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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.
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?
i really expected to make a preamble every ask-post that I’ve searched already?
Yes. You need to show your effort, otherwise your question will be considered lazy. This is specially true regarding technical issues in volunteer forums.
The seminal essay "How To Ask Questions the Smart Way" explains these and other finer points.
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
Wow that is infuriating.
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.
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.
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.
"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
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).
and worse, it's a thread from 17 years ago and apparently nobody else except you has had the issue since.
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.
Yeah, I ditched Google as my default search engine a while ago. It's next to useless and they're a horrible company.
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"
Test kagi too
Noooooo don't Just Google it try, Use a Search Engine or just WebSearch it
Dont't make Google an integral part of internet culture
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
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.
"Google It"
I google
finds 1 link
its a link to a fourm post with the same question
only 1 answer found
answer says "Google It"
🙃
Also, fuck Google. I've been removing the word from my lexicon. I say, let me search (or research) that instead
“Check the documentation” should absolutely be a retort though.
One of my least favorite things about the fediverse (and especially Discord and Reddit) is members asking the same simple question hundreds of times because they didn’t bother to do a simple search and didn’t bother to check obvious documentation.
They didn’t know the documentation exists? OK, I will happily show you, and show you how to find it in general. Question only partially novel? Great, I will link an old answer and explain the rest… But I am kinda fed up with how “ephemeral” social media is, which is by design, as that repetitiveness increases engagement dramatically. Many forums should be structured more like a wiki, and its users should reflect that.
That kind of behavior can also be a sign that the documentation is hard to find or hard to comprehend. Or that something isn't documented at all, but the seniors imagine it is, because the answer is obvious to them.
Check on Ecosia!
When I ask someone for clarification via their expertise, I usually reflexively indicate that I cannot trust google because of the incursion of AI slop, and even if it shows THEM accurate results, it is no guarantee that it will show ME those same results.
Never say just, and if you bother answering be proper about it
I've never had issues with looking anything up. By downranking Reddit and using a search engine with a good indexer that downranks bullshit and generated websites, which mine is really good at, I haven't noticed much change from how it was before.
But I agree with the second part. That's something that never occured to me, and it makes sense. I was usually trying to answer questions I knew, and never had the urge to reply "just google it", so it doesn't change much for me, but it's a really good point I never realized.
Remember that most people don't even know there is something called "rankings" or "indexer" in this context.
Search engines are mega sucky these days, but Wikipedia has never been better. I find myself going straight to wiki any time I need a quick fact or basic info.
