually:

1. Amazingly the documentation covers that odd topic!

2. Just knowing where to search is a big enough task a whole chatroom has essentially devoted itself to it.

3. No one thinks it odd that vim is a big enough, esoteric enough space that being a fancy search bot doesn't bother people.

:)

sometimes its hard to know what you need to look up in help to reach your solution though (I mean before you know the general vim subsystem you need).

True. People often underestimate the comprehensiveness of vim's :help. Maybe (and this is conjecture) it's because other utilities lack thorough help documentation.

I think it's because most help system emebedded inside applications are useless. Vim is the only internal help I find useful.