Every so often, I’ll run across a thread in GQ where within five posts of the OP, a responder points out that the answer could have been found easily with a Google or Wikipedia search.
Personally, I think that’s a bit silly. I think that threads that have questions I find annoying (as many may find this one) are very easy to ignore, and they don’t occupy a lot of real estate. And I often find that even if the answer would have been easy for the OP to find independently of the Dope, the question itself might never have occurred to me to ask, and I may find it interesting.
So, would you prefer that people ask anyway, even if they might be able to find the answer on their own? Would you prefer they got off their duffs and just did the research without bothering the rest of us? Or something else?
The Dope is often a way to learn about some of the more subtle and nuanced aspects of an answer, and sometimes even learn about controversy related to the question which you might not learn in other places. I don’t get bothered by ANY question which has a factual answer posted in GQ.
Well, first of all, yeah sometimes I learn a factoid or something because someone’s curiosity was tripped and they asked here instead of google.
But secondly, I don’t subscribe to this idea of forum purity that seems so present on this board. If someone posts a thread that I think is dumb or not worth my time answering, I just move on. Natural selection, baby! I randomly hypothesize that the people who complain about it are either OCD about the number of threads in each forum, in which case I see no need to enable their illness or they’re busybodies who aren’t happy til no one is. This is also why I am opposed to the too pointless to live closings that the mods give out sometimes. If a thread has garnered a bunch of responses, it’s clearly not pointless so ease up.
Sometimes the answer is easy to find if you know the right words, for example. Sometimes the search brings up contradictory information, or the information you find smells like those Amazon reviews which declare the book the best book ever, and there’s 5 reviews, all with 5 stars, and all written in the same style.
And sometimes what seems like a straightforward answer brings up alternatives or nuances by being answered here that you don’t get from other sources.
You know what annoys me more than a researchable question? A plain link as an answer. Yes, it’s reasonable to expect the OP to bother to click a link to find an answer, but as a passer-by, I want to find out the answer in a quick, efficient way–I don’t care enough to go looking, but I cared enough to open the thread!
What bugs me a little are the responses that don’t really get the point of a very clear OP (see first reponse here) or of other posts (post 19, same thread).
Sometimes, Google won’t give really useful answers. For example, "What is (mumble-berry juice) good for? The first 3 pages will be laudatory hits by mumbleberry vendors, and they all say it’s wonderful. Gimlet-eyed Dopers will tell you the truth, that mumbleberry is overpriced and of little use, and that your “cellulite” is plain old “fat.”
Likewise, if you Goog the latest political point of outrage, the first 5 pages of hits are likely to be repetitions of the same public figure’s rant in a lot of blogs. It can take a lot of work to find the facts, if Google is your only tool.
Google-able questions generally annoy the shit out of me. However, there is one quick phrase that completely solves the question:
“I tried Googling, but…”
Frankly, I don’t care what the disclaimer is. If you gave the 15 seconds of effort to Google and weren’t satisfied with the results, then ask away. But if you honestly can’t be arsed to plug two or three words into the search box, you deserve at least a little derision.
I used to subscribe to the “Google is your friend” meme.
But I got over it. Now, the ebb and flow of SDMB input on a GQ topic, covering nuances and peculiarities on subjects (and posters) is part of the fascinating experience that GQ is for me.
But priority should be given to answering the question first, before getting clever or (half) witty.
It would be OK for a poster to ask an easy-to-use question once, but if the poster is doing it multiple times, then the SDMB is not teaching the poster the right skills: that some questions are answered quicker and easier by doing the work yourself. In the case of a poster that repeatedly asks simple questions (e.g. In what year did John F. Kennedy become president? In what country is the Tagus river?) then it’s not obnoxious to answer “Go to google.com and enter “tagus river” in the search field.”
I don’t especially care. Imho, people who participate in sites like this want to answer questions. I think in some small way, being able to help somebody else makes the answerer feel needed and/or validated.
On the other hand, I find an alarming number of answers from non-experts that either:
a) propagate an outdated, discredited, or even outright wrong response, or
b) barely scratch the surface of an otherwise complex field.
I have been guilty of the above on many occasions. Nowadays, usually try to stick to what I know in GQ, not WAG’s. However, sometimes if the thread is in danger of falling off, I will throw in a WAG just to keep it on the front page, hopefully so that a real expert can participate.
I do get a big annoyed by that, I’ll admit. It’s lazy. Before I post a question here, I always at least run a quick Google search. The SDMB isn’t your kindergarten teacher or mommy. Use your brains people and give it a whirl. Most of the times that I"ve provided an answer in the GQ forum, it’s been courtesy of a quick Google search. Yes, there are answers I’ve known based on my own learning and experience, but I’ve stopped reading GQ fo the most part because either a) I don’t know the answers, b) don’t care about the answers or c) don’t have the time or patience to Google things for other people.
Sometimes a question is asked that I hadn’t thought to ask. For instance, (although not on this board) someone recently asked: Forget about *how *they moved those big stones to build the pyramids, I want to know *why *they used such big stones. Wouldn’t it have been easier to build them with much smaller ones?
Over all the years I’ve been reading about them, I have never thought ask nor have I have ever heard anyone else ask that question.
Sometimes I’ll ask a question because I want to hear from someone who has experience with the subject, not just a bunch of googled answers.