Not unless you can direct people to knowledge that helps them and others with the same problem. FYI alerting people to certain usages of google is fighting ignorance.
You certainly do not belong here if your only resource is Google, unless you have a specific expertise, Fuck Off!
Prove your worth, before you claim that we have none.
“Fighting Ignorant” might be construed as an agressive retarded person, but to call you that would be an offense to retarded people.
Wait a second, I forgot that you have some divine wisdom to impart to us, what was it? Feel free to google a good lie in order to save face. Jackass.
I really don’t get this. This board is partly for answering questions. Why is it so much higher or better to use a search engine than to ask here? If you’re so annoyed by questions, what are you doing in GQ to start with? If you don’t want to answer, just don’t. Where is the big problem here?
Man that’s me. Google doesn’t usually kick my ass, but when I use databases like Ebsco and Proquest, it takes FOREVER. I once needed to find a lit crit on Dracula, went to the proper date base and spent about an hour before i even found one.
There is one good reason for asking a GQ question that could be Googled – and that is when one wants to get the Straight Dope (in the original sense) on the subject. I can think of a wide variety of topics on which the truth is out there on the Internet – and so are the theorizings and ravings of a wide variety of folks whose lunacy is not so far advanced as to keep them from using MS Front Page to spread their bizarreries to whoever unwarily clicks on their site.
If for example I have a question on ethnolinguistics, there are several folks here that I know I can rely on the answers to: Jomo Mojo and Wendell Wagner come quickly to mind, and there are several experts on regions. Eva Luna for some strange reason seems to have a handle on the complex of cultures that is the Caucasus – if I need to know something about Ossetians or Circassians, she’s reliable. How far to trust the language superphyla theory is something I’m not going to find a good answer to outside the expertise of people whose insights I’ve come to trust.
Substitute in the intricacies of economics, the mysteries of Christian doctrine, what the heck Kant was talking about in his metaphysics, etc. – someone in GQ has a handle on it, and can explain it, usually being able to give competing theories and how to judge between them.
Google (and its siblings) are wonderful tools for retrieving knowledge – but not for evaluating it. And that’s where GQ (and sometimes other forums) come in wonderfully handy.
I’m sure it is possible but how do you injury yourself with a phone book? And how will practice help prevent those phone book related injuries? Just asking cause I got a big phone book ominously sitting on the shelf and I want to find out if I should be worried.
Google uses automated programs to browse websites and index their content. There is a standard method for webmasters to exclude part or all of their sites from these searches. For whatever reason, the SDMB admins have chosen to use this to make threads here unavailable to Google and other standards-compliant search engines.
I ask a lot of stupid questions because I have been banned from GOOGLE.
I am told that many of my words are very common and they are not included in my search. To add insult to injury, I am told that the ‘AND’ operator is unnecessary. On the day they banned me, they asked a parting question, to wit.’.have you heard of the SDMB?’ :smack:
There’s nothing wrong with asking a question on the straight dope, no matter how easy it is to find the answer elsewhere. EVERY question could be answered elsewhere if one is willing to dig hard enough - the Straight Dope has no monopoly on information. People like to use this place to ask their questions, even people who know how to use Google just fine, because they like the way their questions get answered. You don’t just get facts, you get background info, opposing viewpoints, debunking of erroneous answers, etc. Things you don’t get on Google without a lot of work.
People should just lighten up about being the question police. There are no bad questions - just bad answers.
And here’s a good idea - If you don’t like a question, don’t answer it. In fact, you might just consider ignoring the whole thread. There are plenty of others.
Since when? I run across SDMB threads on Google all the time. In fact I have used Google before when doing a search for something discussed on the SDMB. Especially when the search engine is down at the Dope. But not recently! I will go now and see if I can pull up some SDMB threads via Google.com ~later t/k