Reasons Why I Hate Responding With "Google it"

CandleJack · 2010-03-15T17:19:10

Every time someone replies to a thread with something like "Just Google it", I cringe. I'd like to note that this thread is in no way was the result of any experience I've had here on Gamedev.net. It's just a trend I've noticed on the internet as a whole that I think can be quite annoying for the following reasons: 1. You can't ask a website questions if you don't understand something, or wish to discuss some aspect of it further. Even questions with simple answers at face value can often merit more intricate discussion. Someone could easily look up the article for IEEE 754 floating point representation on Wikipedia, but that doesn't mean they'll necessarily understand it. 2. It's rude. If someone takes their time to come to you with a question, no matter how easily you can find the answer on Google, you should be polite and answer the question, and as a side note, mention that Google can be a great tool to find answers to such questions. How would you react in a situation outside the internet when someone asks a simple question which you know the answer to? 3. Adding "Google it" offers nothing of value to a conversation. If you don't have anything interesting to say, is it really so hard to simply ignore the topic? There's no obligation to reply to everything you read. If you simply want to inform the person that Google is a valid means to find an answer, doing so in a manner as described in point 2 seems more appropriate. 4. Finally, I think it sometimes pollutes the signal to noise ratio of the Google searches themselves. I've run into a situation a couple times where I tried Googling for some information and what I found was people on random forums asking the same question, followed by a "Google it" response. I guess this point may be debatable since you could say that I would have otherwise just found an empty thread with no answer and this would be equally useless to me, but I wonder if maybe someone who would have otherwise given an answer would be deterred from posting it, as they may have assumed the person who asked the question has already found a satisfactory answer via Google.

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Started by CandleJack March 13, 2010 04:06 PM

29 comments, last by CandleJack 14 years, 8 months ago

CandleJack

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March 15, 2010 05:19 PM

Quote: Original post by LessBread
Quote: Original post by CandleJack
I guess my curiosity was why people more often choose to respond in a more smug manner when I suspect that in a scenario outside of the internet, this wouldn't be the case.

Maybe because outside of the internet you're not sitting in the middle of the largest library ever constructed with one of the easiest to use card catalogs ever made a click away.

But with smart phones becoming increasingly commonplace, we pretty much are. It's completely ruined bar trivia for me :(

Reasons Why I Hate Responding With "Google it"

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