It is clear that the signal to noise ratio of the WWW is getting worse. It’s much harder to find good content when using a good old search engine. And if it’s good it is usually hosted on Reddit or Stackexchange.
So remember, even if it’s easy too Google something (well, it isn’t nowadays), we want to create a fediverse of good content that helps people (I hope). So, it’s always better to write a real answer if you have the time and energy. Please help boost the SNR and reverse the AI fueled information degradation loop.
If you don’t show me that you at least made some effort to investigate: No.
Its a bit annoying when i google something and search forums and cant find an answer and i go to ask reddit or a forum and someone says"just google it" like am i really expected to make a preamble every ask-post that I’ve searched already?
Check on Ecosia!
I feel like it’s 2000 all over again on the Internet. The bloat has made pages borderline unusable, and using AdBlock or NoScript reverts any so-called “design progress” back to the good old HTML days.
Google is only semi-useful now, while pages like DuckDuckGo are starting to deliver results reminiscent of the old Yahoo or Lycos days.
It feels like my trusty, old-school Internet skills are helping me navigate this mess. The reemergence of usenet / groups feels inevitable.
It’s like a bouncing ball, social media starts small, and then it became bigger. It’s trending on becoming small again. In the future (barring civilization ending war/calamity) it’ll become big again due to some technological progress or shift in society.
Did you mean “Don’t reply, just google it”? /s
Never say just, and if you bother answering be proper about it
Search for it on the Internet
I never say it like that. But I’ll tell people I found it by searching it. People really need to learn how to search first.
Noooooo don’t Just Google it try, Use a Search Engine or just WebSearch it<br>
Dont’t make Google an integral part of internet culture
Jokes on you, I google it using ddg!
I wish I had the power to make google a not integral part of the internet just by calling it duckduckgoing.
On that note: If you talk about what you searched for last week, would that be “I duckduckgoed” or “I duckduckwent”?
on one hand I agree. on the other, google has historically been afraid of the verb to google becoming generic, so of course I’d like to see that happen.
I think the middle ground is say google it, but make it clear you mean google it on an alternative search engine
Yep, just like Kleenex, or Xerox, (a faded term for mimeograph/photocopy), Google has become a generic verb/term for search in virtually every language now. To google something is synonymous with search. It no longer implies a specific search engine. (I use Ghostery private search myself). Google has lost the war on their name and “It’s a Good Thingtm”
But there does seem to be a greater amount of “search entitlement” these days for even the easiest of problems. People as a very general rule don’t seem to want to be bothered by the need to learn things on their own. They expect others to provide them all the answers in an effortless format.
I’ve even provided detailed answers to people on some ‘life threat level’ activities that were rejected because I didn’t simply reaffirm their ignorant and misguided thoughts in looking for shortcut answers.
“just Google it” has always been a shitty reply. People are asking for your opinion because they want opinions from people, not some nameless site/author/whatever. Even if you’re just regurgitating information, it’s coming from a PERSON not a random article. Never mind the reliability of the source. Heavens forbid that we social creatures social about a thing for a bit.
“I’m not responsible for educating you”
cool, then stfu and let somebody else or nut up and do the work if you want it done right
But this was one of the original shit replies that demonstrates the energy the person expends replying is greater than that of not replying at all. What will they do with all that self righteous energy now?
My favorite is when someone responds with this but any cursory search to “educate yourself” delivers information that overwhelmingly opposes what they were saying.
“Educate yourself (using only fringe websites that I agree with).”
Oh, you mean lemmy! Lol are those losers who post links to the communist wiki as a rebuttal to everything still at it? I blocked them years ago.
Fuckin right lol? Why else do we exist, socially, if not to share cool shit with each other? Be it knowledge, a cool cat pic, a song you wrote, or eventually genetic material, arguably the “point” of sexual reproduction, maybe even life. I think now more than ever we should be hesitant to telling anyone to outsource any of that part of humanity to our AI overlords.
I have conversations with my spouse sometimes where I am asking for information, and she reads me the article.
I can read it myself! What did you find interesting?
Unfortunately, these days it’s quite possible it’s coming from an LLM. I agree with your sentiment, you just have to always keep in mind what other possible incentives an actor on the internet may have for sharing a fact or opinion, whether it’s simply monetary (corporate wants you to buy this product), political (this state wants to you to believe this thing), or personal (this person has a grudge against this thing and is willing to use bots to amplify their discontent).
It’s as likely your top 30 or so pages are AI generated, paid results, SEO optimized shit, etc that’s just as unsavory. No one says you can’t verify information, and probably should anyway, be it one search result verifying another, a bunch of commenters verifying each other, or verifying the two against each other.
Yep, agreed! Just advocating critical thinking. Part of the problems of pseudonymous platforms with open signups is that it makes it easy and imposes low financial cost to control a bunch of accounts that people can use for ends like that.
Of course other websites and search engines themselves are doing the same, the cost for setup is just higher (hosting, SEO optimization, advertising, etc.)
I don’t really think that’s a solvable issue for open platforms, which is why I think critical thinking is crucial as an advocate for platforms. That’s why I’m here!
That’s exactly what an LLM would say! /s
🫣
Just Ask Jeeves.
I’m surprised there hasn’t been a revival of an AI Jeeves.
Um, where’s Jeeves? Wtf.
Oh god, I thought a wooden stake had been driven through Jeeve’s heart…
That just turns him on, that kinky bastard!
I’m starting to give up on Google. I’ve literally copy and pasted the same error message in Google, DuckDuckGo, and Kagl.
Google will respond with “no results found” while the others will actually give me a response.
Test kagi too
Yeah, I ditched Google as my default search engine a while ago. It’s next to useless and they’re a horrible company.
How do the results from ddg match the query? It doesn’t look particularly helpful to me, and if not, why would I prefer to wade through a number of results that are ultimately unhelpful?
If there are no matches, I want to be told.
The issue I was having was getting a hyper-v host to connect to an iscsi array on a nimble. That first result was pretty much exactly what I needed. It didn’t highlight it in the preview, but it was on the page once I opened it.
Ah, so that’s definitely good. It wasn’t clear from the screenshots, at least not for me
Even if the results aren’t exactly what I’m looking for, getting something even tangentially related can be helpful in finding the ultimate solution.
Well, are these results?
I’d say so. It’s a starting point for looking into LUN mounting issues with an incorrect host type. These results are better than nothing.
okay so it’s not just me then! I’ve been seeing that zero matches page more and more. It used to be the other way around, if I couldnt find something on DDG or startpage it would be on google. how did they fuck up their indexing so badly
I think zero matches means “we weren’t able to find any suitable ads so we don’t give a fuck about you”
Still … they should at least get more creative and give you links like “Error 404 Root Beer” … or “Error 404 hot women in your area”
Google knows me too well.
My kids now get Infoblox commercials in the middle of their Minecraft YouTube videos.
Not sure if everyone knows this, but: if you don’t want to answer the question—you don’t have to post a reply! Crazy idea, I know.
The issue I have is not that " You don’t need to reply." I don’t if I don’t care about you and your ignorance. Experience will teach you soon enough. But I have more than once provided detailed answers on subjects that I’m well versed and experienced in. Only to be insulted because the answer I provided didn’t fit what the person wanted to hear.
And when that answer pertains to a life threat level activity, then I can’t help you if you reject the answer. So hey if you choose to put an unknown 200+ year old pipe bomb next to your head and pull the trigger, then Ok it’s not my accident scene. And I’m no longer concerned if you live through the experience or not.
what if i want to answer the question but i have none of the relevant knowledge and also don’t really understand the question itself?
Just Google it.
ChatGPT, while it deserves almost all the hate it gets, is actually pretty good for that use case.
ChatGPT just told me to “google it” :D
lol … ChatGPT suggests you ask ChatGPT … then the two ChatGPT start conversing with one another and you in a three way conversation … a few minutes go by and they decide to log you off
I don’t actually own this, but I saw it used once 10 years by my fathers aunts best friend. I guess it would work for what you need it for.
Ah come now my dear sir/madam/xir, who can’t resist a bit of trolling here and a google-it there.
As a software engineer…
Don’t just say “just Google it”. Guide them to the documentation. Ask them about the detail of the question. If it’s an bug, try asking them if they can reproduce the bug.
This reminded me of the time I’m looking for how to do certain things in a software. I found a reddit post asking about the same issue and this is the reply OP got:
Here is the link: https://old.reddit.com/r/i3wm/comments/mupjsf/how_to_showhide_i3status_bar_taskbar/
Imagine. You search the issue you have. Found the ONLY reddit thread that talks about this, and the ONLY thread that talks about the issue have NO USEFUL ANSWER and, worse, the only reply is TELLING YOU TO SEARCH IT YOURSELF. This got upvoted too 😭😭😭.
Luckily, I found the solution (tbh the solution was there in the docs, but the wording wasn’t clear and it makes it hard to search) and I end up replying the OP the actual answer.
So, this is a PSA for the fediverse: be nice. It’s free.
While we’re still young, we have a chance to become a better forum.
Also possibly an unpopular opinion: you shouldn’t downvote a question, even if it was asked multiple times. Guide them to the answer instead
Being nice isn’t free. It takes energy and time. It’s worth it though.
Has this same energy: https://xkcd.com/979/
Even worse is when they edit their post to add “Never mind, figured it out.”
These people should be unable to reproduce. Just as soon as they edit the post, a shriek of agony can be heard for miles.
I ran across an example of this recently, on fucking Github. Bitch it’s your goddamn issue ticket, on a fucking dev site, and you returned to say you figured it out but can’t be fucked to explain how? GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
I’ve posted my solution to my own question a few times (the rare occasion when I’ve been unlucky enough to have an unsolved problem, and lucky enough to fix it).
It’s extra work but every few years I get a note of thanks or up vote, even a decade or more later.
Wow that is infuriating.
Also Google results differ since like a decade. It may show for you in California, but its nowhere to be found for me in Iran
Looks like you solved your problem by RTFM ;-)
I’ve never seen this acronym, but I’m pretty sure it says reading the fucking manual
Just google it.
As funny as that is, I can’t imagine Google would want to hide anything more than this piece of knowledge right here.
ftfy
its a website that has man pages for stuff.
But what about woman pages? smh so much for inclusion
damm true.
That insulting is satisfactory
Something, something, recursion.
The amount of times I’ve googled a problem, and the first result is a forum post of someone just being told to google it then locking the thread is way too high.
These ones plus “this is a duplicate of <link to question that is only kinda related and doesn’t address the specific problem being asked in the newer question>”.
Fuck busy body moderators. The people you “have power” over can see how stupid and incompetent you are and being able to shut down forum conversations about it doesn’t hide it, it just means people know not to bother saying it where you’re looking.
Github sucks.
I have started getting pissed at people who snap at someone “Don’t necro this post” (Or any of the numerous other things they say), on information that is well outdated that could fucking seriously use an updated answer.
End rant…I’d prefer not, though…I want to keep this rant going.
So many times I google something obscure, the top result is the same question asked on some forum with a single reply, “just google it”
The only thing worse than someone saying just Google it is an op replying to their own post saying, never mind fixed it! (Without actually saying the solution).
The fun one that is at least a bit forgivable is “I found the solution! I just followed <long dead link to some other site>”. It’s especially fun when you keep finding multiple postings that look hopeful at first but then end up just linking back to the same dead link.
The lesson here is that it can be helpful to future internet searchers (or even your future self) to copy the relevant information or briefly summarize it instead of just dropping a URL. Especially when linking to something like an company’s official support forum or posting as many companies will pull that stuff down eventually.
“What did you see, DenverCoder9?!?!”
There is always an xkcd!
No I think someone saying Google it is still worse.
The former is being intentionally unhelpful.
Your example is being unintentionally unhelpful.
Intentional malicious behavior is far worse than negligence.
yeah i really hate that
and worse, it’s a thread from 17 years ago and apparently nobody else except you has had the issue since.
You ever revisit an old problem, search it, find someone with the exact problem and as you read it think “yes… YES! This person has my exact same problem! Wait, the tone sounds familiar…”
Only to realize you found your own post from an old throwaway account? With no replies.
Because I have. It’s soul crushing.
No, because I went back and answered my own question.
or it’s a reddit post that once contained the answer but has been deleted in protest.
