Ok, in your case you listened to people who knew what they were talking about instead of reading. That's like saying "Reading books is a bad thing to do, but I think you should listen to audio-books." It's the same information dealt two ways so really you just dislike one method of delivery is all.
Also guides have the advantage of standing up to scrutiny from thousands of players whereas "Random Guy X" (speaking in generalities) got his information from who knows where and could be in the same keyboard turning, clicking, SW: D glyph using, bad gemming boat that you are.
I admit I'm biased as an author of such a work and I don't mean to completely dismiss the value of in game help but it's just not as reliable.
Information Overload:
It's why I state in the intro to my guide "Be warned though that I intend this to be fairly comprehensive (aka long), so feel free to skim through to sections most relevant to you." followed by a Table of Contents. I even made a
tl;dnr version. So there's definitely resources available (specifically to Shadow) that delivers the cliff's notes with the option to get very in depth: you choose your experience.