Jinx, for God's sake make an effort!

The BBQ Pit
1

Listen, I understand that GQ answers can be especially helpful, often containing insights and examples that aren’t to be found in more typical (re)sources. That being said, Jinx my lad, at least make some effort to figure out the answer yourself. And, you know, if the question you have is obscure, or vague to the point that you know in advance that researching it yourself will be futile, no problemo - go ahead and ask it in GQ.

But tell me, exactly how and why is the question “What Country Is This” so obscure or difficult that it needs to posed in GQ? Especially when it arises from, “Watching the Olympics, the announcers too quickly announced some tiny country between Spain and France. Any clue what country this is?” That is not a question that will require any deep explanation to answer or particular insight. You’re looking for a simple, isolated, well-defined fact. You could have found the answer in less time than it took you to type your OP.

What can I say about this gem: “Age of Phelps . . . and Spitz?” Were you serious? There again, the answers you were looking for are simple, uncomplicated facts. There was going to be nothing to gain by asking other Board members to answer for you. The text of your OP said: “I was just wondering if Phelps is about the same age as Spitz when he won so many gold medals at one Olympics (1972?)”. Can you not do grade 3 arithmetic?

Then, again today, you did it again: “What is astigmatism . . . does it distort images”? Gimme a break. If, despite having God knows how many millions of internet pages out there in front of you, you still need to ask if astigmatism can distort vision it means you’ve, yet again, not done any “research” on your own. And, when I say “research”, I don’t mean poring over PubMed but, rather, doing the most elementary Google search.

We have a rule in GQ that we won’t, and don’t, do people’s homework for them. Jinx, what you’re doing is worse than trying to get others to do your homwork - you are exploiting the good will of your fellow Dopers (and that’s after being a Board member since 1999!) You are also making yourself look like a total ass. So, here’s an idea: Make an effort. Next time there’s a fact you’re looking for, gather your strength and your smarts, go to www.google.com and type in your question. D’ya follow?

2

It’s because he’s jinxed.

3

I appreciate the OP but it’s a lost cause. Simply said, Jinx doesn’t give a shit and never has. This comes up in the Pit once a year or so and nothing ever changes. People just need to stop answering Jinx’s OPs if we want it to stop.

There are a handful of regular posters who I don’t like all that much and annoy the crap out of me. I will still answer their GQ or IMHO posts if I feel like I can be any help. The one exception is Jinx. She does nothing but ask stupid lazy questions to my knowledge has made zero effort to give anything back.

4

Ah yes. S/he also recently asked the extremely obscure and difficult-to-research question, When did Toy Story debut? At least this one led to an interesting “which is your favorite Pixar movie?” discussion.

I can’t imagine asking such questions without doing some basic searching first. Bad enough to be ignorant (which isn’t always shameful, after all – we’re all ignorant of some things until we learn about 'em); but displaying this level of laziness is really embarrassing.

5

When Jinx was a kid… a google killed his dad.

6

:dubious: What is this “google” thing you speak of and how would one access it?

7

Lazy? Perhaps. But I don’t feel that it’s necessary to try to force a change in her behavior. We aren’t limited to so many threads per month or anything. If people want to ask easily-googled questions, then those who are opposed can just not answer. Those of us who don’t mind it as much will answer the question and then have a lovely discussion about Pixar movies or whatever topic the thread gets hijacked with.

8

I had never really noticed Jinx’s GQ questions until the Phelps/Spitz thread mentioned by the OP. It struck me at the time as particularly pointless.

M general rule of thumb is that anyone thinking about starting a GQ thread should at least do some very basic searching before posting. If your question has a non-complicated solution, and can be answered by the very first Google hit, or by a single Wikipedia entry (those two things are often the same), then don’t tax the hamsters and the patience of other Dopers. All three examples mentioned in the OP seem to fall into that category.

I guess that when someone has about 5,500 posts, and well over 1,000 of those (!!!) are GQ OPs, it suggests a certain penchant for letting others do the heavy lifting.

9

Last night I almost started a thread in Cafe Society because I was thinking about a song I had heard years ago on a classical music station, but didn’t think I had enough info to find it online. All I could remember was that it was two female singers meowing at each other. Before starting the thread, I decided to take a shot at it anyway. Googling “cat duet” quickly revealed that it was “Duetto Buffo di due Gatti” by (or at least credited to) Rossini, as well as a number of youtube videos of various performances.

I generally don’t notice who does it, but I am always fascinated by the number of times I’ve seen a question that could be answered, as mhendo pointed out, by a simple Google or Wikipedia search.

10

Exactly my sentiments. **Jinx **and ralph124c. The latter may be an idiot or a troll or both. As long was someone keeps feeding them, they’re going to belly up to the trough.

11

It astonishes me that there are still people who just won’t spend a few minutes searching when literally a world full of information is literally at their fingertips.

But their enablers have established that it’s rude to even suggest to these people that Google would have turned up the answer in short order.

12

If it bothers you, you can send him/her this link.

just fuckin google it.

I personally don’t have any problem skipping over posts that don’t interest me, but I rarely pay enough attention to posters names to notice these kind of trends.

13

Surely you could have done a simple AltaVista search before you asked this?

:stuck_out_tongue:

14

You mean he was…Googlewhacked?

15

It is, however, against GQ Rules, listed in the sticky at the top of the forum page, as I noted in one of the threads linked to in the OP.

The problem with inane and stupid questions, such as the ones Jinx frequently asks, is that they may bump more interesting questions off the front page.

Admittedly, we don’t generally enforce this rule much, and allow many such questions to slide. Most posters (at least long-term ones) don’t do it very often. But Jinx has made such a persistent practice of it, I may just start locking such threads when I see them, as I did to one in the OP.

16

You’re in for it now, Jinx.

17

Thank you, Colibri.

18

I had a pretty similar experience–the first time I heard “Young Folks” by Peter, Bjorn and John, all I could remember from the song was that it had whistling and bongos in it. I asked in my LJ if any of my friends might know that song, and someone found it by googling something like song whistling bongos and sending me a Youtube video asking if that was it. I was pretty damned impressed.

19

I’m glad you brought ralph124c up. He is the only poster that starts more threads than BG, but the bulk of ralph’s Ops and posts makes me think of his his namesake on the Simpsons.

I haven’t noticed **Jinx ** as much, but there are times when ralph just writes an op for any little thing that crosses his excuse for a mind.

20

The latest wasn’t so great either.

Cutting and pasting his own subject of his own thread in Google gives the answer. If you can type “Internet Explorer: Where did my bar go?” in SDMB, you can type it in Google.
http://www.google.com/search?q=Internet+Explorer%3A+Where+did+my+bar+go%3F&sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS241US242