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.
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.
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.
Search for it on the Internet
Check on Ecosia!
Did you mean “Don’t reply, just google it”? /s
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.
Wow that is infuriating.
Has this same energy: https://xkcd.com/979/
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
“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”
🙃
Old Reddit threads where the answer giver deleted their account & all their comments.
That’s why when I left reddit I don’t delete my posts (even if those posts suck)
Bonus:
I did, bc reddit locked up my content, and wanted to use it to train a LLM.
Let people ask again, here, in the fediverse.
(already had a feeling that someone will say this)
I won’t delete my posts/comments because I want to be helpful, that’s it.
But if I prefer deleting my posts/comments, I will archive it instead.
I respect what r/ArtFundamentals did, and it should be an example: After reddit’s APIpocalypse, they don’t support reddit and decided to close the subreddit. But the advices from the subreddit wasn’t gone–in fact they actually archive it in their own website:
Sadly, DuckDuckGo really sucks ass at searching the fediverse.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Lemmy+don't+reply+just+google+it&t=fpas&ia=web
Even if you type in the exact words of the post, it will display 1 post and that is it, then switch to other sources. Probably because of all of the different server names that aren’t Lemmy.
On the bright side, while the top instance hit for “Lemmy” in a Google search is “lemmy.ml”, the top DDG hit is “Lemmy.World”. Not only does LW have ~80% of all Lemmy users but it also shows a default post sort using All rather than Local as ML does. Thus while the chief takeaway from a normie user going to ML is “wow, these guys really hate the USA/Western world” and “bUt BoTh SiDeS eQuAl ThO”, the takeaway from using DDG to find LW is a much more positive experience of “Lemmy”.
So if DDG searches of Lemmy are not always better than Google, they are least sometimes are.:-)
Reddit lost nothing when you deleted your comments, they still exist on their servers and are likely being used to train LLMs now. All that was lost was other peoples ability to readt them
That does hurt Reddits usability for users, though, which is bad for business in general.
And without my.comment, fewer hits because users cannot see it, which means less people provide training data.
No single drop feels responsible for the flood.
Sure thats correct, but I’m a little uneasy with the idea of “burn down a useful resource for people becuase fewer people helped people results in slower increases of data to Reddit”
A trap for people isn’t something I’d consider “useful”.
Just like a pedo van offering free food to kids… sure kids get fed, but at what cost?
I can kinda get the sentiment. I left during the protests too and I can see people wanting to damage Reddit, which is also completely deserved. Of course now Reddit is respecting the right to your comments even less and scrapes them for Google’s LLM models.
Or scrambled all of their posts after APIgate (or whatever we’re calling it). Perhaps they came here, which means OP is right in saying we can be a new source of useful answers.
I’m not sure if Lemmy or other Fediverse posts even get indexed by any of the search engines. I’ve yet to see any in a search result.
I don’t feel bad about wiping my account, as almost everything on it was useless.
Also I was pissed off at the time, and my goal was to make more people dislike going on Reddit.
“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?
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.
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.
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
🫣
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.
Also, fuck Google. I’ve been removing the word from my lexicon. I say, let me search (or research) that instead
Duck It
Duck you 🦆
can you ducking duck off you ducking ducker?
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
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.
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.
In the before times we had libraries of books that’d teach a person anything they wanted to learn. If a person had a question and the book didn’t answer there was someone there who didn’t know the answer but damn well knew how to find it. We never had to sort through piles of garbage content produced to waste our time for profit.
Even the early Internet was this way. Its slow degradation became a nose dive with broad adoption of Facebook and AI. I had to starting writing a line of code to search. And, that doesn’t even work anymore.
I used to be pretty good at googling stuff, but the last 1 or 2 years it just won’t work anymore. For instance, I had to charge a battery yesterday, and the power led started blinking when I put the battery in. I didn’t know if this meant either charging or faulty battery, so I googled it. Got pages of ads for this particular charger, but no answer. So google is just a big marketplace these days, and nothing more.
Just so you know, a dremel battery is charging when the power led blinks.
Did it not have a manual?
Just yesterday I was looking for similar info on a thermostat. Given only the brand name and knowledge that it was a thermostat, I found the product line, tech specs, and manuals. (I didn’t find the answer I needed, but that’s because it was “the button can be programmed to do different things by the control system”).
It does, but google decided I needed to buy a new one, not download the manual.
Usually both of those options are on the same page. If you have one, you have both, or at least a lead on their support site.
Do you mind elaborating on your search setup? I’d like to be able to avoid a ton of bullshit especially while working.
I just use Kagi, which seems to be pretty good at filtering bullshit by default, and have mabually downranked reddit and twitter, ot any other site I found and don’t like. But it’s been a long time since I used other search, so I can’t compare it much since I’m used to it. Never really had any problems with not finding what I need.
I’ll be sure to check it out, thanks!
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.
Yes please don’t do this. Google doesn’t need more support either from search activity or inclusion into the vernacular. If someone is asking in the fediverse which is still a relatively small community, they are expressing a degree of patience with their answer that suggests they’ve already tried search and came up dissapointed or they are really lacidasical about their question and won’t really mind if you just ignore it and move on. Taking the time to tell someone to websearch something is even more pathetic than a “this” reply.
The most useful thing about interacting with another human mind is that it can see when the question needs to be updated in order to get a correct answer.
A crude example would be:
Q1: how many screws should I use to join these pieces of wood?
A1: It’s more relevant to use screws which are long enough.
Q2: Which screws should I use?
A2: This size.
These will be CAPTCHAs in the future.
