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.
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.
Something, something, recursion.
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.
That insulting is satisfactory
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
its a website that has man pages for stuff.
But what about woman pages? smh so much for inclusion
damm true.
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
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?
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
Just Google it.
Ah come now my dear sir/madam/xir, who can’t resist a bit of trolling here and a google-it there.
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.
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.
Never say just, and if you bother answering be proper about it
Check on Ecosia!
Imagine asking chatgpt and it tells you to “Google it”
Didn’t it already tell some teen to kill themself recently? It fits right in with the worst of the internet.
I assume that grok did that, just because that’s on brand
This will be Gemini in 2025
Did you mean “Don’t reply, just google it”? /s
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.
Hear hear! We’re all witnessing what can happen with something nice, if you nurture it and keep improving, slowly, instead of the new pattern of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish or insisting on extracting maximum value. Modern Wikipedia is often rich in content and fun to use. I love it :)
Wikipedia is an internet gem
I give them a few quid every month. Might be the only regular donation I’ve got going at the moment (was being the sole earner for 3 until recently so yeah, rebuilding slowly)
I can’t imagine just how much more lost we would be if we had an internet without Wikipedia…
What would we be using, some form of online Encarta? Ugh.
“Just ChatGPT it” is going to become a thing.
“Just make shit up” is basically saying the same thing.
Until it gets paywalled
and ill throw that suggestion into the fucking trash.
Just googlw it is unfortunate shorthand for “learn it by doing research and troubleshooting”, a skill sadly very scarce. I agree it’s toxic and unhelpful. Guiding people to be better at finding information on their own is the way.
Asking someone else a question is also doing research.
Can’t argue with that.
If someone actually wants help searching Lemmy or the Fediverse, I recommend this site: https://fedi-search.com/
Very simple, but it does the job. It’s also good if one wants to learn advanced Google queries.
Unfortunately it doesn’t work in Tor Browser
“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.
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).
That’s exactly what an LLM would say! /s
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.
“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
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.
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.
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?
Don’t tell me what to do.
Found the guy who grew up listening to rage against the machine, who now uses machines to rage against the humans who want him to rage against the machine…but fuck you I won’t do what ya tell me! Fuck you I won’t do what ya tell me! Fuck you I won’t do what ya tell me! Fuck you I won’t do what ya tell me! (UGH!) guitar solo
Who?
No, not The Who.
I see things haven’t changed much since the island…
deleted by creator
Old Reddit threads where the answer giver deleted their account & all their comments.
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.
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.
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?
(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:
I wrote a script (well, modified one of my old bots) to copy and archive all of my comments before editing them. I left a note in the comments for how to find me in case they wanted the original comment. I felt like that was a fair compromise
That’s assuming we’re able to draw the people with answers here into the fediverse, in the long run.
What gets us there is long term stability.
Grow organically, and they will come.
First, the tech enthusiasts, then tech journos, then normal journos, then normals.
It’s how online spaces grow.
Just search for obscure shitty pocketknife models and my dinkum pictures from here are among the top results, sometimes even #1. I therefore conclude that this is not outside the realm of possibility.
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.
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.
Eh. I torched all my comments when I left (and posts, too) and I’ve said before and still maintain that I’m not sorry in the slightest.
If anything wants to know anything I said that was relevant to anything (and not the usual cavalcade of political bickering) they can come here and ask. I’ll gladly retype any of it.
Fuck reddit. The quicker we can dispose of it and just rip that Band-Aid off, the better.
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.
They absolutely do. Not only Lemmy posts in general, but I have found my own content completely unintentionally on searches several times.
I guess it’s a matter of lack of good posts that could become the desired search result then. Time will tell if we ever get to that point.
Why not just reply with Search it?
