I’ve always been a “lurker” on all platforms and communities because when I do have a question or would like to contribute my first thought has become:
Actually, let me google it first
In which case I’ll usually have some answer. Usually it isn’t a complete answer but enough for me to not want to share my question anymore.
Maybe. It does bother me when I see people complain about posts where the person asks a really basic question and someone gives a few words in snide response like, “Google much?” and don’t actually answer the question. At the same time, some questions being asked could honestly be answered with a simple Google search, I just don’t know what the cutoff is. Sometimes you can get better responses in the comments than you would with a Google search, or the Google searches themselves will just turn up Reddit comments where somebody else asked the same question once upon a time. I think it does help to refresh the information sometimes, rather than just relying on Google Searches for information, sometimes you get actual real-world experts chiming in like, “Yeah, everybody thinks it’s A, but actually it’s B because of X, Y, and Z, it’s a common mistake that alot of people make.” So I’ll usually err on the side of just let ask whatever they want to, no matter how basic a question.
Many times Google has led me on a wild goose chase, sending me to thread after thread where the only answers are “just Google it durrr”. Google results are not stable. If you have time to post a snarky comment and it’s so easy to Google, then why not Google it and include a link with your snark?
Also, Google (and web search in general) has generally gone down the crapper over the last 5-10 years. SEO is practically a solved problem, but it’s mostly bad actors who benefit from it. Google doesn’t seem to care to play the cat-and-mouse game anymore.
Hence one reason why I pay for Kagi
Yeah! when I begun my journey in linux I remember asking how to permanently mount a drive. Being the Google answer to just crontab -> mount, then just to confirm I went to the linux forum in steam and getting to know about fstab. Wich in turn brought me to encryption, and that to foss and gnu, etc, etc, etc.
And all that wouldn’t even begun if it wasn’t for that guy in steam whom was just answering a noob question.