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> If you Google it, you’ll find tutorials Telling people to google something is rarely helpful. It's great that Google shows noteworthy results for you, but t
by jwilk 8y ago
> If you Google it, you’ll find tutorials
Telling people to google something is rarely helpful.
It's great that Google shows noteworthy results for you, but that's not necessarily true for somebody else, possibly years after you wrote the answer. Also, unlike you, the other person might not be qualified to separate the wheat from the chaff.
- corobo 8y agoEspecially when SO is trying to be the resource that is top result in Google for the question! I did Google, this answer about "You should just Google this" is the result! At least noindex the closed questions, SO :(
- runevault 8y agoThe downside to this is some closed questions do have great answers on them from before they closed it. I always wonder why I get more duplicates as my top hit than the question SO left open as the "original" because it at least feels like those are what I hit far, far more.
- Shog9 8y agoThere are hundreds of duplicates for some questions: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9686/what-is-the-most-rampant-duplicate-on-stack-exchange-sites/168289#168289 https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9686/what-is-the-mo... ...often, with slightly different terms used. So there's a very good chance a given search will find one of the duplicates rather than the original. This is an explicit goal: it helps searches; in fact, if you're not logged in and you land on an unanswered duplicate, Stack Overflow will redirect to the original.
- mnx 8y agoWell, duplicates are probably more likely to get created when the original question is not easy to find using some particular combination of keywords. So in that sense the duplicate is doing it's job.
- xxs 8y agoAny harder enough question usually deserves adding -stackoverflow.com in the search bar.
- scott_s 8y agoI think the point of such a response is it's a more subtle way of saying we're here to answer questions, but we're not equipped to impart the entire conceptual framework of a whole field. That's why the response gives some keywords so the asker can find that material.
- dspillett 8y ago> Telling people to google something is rarely helpful. Though it is sometimes, particularly if what the question raiser seems to be lacking is the right terminology to search for. In that case then "Basically what you are looking for is [short description], search SO or Google for [keywords] and you should find more details." is possibly the best answer you can give. You might rightly ask "why not just include the 'more details' or some direct links in your answer" which in some cases would be the right thing to do, but often these questions are fairly generic or otherwise lacking in detail so you could end up typing out a massive summary of a large knowledge area, little of which turns out to be directly useful.