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You can only be thoughtful with your search if you know what you are searching for. But oftentimes i'm not really certain what i'm looking for, or i don't know

by ako 5y ago

You can only be thoughtful with your search if you know what you are searching for. But oftentimes i'm not really certain what i'm looking for, or i don't know the exact terminology that should be used, so i'll just enter some related terms, in the hope that google leads me in the right direction.

Mezzie 5y ago
At the minimum. A truly thoughtful search requires an understanding of: - What you're searching for, which as you mention means terminology and knowing that information exists. (If you don't know that there's a country called Burkina Faso, it's never going to occur to you to search for its capital) - How each of your search tools works, its benefits and drawbacks. It's similar to selecting a programming language or framework: If I need to know a holiday date (e.g. I can never remember when the fuck President's Day is), I'll Google it because that's something even a normal person would notice if they screwed up. On the other hand, when I'm looking for current events information, I use a search tool that specializes in news searches for journalists and researchers because I don't want my search results biased by what Google thinks I want to see. - The domain in which you're searching, so you can evaluate what the search tools provide for you and use the tools iteratively. - Your own abilities and desires, which requires self-knowledge. A search is only a success if it produces something helpful to the searcher, and something they can't understand or won't use = not a successful search - What information is and is not available. It sounds like a silly thing, but this is how a lot of scams work: They're testing for people who lack a certain subset of common knowledge. For example, I've seen articles talking about local elections that imply nefarious intent behind some information not being provided online, and they're obviously written by people who don't commonly work with local election data. Because if they did, they'd know that when working with local election data, the default is 'idk we have it in a file cabinet or on a computer somewhere'. Search is HARD and Google has figured out one tiny, tiny part. It's just the part that was the easiest to build with what they had and that was easiest to monetize.

by ako 5y ago

Mezzie 5y ago

At the minimum. A truly thoughtful search requires an understanding of: - What you're searching for, which as you mention means terminology and knowing that information exists. (If you don't know that there's a country called Burkina Faso, it's never going to occur to you to search for its capital) - How each of your search tools works, its benefits and drawbacks. It's similar to selecting a programming language or framework: If I need to know a holiday date (e.g. I can never remember when the fuck President's Day is), I'll Google it because that's something even a normal person would notice if they screwed up. On the other hand, when I'm looking for current events information, I use a search tool that specializes in news searches for journalists and researchers because I don't want my search results biased by what Google thinks I want to see. - The domain in which you're searching, so you can evaluate what the search tools provide for you and use the tools iteratively. - Your own abilities and desires, which requires self-knowledge. A search is only a success if it produces something helpful to the searcher, and something they can't understand or won't use = not a successful search - What information is and is not available. It sounds like a silly thing, but this is how a lot of scams work: They're testing for people who lack a certain subset of common knowledge. For example, I've seen articles talking about local elections that imply nefarious intent behind some information not being provided online, and they're obviously written by people who don't commonly work with local election data. Because if they did, they'd know that when working with local election data, the default is 'idk we have it in a file cabinet or on a computer somewhere'. Search is HARD and Google has figured out one tiny, tiny part. It's just the part that was the easiest to build with what they had and that was easiest to monetize.