Google is your freind, and a suprisingly number of dudes don’t know how to use it or are too lazy to try.
If you do ask a question in GQ, and you have already Googled or Wiki-ied and gotten nowhere, it’s your job to say so. If you don’t then you are hrasing your question in an unhelpful manner, and getting a slew of "yes, I already knew that :rolleyes: " answers is generally your fault for phrasing the question wrong. If you are that super-duper smart, why not take an extra second to word your question right?
You may or may not be an idiot. Simply being a member, even a charter member here is no proff of either smarts or especially common sense. And, you may even be a PhD in some school of knowledge but not know the best way to clean our a slow drain. In fact, I’d hazard a guess that dudes with a PhD are less likely to know the best way to clear a slow drain, but that’s just a WAG. And, even if you are smart enough to Google, you can and often do get a variety of contradicting answers, thus someone who replies with a Googled answer is hopefully giving you one which he agrees with. In fact one of my pet peeves is those here who give an answer they have garned off some Blog without a cite and as if they really knwo what the fuck they are talking about. At least if they give the damn cite, I can judge for myself how biased or worthwhile the cite is!
It’s also helpful to state your location if your profile has something “funny” :rolleyes: and the location is critical- like any of the many “is it legal to…” threads.
So- sorry, KarlGauss- you are completely, totally and utterly wrong. Next time, if your do know how to do a Google search, then you also do know how to phrase your question correctly. Do so, why don’t you? :mad:
Podkayne, I agree with you partially - except I’m generally too polite to get snarky and I get very annoyed being explained things I already know.
DrDeth, I just reviewed some of the GQ threads I posted (and wow, would I have hated myself as a poster 5 years ago) and I got a lot of examples of people just not paying attention to what I did say, even when I phrased my question carefully. If someone says they know about a certain aspect of their question, it often happens that people pontificate to them about it anyway.
Of course, my favourite is when an intelligent discussion has been happening on topic for a few posts, and then someone posts a only-barely-relevant, very basic one-line response.
You do have a valid complaint though, far too many threads get a first reply from someone talking out of their ass. That makes it harder for posters who have real knowledge to frame a reply.
Yeah, and I think that there’s a difference between that, and some bombastic idjit holding forth on some subject based on the Discovery Channel program they half-remember last week acting the whole time like they’re doing you a favor by explaining it to you using small words.
If someone tells me something I already know without being a dick about it, I’m happy to say, “That’s a great general summary, but what I was really wondering about was [subtle point.]”
If somebody drops a steaming pile of kindergarteny bullpucky and misinformation and follows it up with some snide remark like “Google is your friend,” or (IRL) “Didn’t you learn this in school?” then I’m more likely to say, “Well, gee, I’ve read several peer-reviewed articles and scholarly tomes on the subject, and consulted these experts in the field, and they seem to disagree with what you said on the following points . . .”
Actually, in my mild, little rant, I wasn’t referring at all to OP’s that I, myself, had made. Rather, I was thinking about some other peoples’ recent questions where the responses clearly contained less knowledge and insight than the OP itself. D’ya follow?
Before we come down too hard on this, let’s not forget that many posters asking questions in GQ are Guests, rather than experienced Dopers. Some of them may not be proficient at separating the wheat from the chaff in Google results, which may be why they’ve come here to ask the question in the first place. It doesn’t always take an expert to answer a question.
Actually, given the amount of crap on the 'Net, I prefer to trust a fellow Doper. Not just because, but if I’ve read something from Q.E.D that I know about and know he was right, when next I ask a question and he answers, I can hope that the answer’s accurate with a larger certainty than if I’d just googled and picked the top ten hits.
Google doesn’t sort for accuracy, y’know.
True, and I don’t want to speak for KarlG but I don’t think that is really what he’s pitting.
However, there are lots of questions where some expertise is desireable, yet some fearless poster has ridden in with what I can only describe as pseudoknowledge.
I recall seeing this phenomenon a lot regarding questions about disease processes and medicine in general, and it is scary to see what some posters throw out there in the way of an answer.
Sometimes how you Google something makes all the difference. Just saying “Google is your friend” is vastly less helpful than saying “Google search term a, search term b + search term c.” Just because *someone *is able to find something using Google does not mean the poster was able to find it using Google.
I actually don’t think failing to Google is the biggest sin in GQ. I think guessing on the part of respondents is worse, and I see a fair amount of it. It has its place sometimes, but it’s irritating when someone has given a definitive answer in the thread, and later posters continue to weigh in with their WAGs.
When someone posts an answer on a question I am unfamiliar with, it’s sometimes difficult to know if they truly have practical knowledge of the subject, or just now found something via search. Especially since I’ve seen some very misleading (or flat out wrong) applications of “knowledge” in fields I am very familiar with.
Trust me, if I catch you fronting about something I know like the back of my hand, then every other answer you give about anything else becomes suspect.
The eager googler is to blame if the OP has said “I already did a Google search and need more information, such as …” or “I found these pages (link) (link) in Google, but I would like confirmation from a more expert source because those pages seem unreliable in that they say …”
If the OP posts a general question, then how am I, SDMB ordinary citizen, to know that the poster has a Ph.D. in the subject and needs more to go look up an obscure tome hidden in a medieval monastery to find something she doesn’t already know?
After reading this, I am thinking that my previous comment doesn’t address the issue the OP is raising (though I am still LOL when you combine the thread title and Squink’s quote).
If someone is posting wrong information obtained from a Google search, then of course that person should be corrected and taught the error of his ways. But I would caution against falling into the mindset that “the big boys are talking, you lesser fry should run along and play outside now.” I work with software engineers (am one myself) and constantly have to guard myself against that attitude when discussing our product with non-technical users. Even a person not an expert can come up with some interesting ideas, and the dumbest questions can encourage new ways of thinking about an issue.
