Down votes due to lacking knowledge even when question is clear and comments are responded

Question

Here is a question by a user not very new, he has been member for 5 months but only had asked 4 questions

His question seemed me clear and became crystal clear after one comment.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13084636/html-white-space-padding

Down-voted, I think just because of having very few knowledge about the question context. Question is very concise, clear but the way user asking can not give good results by googling. So should we not guide simply such a question/user rather than down-voting?

Answer 1

I'm not a regular on SO and an outsider but here's my thought. The first comment I think explains it all: no code was provided. What does this mean?

First, when you're asking for help on a code, the least you can do is provide a Minimal Working Example (MWE), so that people can work on your code. I do that when asking questions on LaTeX, so it only makes sense to do that in this case as well.

Additionally, providing the code proves that you're not a "gimme teh codez" user, but instead that you did your work, encountering an obstacle that you cannot overcome alone. In the linked question the other users might think that the OP didn't actually write any code and is simply asking for a ready-to-compile one without putting any effort in it.