It is clear that the signal to noise ratio of the WWW is getting worse. It's much harder to find good content when using a good old search engine. And if it's good it is usually hosted on Reddit or Stackexchange.

So remember, even if it's easy too Google something (well, it isn't nowadays), we want to create a fediverse of good content that helps people (I hope). So, it's always better to write a real answer if you have the time and energy. Please help boost the SNR and reverse the AI fueled information degradation loop.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

I've noticed that a lot of people are just really bad in using the right searching terms, and then quickly shifting through all the info to find the right information. Googling well truly is a skill. Though be it a strange one.

[–] seaQueue -5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

It's not even much of a skill anymore now that there's so much focus on natural language question and answer. You can straight up Google "how do I X?" And get a relevant answer for just about anything.

Edit: I'm not even talking about generative AI here, googling simple questions without using AI worked well before the AI craze.

[–] soul 5 points 3 weeks ago

That's not exactly true. The AI answers are often wrong or incomplete. You still need skill, it's just that the required skill has shifted to accepting this is true, recognizing when the AI answer is not complete and correct, (which can be more difficult due to the answers often being seemingly correct, yet slightly wrong or incomplete), and then doing what you'd do in any other search that nets poor results: adjust and search more or dig further down the given results stack.

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