I don’t see how posting an easily googled question is annoying someone else. I’d rather someone ask here than a lot of other places. And if we’re going to start censoring threads based on their boringness or usefulness, can’t we start with MPSIMS? There are a lot of threads in there that are just *too *mundane, and would be better suited for a Live Journal account.
Some people just have incredibly weak Google-Fu. Besides, the side discussions, digressions and bad jokes make all the lame questions worthwhile.
I think it is fine. I like that sometimes a question is asked that I might have thought of at some point, but never got around to googling it, or a question is asked that I hadn’t thought of at all. I have found that most questions may seem like they have a right or wrong answer, but there are an awful lot of gray zones in between those answers. On a board like this all those nuances can be flushed out whereas a simple google search may or may not flush that out. If the question doesn’t interest me I don’t open the thread. Seems like a simple enough system to me!
How about 750 easily googled questions?
:eek:
Okay, when starting threads with easily googled questions becomes OCD-like behavior, maybe something could be said…
That’s where the problem lies. People start seeing a few posters spam GQ with easily googleable questions, and it snowballs. Lots of people are mentioning “I’d rather ask here” and “you get better discussion here”. That’s absolutely true. But OPs that don’t offer any effort to google, follow up or continue the conversation don’t offer any of that.
Count me as someone who likes to see what other have to say about it. Sometimes the question might be about something that someone here is extremely knowledgeable about and it starts off an interesting discussion. People get a chance to ask questions of that person they might not necessarily get in a Googled link.
True. In that case, I think it is proper in GQ to help them acheive a better Google-Fu, e.g. saying “I found your answer via Google using these search terms.” People can still have an interesting discussion, even if a poster mentions that the answer to the OP’s question was easily found via Google.
Yahoo Answers is very helpful if you want to know how is babby formed.
Same thing as in the Pit thread on this subject:
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Some people may trust the Straight Dope answers more than Google, Yahoo, etc… Nobody corrects the incorrect information there. In GQ you will get corrected if you’re wrong, or even if you’re not and there’s a more complete answer. And there will be cites.
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How else do you get to respond to questions like:
What can I do to make my finger less smelly?
Finding nuts by memory or smell?
Because if you’re snarkily going to say, “enter tagus river in the google search field” it will be better for your blood pressure to just stay away.
And if one person is posting a bunch of questions, you can put them on your ignore list. You don’t, in point of fact, have to answer any question about a field you know about or a tangentially related field. In fact, in the latter case I’d advise against it. Its a courtesy to answer questions in GQ, not an imperative.
If someone thinks that an answer like “these search terms in the Google search engine will give you the answer to your question” is obnoxiously rude, then that person is probably to sensitive for the GQ forum anyway.
There is a difference between saying “here are the search terms to find the answer to your question” and saying “How can you not know how to use a search engine? Googling it is so easy a monkey could do it!”
Helping someone with tips on using Google is a useful thing.
Putting someone on ignore doesn’t hide their (hundreds and hundreds of) threads.
GQ moderator checking in. I didn’t respond to the poll because there was no “most of the time” answer, but I’d lean toward “Yes.”
Most of the time, even the simple questions generate interesting discussions, and I’ve been surprised at how long and involved some of those threads have been. But when someone starts posting multiple easily-answered questions every day (e.g., “what does this word mean?” – “How about this word?” – “What does this phrase mean?”), that’s over the top.
When I click your link, I get no search results. What were you trying to link to?
Well, that’s what we have you for, ducky. Go ban someone. 
I’ve learned that searching is a skill, some have it and some don’t.
Plus you can’t discuss the answer with Google.com, you can with Dopers.
It was a search of General Questions only, “Find Threads Started by User”, for Jinx. Must have timed out.
I’ll get right on that! 
Either that or the search engine found the results too depressing to contemplate.