4 ms·
This is nitpicky but the tire changing page doesn't actually fit your rational for choosing .edu pages >Professors are paid generous salaries to share knowledg
by s-video 4y ago
This is nitpicky but the tire changing page doesn't actually fit your rational for choosing .edu pages
>Professors are paid generous salaries to share knowledge with the paying customers of the University (students). So, let’s find some paid unpaid University knowledge on how to change a tire by using our new trick!
But the bottom of the page says
>Prepared by: [students] For Dr. Bruce Magee's English 303 (Technical Writing) Class, Winter 1997-1998.
The professor is actually an English professor and the page was written by students as an assignment. I looked into this because I was wondering, "what would a professor be teaching that he's writing notes on tire changing?". There's probably some professor out there that does that in an academic context, but there's probably a lot of things that no professor actually gets paid to write about. Maybe they would write about something miscellaneous like that anyway and put it online, but they would be doing so out of the culture of web savvy professors having personal pages where they upload stuff they think is helpful.
- taoufix 4y agoThe real problem for me is that you need to know where to search in ordre to make the search: Car troubles? YouTube chrisfix car_problem Knowlage stuff? Wikipedia query Programming question? Stackoverflow question ... and so on
- CaptainZapp 4y agoDoes it really matter if it was a writing assignment, or a class in tire changing, provided that the information is correct?
- bentcorner 4y agoYes, it matters - a writing assignment would be graded on writing quality and style. I would assume the writing professor is not a tire changing expert. You're there because you don't know how to change a tire, so there's no way to know if the information is correct. It's certainly better than nothing but there could be specific gotchas for your situation. Most common would be needing certain tools or techniques for your model of car. It'd probably be best to either look up the manual for your car online or find a youtube video for changing the tires for your model of car.
- Phrodo_00 4y agoI know this isn't the point of the discussion, but any car's owners manual likely has a section on how to change a tire in case anyone needs it.
- jeremyjh 4y agoIt isn't nitpicking at all, I had the same question and glad you uncovered this answer. I think site:*.edu is just one tool in your search toolbox that you should know about, but I wouldn't expect it to work for every topic. Still, I had never thought of it so I'm glad I read this article.
- chii 4y agoi would often use `site:news.ycombinator.com` to search a topic to see if it has been talked about, and what comments that topic has. It's good, but not really _that_ often useful.
- jeremyjh 4y agoYes I use that and site:reddit.com as well.
- april_22 4y agoConsider using alternative SE's like you.com or neeva, they give you the ability to rank sources and e.g. set Reddit as a preferred site so you don't have to type site:reddit.com every single time. Works great and saves time.
- thefourthchime 4y agoYep, those are my two modifiers i often use -- that and since:2021
- avh02 4y agoThis has recently been my desperation move when e.g similar bugs to what I'm facing were solved a decade ago (but were irrelevant) were coming out as top results rather than bugs for a recent version
- richardsocher 4y agoWe also have recent github issues as an app within you.com to solve for that. (you.com founder here)