Google Search Mod Orgy!

The BBQ Pit
161

I lurked during the original jarbabyj fiasco, and felt it was justified when she was told to take it down a notch. She was getting high on her own acclaim for a minute there. This isn’t a knock on you now, jar, just a way of explaining my position - it seems a poster can’t necessarily agree with your position in this thread without being a lapdog of yours. :wink:
That being said, I haven’t enough exposure to DDG to judge whether her Google tactics are annoying. But just from this thread, her general attitude towards newbies is atrocious. DDG, you come off in this thread as some holier-than-thou matriarch who feels it is her absolute duty to shepherd the weak through the valley of darkness. If the SDMB was only about answering question, then there’d be only the GQ forum. You complained about someone calling you out for doing what you do, how that wasn’t right to attack someone for what they are, then looked right down your nose at them for not doing what you do. That’s a bit hypocritical, no?
Give the newbies some credit. Common sense goes a long way around here, and most of the posters who make it past fifty posts have that in spades. Not all of the newbies are helpless little blind children needing your imminent assistance.

Get over yourself.

Maybe this is what jar was trying to say, in a more eloquent manner. Based on some of her more creative swears, you have to give her credit for being level-headed this time out.

162

And do you have any evidence whatsoever that DDG has done anything resembling that with her research posts? That she is stupid enough to just spew out random google results?

No, wait, let me answer that: You don’t have any such evidence, because she doesn’t fucking do that. In fact, she is an admirable evaluator of the sources available to her, as demonstrated by her thousands of research posts.

No reasonable complaint there, CRorex. Just a chickenshit cheap shot on your part.

163

I don’t have a problem with the way you phrased your post, only the context it was in, which is this fairly nasty Pit thread. Seemed like you were adding another rock to the pile already gathering.

Well, I can definitely see your logic here.

164

Oh?

This isn’t strictly medical advice, but DDG does editorialize about vaccinations, and her remarks are contradicted by the donation guidelines of the Red Cross. I’m sure she meant well, but her post was irresponsible. Fortunately, someone showed up later with real information.

minty, I waited longer for the boards search than I spent reviewing DDG’s GQ threads. Given their sheer number, I have every reason to believe that further review will uncover further inaccuracies. So google or not, I think I have a reasonable complaint.

165

No, not at all. But had DDG said come back in reply “yeah, I was wrong then but that was two years ago. Is that the best you can do? One mistake halfway back to the board’s creation?” you’d have to go scrambling to find a more recent example or retract your statement.
She didn’t do that and that’s what I’m arguing about. It actually helps your point that she couldn’t admit she was wrong even for something that took place so long ago.
So, yes, I agree that an example need not be recent to be valid, but it also makes it that much easier to rebut precisely because it isn’t recent.

166

FWIW, I was put off by DDG’s response to Joe_C in the “Unban” thread. It was not a reasonable response. However, that has fuck-all to do with her amazing use of Google as a tool. Yes, sometimes I find it irritating because the facts she culls disprove whatever minor point I was assuming was valid, but that just means she does a damn good job with it.

Seems unnatural to agree with minty, dammit… :wink:

167

Very nice, Maeglin. Maybe you’d have a point if it was a research post. But it isn’t, so the Google criticism still blows.

168

First, I agree with everything Tom said.

Second, as to DDG’s assertion that jar is dissing her lifestyle, I understand where she’s coming from–I’m a research-aholic. I don’t do it much here because, well DDG usually gets there first, and because I’m spending so much time doing it for my friends I don’t have time. I spent over an hour today trying to track down a missing friend of a friend. DDG clearly loves to research and IMHO, she does it well. I have never seen a thread where she posts only links–she goes throught them all, pulls out relevant quotes and ties them together in a cohesive answer. She might give too much of an answer for some people and sometimes she may be wrong–but that happens to everyone. It’s nice that she’s trying.

If someone dissed me because I like to research, I would get my knickers in a twist too. My friends know if they pose a question, even if they tell me not to look it up, I will–I just have to know. Plus it gives me a nice feeling when I can find an answer for them. I imagine DDG feels much the same way.

Jar: Imagine how you would feel if someone criticized you for doing something that you love to do, that feels important to you (like acting, for example). Wouldn’t that feel like a slap in the face? Seems to me that DDG just got slapped in the face for doing something that she loves.

169

And because work is just that slow, minty, here is another.

No “oops.”

170

Still not a Google post. Keep working there, Maeglin.

171

Ok, fair enough, so speaking with undue authority isn’t enough. Give me a few minutes.

172

Jarbabay

I remember when you were Pitted, and I’ve noticed how you’ve changed. Thank you for caring enough about yourself and about us to be willing to change. God go with you.

173

Incidentally, I’m not jurt trying to nitpick on the Google thing. The basis of the complaint in the OP is that DDG posts answers from Google searches. Anybody can screw stuff up when posting off the top of their head, but that’s not the complaint here. If you wanna bitch about her research, show me that her researched answers are wrong.

174

Okay, the first thread. You object to my giving my opinion as to where someone should post his thread? In what way am I arrogating godlike Mod powers to myself, by posting what is obviously only my opinion? It doesn’t say “Moderator” under my name. Are you saying that nobody except Moderators should ever be allowed to give an opinion as to where a thread should be posted? Ever? At all? 'Cause if so, you sure better put it in a sticky, let all those other people who post things like, “This might be better in another forum” know that they are thereby arrogating godlike mod powers to themselves, and they’d better cut it out.

The second thread, same thing, and is somehow even less relevant–I posted my opinion of the links, and by implication, of what Lynn did with them. In what way was THIS arrogating to myself godlike Mod powers? I am certainly entitled to express my opinion both of the links people post, and of the actions that mods take towards those links.

If all you’ve got by way of cites is those two threads, you are full of shit.

You have not shown that I often “go beyond factual answers”. You have not shown that I often “try to get into the heads of mods and admins.” You have not shown that I am “often wrong”. You have not shown that I often “have had to be corrected”.

You have only shown that twice I expressed my opinion, and that both times, it seemed to annoy the hell out of you, for reasons which remain obscure.

In both threads, it seems to be YOUR problem. In both threads, YOU are the only one who is disagreeing with me. Not Lynn or some other mod or admin–just you. It sounds to me like this is “Coldfire’s Problem”, not the SDMB’s problem.

Better put this in the FAQ, then, because I’m not the only one who does it. Or would you just prefer that we all stayed out of ATMB, and let you and the other godlike mods handle the questions?

Tell you what–you get Tuba or Lynn or Arnold to come in here and tell me, officially, never to offer SDMB housekeeping advice to anyone again, on where they should post threads, or whether they should post certain kinds of links, or anything that might possibly be construed as Moderating, and I promise I will never give anybody advice like that again. And I will give ATMB a wide berth, if Tuba or Lynn or Arnold tells me to, so you may rule your little message board fiefdom in absolute godlike privacy and splendor.

175

Ok, minty, it didn’t take long. She doesn’t explicitly mention google, but does post a link and a quote.

Parkinson’s, my ass..

Took longer to load searches than to find amid threescore threads. Shall I continue?

No oops, either.

176

Link.

177

Yep, keep going, Maeglin. You’ve got a long way to go before there’s a reasonable complaint there.

178

Wow.

Well, gee, I suggested in the Satan thread, that ugliness would insue. Damn didn’t it.

One thing off the top of my head. There’s any number of ways to get in touch w/another poster should you wish to. Post after one of theirs “Hey, I have a question for you, email me??” is one. Once some one wanted to address me about a post, I didn’t have my email listed either. She posted my name in a pit thread title and her OP went started with “This isn’t a flame”. and continued in a very measured way to ask, essentially, the question. So, jar could have started it off w/ “I was upset by your response to Anahita in this thread, would you explain?”

as for the rest of the OP. Fenris & tom have said what I would have had I gotten here earlier.

I’m glad DDG backed of her “cunt” remark. I wish that in turn, jar would admit that her OP wasn’t really designed as constructive criticism. and keep in mind, I like both of you, loads. and never have (to the best of my knowledge) had cross words w/either. Yes, you have a right to your opinion, and a right to share it. But if your intent was truely as constructive criticism, I think your OP would have been worded differently. Jus sayin. and bottom line is, as was pointed out. No one here is universally liked. Or disliked.

I absolutely agree w/the folks who say that Googling is an art. I’m not so shabby myself at finding stuff I’m looking for, but she’s much better at it. It’s much more than simply typing a word or two into the search engine (or if you think that’s all there is to it, then I suggest that you’re not properly using the tool. there’s advanced searches, there’s choosing the specific word or word form, checking the specific responses to check for validity etc.)

as for the ‘sheparding the newbies’ gig. Some folks apparently are annoyed by it. Others aren’t. ain’t it grand that we’re all so different?

Oddly enough a few days ago, DDG and I exchanged memories about our first encounter, when I was a newbie. Looking back at that scene and being now privy to what she thought about me (not knowing how very wonderful I am), what happened (essentially) was she sorta wondered if I wasn’t a returning trolly/sock, but when some one else spewed venom in my general direction, she also looked at it dispassionately and stepped in. It made a big difference to me personally, that some one who’d been here for a while stepped in to defend me, even after she’d been sharp in her prior response to me. And, for what it’s worth, because she stopped an ugliness from getting worse, I hung around.

So, I’m ready for kumbayaa, anybody else?

179

Yes, he did. There’s a factoid on the David Duke-type racist websites that says he said this in such-and-such a magazine article (Life magazine IIRC) and I went to the library and looked it up and xeroxed it and copied it into the GQ thread, so it’s around here somewhere. He worked as a waiter at the country club in the 1960s and did say, in public, that he used to spit in the white folks food.

However, it wasn’t in an interview–the article’s author was doing one of those “follow Jesse around town” articles, and the quote was made during one of his speeches to his group, I forget whether it was actually the Rainbow Coalition or some other Chicago group.

Anyway, he was speechifying, and made the remark.

Maeglin, I’m just going to say this once, and then I’m not going to feed you anymore.

You are pathetic. You are tying up the Search engine, looking for “DDG is wrong!” posts? That’s just sad. And they aren’t even very good “DDG is wrong!” posts either. The Parkinson’s one was not “wrong”, I just didn’t read the OP carefully enough. So BFD.

Then, like I already told Jarbaby, I don’t start out the day doing vanity searches for my name, so I don’t always get back to threads I was in yesterday, especially in GQ where they’re usually off to page 3 by 24 hours later. Also, I did not say I was never wrong–what I said was, if I’m wrong and I SEE it, I post an “oops”. So I didn’t fucking SEE it, geez.

So, two posts out of probably 6,000, since I probably spend more time in GQ than anywhere else, that’s just great, you keep at it, darlin’, maybe you’ll turn up a few more. Here, use www.boardreader.com it’s faster. Make sure you put “straightdope” in your search string first.

Minty, thanks for the support, dear, but don’t encourage him.

180

Love, Love, Love.
Love, Love, Love.
Love, Love, Love.

There’s nothing you can post that can’t be undone.
Nothing you can’t say it’s all in fun.
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game.
It’s easy.

Nothing posted you can’t sweep under the rug.
No one you’ve pissed off you can’t give a hug.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be forgiving in time.
It’s easy.

All you need is love.
All you need is love.
All you need is love, love.
Love is all you need.

All you need is love (All together, now!)
All you need is love. (Everybody!)
All you need is love, love.
Love is all you need (love is all you need).