Great to see the reaction that thread generated! Hope it spreads across WoW and things start to get nicer.
I've spent my fair share of time helping people that have problems with the game. The most time consuming was a mage in an old guild that was dyslectic and didn't know any english at all. I helped him as much as I could until things started to get strange and he wanted to move to my place since life at his town was shit. And then one of his friends went nuts on vent yelling at the gm.
Besides him I usually try to give a small helping had answering questions in /trade or during lfd.
That being said, I've been a jerk from time to time as well. A few dungeons in WotLK which I was cranky at some DPSs and they got defended and I asked myself what the hell I was doing.