4 ms·

What's often overlooked and omitted from this sort of guide is a person's ability to identify the trustworthiness and usefulness of a website that shows up in s

What's often overlooked and omitted from this sort of guide is a person's ability to identify the trustworthiness and usefulness of a website that shows up in search results. It's not enough to juggle operands and search hacks. You also need to know which result to click. Another commenter suggested just searching for your error message. Try searching for "cannot read property of undefined" and scroll through the results. There are dozens of dodgy domains like asdfsdf.cornelius714.site that are just scrapes of stackoverflow or other forums.

smoe 5y ago
For me those google hacks seem a bit of micro optimization. I use some and there are helpful, but more importantly are things like what sources are trustworthy, how to read error messages and stacktraces, being able to formulate your problem, etc.
avs733 5y ago
The academic and scholarly field you are referencing in your first paragraph is referred to as “information literacy“ We’re looking at this and students generally we look for the number of stages that need to be completed: Identification of the need for new information Searching and strategies for finding the needed information. Assessment of the usefulness of the information Evaluation of the credibility of the information Use of the information to progress a project forward Reflection on the process and identification of opportunities for improvement
- troelsSteegin 5y ago
  That's a nice concise list. Even moreso: "You can think of information literacy as having five components: identify, find, evaluate, apply, and acknowledge sources of information" - via https://libguides.seminolestate.edu/researchfoundations/informationliteracy https://libguides.seminolestate.edu/researchfoundations/info...
  - avs733 5y ago
    Yup!
the_only_law 5y ago
I buy a lot of obscure stuff off ebay. Mostly old computers / engineering equipment build for a specific purpose. Because of this, i normally try to google around for the product to see if I can get some information or a manual on it so I don't end up with something next to useless because I can't figure out how to use it. Unfortunately a lot of the time I get these sort of sites that are basically just archives of previous or current ebay listings. Even weirder, I'll get some really strange URLS (I swear one or two I've found before didn't even look like the TLD's were real). The text below the link will often look like a keyword dump that just happens to have what I typed in plus all sorts of other random words and such. Clicking on them usually just leads to an unresolved link.
squeaky-clean 5y ago
Totally, and even on a good website, the real best answer isn't always obvious. I feel like on 30% of answers on StackOverflow the highlighted answer is either flat-out incorrect or out of date by 10 years and one of the answers further down will have 10x the upvotes and be more correct. And then of course there's always the problem of asking the wrong question. Like searching "how to read string between nested brackets" or something, when really the person is just trying to parse JSON but isn't aware of what JSON is.

smoe 5y ago

For me those google hacks seem a bit of micro optimization. I use some and there are helpful, but more importantly are things like what sources are trustworthy, how to read error messages and stacktraces, being able to formulate your problem, etc.

avs733 5y ago

The academic and scholarly field you are referencing in your first paragraph is referred to as “information literacy“ We’re looking at this and students generally we look for the number of stages that need to be completed: Identification of the need for new information Searching and strategies for finding the needed information. Assessment of the usefulness of the information Evaluation of the credibility of the information Use of the information to progress a project forward Reflection on the process and identification of opportunities for improvement

troelsSteegin 5y ago
That's a nice concise list. Even moreso: "You can think of information literacy as having five components: identify, find, evaluate, apply, and acknowledge sources of information" - via https://libguides.seminolestate.edu/researchfoundations/informationliteracy https://libguides.seminolestate.edu/researchfoundations/info...
- avs733 5y ago
  Yup!

the_only_law 5y ago

I buy a lot of obscure stuff off ebay. Mostly old computers / engineering equipment build for a specific purpose. Because of this, i normally try to google around for the product to see if I can get some information or a manual on it so I don't end up with something next to useless because I can't figure out how to use it. Unfortunately a lot of the time I get these sort of sites that are basically just archives of previous or current ebay listings. Even weirder, I'll get some really strange URLS (I swear one or two I've found before didn't even look like the TLD's were real). The text below the link will often look like a keyword dump that just happens to have what I typed in plus all sorts of other random words and such. Clicking on them usually just leads to an unresolved link.

squeaky-clean 5y ago

Totally, and even on a good website, the real best answer isn't always obvious. I feel like on 30% of answers on StackOverflow the highlighted answer is either flat-out incorrect or out of date by 10 years and one of the answers further down will have 10x the upvotes and be more correct. And then of course there's always the problem of asking the wrong question. Like searching "how to read string between nested brackets" or something, when really the person is just trying to parse JSON but isn't aware of what JSON is.