Oy - I tend to be a researcher, myself. If something piques my attention, I'll do much more research than the average person. Still, when I was a total newb to this site, I found the search function here to not always be as helpful as one might hope. Part of that was getting familiar with the terminology used by people here - I've pretty much either grown perennials or stuff I just expected to grow from scratch again in the Spring, so wasn't familiar with the term "overwinter", for example. (And is it technically "overwinter", or "over winter", or "over-winter"?) And of course, sometimes I'd get a HUGE number of threads returned, that may not have anything to do with what I'm looking for at all, but someone just happened to use a search term in it, so there it is. So yes, I agree using the search function should be a first step, but am also very sympathetic with those who give up quickly on it, especially if they're newbs. I've been on this site a whopping 6 months now, and STILL can't find stuff sometimes... though it usually slaps me in the face as to why once someone points me in the right direction.
However, I will say that several folks have kindly offered me seeds and I didn't even ask! 
