I've been lurking since I got my phone back in February, and yea it seems that people don't like to "help" and that's understandable. A lot of the devs do this stuff simply by trial and error or scrapping google for any info they can find. and becuase it can take so much time out of the day fixing bugs, they like to be compensated or "thanked" in some way. cool beans. Though it would be nice to get paid for software and coding, I'm very much about open source and teaching others who don't know where to start. None of this would be here right now if it weren't for open source.
One part that sucks about google is that it has self interest in protecting it's contracts with other corps. so searching for this info is not as easy as one would think. learning google search operators are necessary.
I recently have been having alot of "timeoff" so I've been using anytime i have to dig through the roms and and see what changes have been being made to the files. The more we can share on what we find together and what changes were made can only stand to further develop our phones.
I must also say even though I like helping I'm not one that is very patient with laziness

. As far as helping noob questions, that's when they should be directed toward the available information already on the forums. an active chat room/irc channel helps to keep the forums from unnecessary topics.