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So true. Whenever I look up something now I just add Reddit afterwards. It's been working well so far, but I guess that can be manipulated as well.

outime 7y ago
Not OP but yes, I’ve also been doing this for a long time and it does help.
minitoar 7y ago
Or “wiki”.
- carlob 7y ago
  or use duckduckgo's bangs
CondensedBrain 7y ago
Site searching Reddit can at least give some ideas for different words to try. Most of my problems finding things on Google stem from its declining ability to make a reasonable guess based on what I put in. It's not enough to have a word anymore. You have to know the right keyphrase or it shows a whole different world of results. It used to show its best guess, then branch off from it with less specificity and more variety and, in general, a result reflecting what I meant within a few pages. Now Google is so desperate to get it right on result #1 that it never admits failure no matter how many pages you go.
rlucas 7y ago
There’s a reason that works (sorta, mostly, and when it does). The infrastructure of web navigation and search is foundationally built on textual, first party published content that enjoys some presumptions of good faith authorship: that it was written to be read, by a reader, and meant to be informative, persuasive/argumentative, or recreational/entertaining. Think: journal articles, Usenet debates, faq compilations, RFCs, product spec sheets, forum postings, IRC logs, ur-blogs, even the original social media content types (tweets, wall posts, comments). The cycles and epicycles of architecting atop this “real” content gives us mechanisms that reward and incentivize content produced neither for the ends of the writer writing nor any reader reading, but rather in service of manipulating search and driving ux patterns of various darkness. All the good stuff on the internet is reborn in a spasm of returning to people creating content they care about for other people who care. Then eventually with success it gets polluted into shit with bots, seo, mass media and agencies, influencers, etc. One silly rubric I use is: could this page / app / venue have been there in 1999? If so it’s probably worth reading. If not, who knows. (Of course there are cesspools that qualify too, like the chan world and certain subreddits, but there were cesspools in the early days of the web as well.)
nunez 7y ago
site:reddit.com; after every search!
bash-j 7y ago
When I search for free software I usually put forum in the search terms as it helps filter out the malicious sites and the software where they clearly ripped off the free software but ask for money to unlock the pro version. Plus I get to read why people recommend the software.
deleted 7y ago
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outime 7y ago

Not OP but yes, I’ve also been doing this for a long time and it does help.

minitoar 7y ago

Or “wiki”.

carlob 7y ago
or use duckduckgo's bangs

CondensedBrain 7y ago

Site searching Reddit can at least give some ideas for different words to try. Most of my problems finding things on Google stem from its declining ability to make a reasonable guess based on what I put in. It's not enough to have a word anymore. You have to know the right keyphrase or it shows a whole different world of results. It used to show its best guess, then branch off from it with less specificity and more variety and, in general, a result reflecting what I meant within a few pages. Now Google is so desperate to get it right on result #1 that it never admits failure no matter how many pages you go.

rlucas 7y ago

There’s a reason that works (sorta, mostly, and when it does). The infrastructure of web navigation and search is foundationally built on textual, first party published content that enjoys some presumptions of good faith authorship: that it was written to be read, by a reader, and meant to be informative, persuasive/argumentative, or recreational/entertaining. Think: journal articles, Usenet debates, faq compilations, RFCs, product spec sheets, forum postings, IRC logs, ur-blogs, even the original social media content types (tweets, wall posts, comments). The cycles and epicycles of architecting atop this “real” content gives us mechanisms that reward and incentivize content produced neither for the ends of the writer writing nor any reader reading, but rather in service of manipulating search and driving ux patterns of various darkness. All the good stuff on the internet is reborn in a spasm of returning to people creating content they care about for other people who care. Then eventually with success it gets polluted into shit with bots, seo, mass media and agencies, influencers, etc. One silly rubric I use is: could this page / app / venue have been there in 1999? If so it’s probably worth reading. If not, who knows. (Of course there are cesspools that qualify too, like the chan world and certain subreddits, but there were cesspools in the early days of the web as well.)

nunez 7y ago

site:reddit.com; after every search!

bash-j 7y ago

When I search for free software I usually put forum in the search terms as it helps filter out the malicious sites and the software where they clearly ripped off the free software but ask for money to unlock the pro version. Plus I get to read why people recommend the software.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]