On rare occasion, Google does give me a man page, but more often than not, someone has answered my bone-head question in simple terms in a forum somewhere.
Oh, I wasn't dissing the Google method. I'm just saying that if people bothered to read the whole manpage for some application just once, they'd know of the "cool" features they might need, instead of waiting until someone posts it on HN or reddit.
The issue being that not all manpages are created equal. Some only document 2% of the program's functionality, others drone on and on about insignificant features, others are just unclear in their wording. It makes it so that people only consult the manpages when they need to.
That said, reading the manpages for something that you use all the time like ssh is a good idea. (Though if you use zsh, I'll take a bit to go through all of the documentation)
