Unless you want to propose that everyone's favorite didactic tool, the Socratic Method, is insulting and against the purposes of finding answers, I'm not sure how much of this follows.

This statement seems to suggest that you've entirely missed or ignored the point of anything I said.

First, concerning "didactic tools": Reddit is generally not agreed, nor intended, to be a classroom environment, and neither is /r/askphilosophy (if the sidebar is meant to be a guide to what to expect, which I'm certain this one is). The fact that people may come here to learn does not demand that they come here to be taught, so the matter of didactic methods is quite beside the point, and I think it's pretty clear that the efficacy of one particular didactic method over another is not what's under discussion here.

Second, concerning the matter of "insult": It's curious that those who reply to me keep leaving out the word "potential," as though it doesn't have any material relevance to the argument I used the word to disclaim. At any rate, I'll repeat what I said in another reply-- It's potentially insulting to assume that someone's asking a question disingenuously, not for the purpose of enlightenment but simply to dishonestly harvest answers they can give as their own. It's potentially insulting because we can't know for sure that this is the case, and if the question was asked out of a desire for insight or explanation and not because someone was trying to avoid work (like, for instance, if "qualia" and "Dan Dennett's criticism of it" was mentioned somewhere and OP wanted clarification), the answer would take on a different, more unhelpful complexion.

I'm not sure why you are talking about voting guidelines

I'm talking about voting guidelines because the top voted answer is not an answer at all, even though the sidebar specifies that unhelpful answers should be downvoted.

homework questions are perfectly acceptable here as far as I have seen, as long as the poster is willing to put in the work to understand the material.

I don't see anywhere that specifies that getting an answer to one's question is contingent on how much work they're willing to put in. Here's what I do see:

• "You ask questions; we provide answers." Sometimes?
• "AskPhilosophy defines itself less by the sort of questions that are accepted than by the sort of answers they can expect to receive."
• "Feel free to ask about topics you're studying in school" Unless you are willing to put the work in to understand the material?
• "We require that especially top-level responses to questions (...) ideally (make) reference to the existing literature on that topic." Unless it's a homework question and you're a teacher that insists on the Socratic Method?

I took the reply in question to be more about getting the poster to engage in the discussion rather than simply trying to be flip or dismissive or obstructionist.

What if OP didn't want a discussion? What if OP just wants an answer to their question? Should contributors/readers of /r/askphilosophy expect to have to qualify their questions in this way? The sidebar seems to suggest they shouldn't. I don't think the top commenter was being flip, dismissive or obstructionist, but I also don't think they replied in accordance with the stated purview of this subreddit. Maybe a mod can correct me.

linking to SEP isn't helpful if the poster already has read that

No harm will come of linking it anyway in case OP hasn't, with the added benefit gained by other readers who also might not have.

if the poster is already reading Dennet's writings on subjective experience, saying "go read Dennet's book on the mind, it's called xyz" is not helpful.

"Go read X" is not an answer to the question, so I agree that it wouldn't be helpful. It would, however, be at least more helpful than saying "Tell us what you know first, THEN we'll answer your question." Even MORE helpful, again, to other readers who are not OP and are looking for at least somewhere to start.

Philosophy is not about having the right answer so much as knowing why an answer is right; any test on Dennet will not only want to know what his argument is against qualia, but also counter arguments and maybe counters to those. Just saying "Dennet thinks x" is not enough for anything more than anecdotes.

None of this is relevant to the matter of best practices in /r/askphilosophy. If people want "Dennett thinks X," I don't see how it's anyone's place to suggest they shouldn't be able to find it here because we all have a moral obligation to the Socratic Method or someone else's concept of a minimum required level of effort to understand the answers given.

TL;DR: Sidebar says "You ask questions; we provide answers." OP asked a question, and the top-voted comment withholds that answer on insistence that OP must engage in a pedagogical process neither OP nor anyone else subscribed to, which I submit discourages the asking of questions by others who might want not to be taught, but merely to get answers to their questions.

Thank you for taking the time to discuss your view of the matter with me.