Every once in a while, somebody comes into an IRC channel with a code question, and their code turns out to be a mess - very hard to understand, even harder to fix, and sometimes flat-out unfixable. This is usually followed by a recommendation towards the person asking the question, suggesting that they clean up the code first, and giving them concrete suggestions on how to do so.
Most of the time, this works fine - the asker cleans up the code and returns with a more readable version. Unfortunately, sometimes it does not.
Asking people on IRC a question means asking volunteers to give up their time and energy to solve your problem. This is fine, since that's what people are there to do in the first place - however, it means that you are expected to put in your part of the effort as well.
When you respond with something along the lines of:
"I don't care about improving the code quality, I just want to get this issue fixed"
... then what you're actually saying is:
I don't care that a bunch of volunteers, there to help people with the best intentions, need to waste potentially hours of their time on understanding my code. I also don't care that every time I ask a question in the future, this time will have to be wasted again, because I'm too lazy to work on improving my skills towards writing more readable code.
This is not respectful behaviour towards the people you are asking for help. It wastes both your time and that of the people trying to help you. When people ask that you clean up your code, it's not just an off-topic suggestion, it's an expectation.
It is of course up to you whether you follow the recommendation, but if you do not, then you may find that people stop answering your questions.
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