I am not your google mummy!

Stumbling around the internet last night, searching for information about this and that, and falling down rabbit holes and eating the cakes that say "eat me" I was reminded of something I heard long ago, about why forums are better than google and why google hates so many forums and wants them to die a quick and nasty death.



So many forums aren't useful.  It goes like this:

N00b shows up and asks a very simple question: "how to plant an apple tree?"
The established members reply:
"Look it up"
"use a search engine"
"haven't you heard of google?"
"let me google that for you"
"I am not your google mummy!"

That kind of reply is terribly unhelpful, spiteful, and mean.  (and I suspect against publishing standards at permies.com)

If the person is on the internet, there is a very good chance they understand what a search engine is and how to search for information.  So they must have a very good reason to ask their question on a forum instead of "looking it up".

Why would someone ask on a forum?
- google and other search engines are designed to make money - so their results will often favour sites that help them do this.
- google is restricted by some government regulations that limit the content they can share with us
- people are still better than machines and I'm betting that the search engine has never grown an apple tree - not a real one, anyway.
- the internet is getting old and some of the top information that comes up might be outdated
- google seems to think that I want pop culture references when I'm trying to search for something specific that has the same words
- Maybe the forum is specific to Permaculture and what they were trying to say is "how to I grow an apple tree in a permaculture way?"

I bet there is more that could go on this list.

Basically, I'm writing this to show that at permies, it is acceptable to ask really simple questions like this.  

What's more, quality answers to this kind of question helps google love us more and thus, infect more brains with permaculture.  

I know years back I found permies via google. I'd type into google things like "how do I raise ducks permaculture" or "how to grow on a north-facing slope permaulture" and find permies (I always added "permaculture" to my search because I had discovered putting that in there always gave me answers aligned with my values, rather than how to spray things with round-up).

Over and over and over again I found great answers to my permaculture questions here on permies. It's why I finally joined permies! If we think permaculture can solve a lot of the worlds problems, one of the greatest things we can do is answer each others questions. It not only helps those who asked, but those who search google asking the same questions they are asking.

Very often the information on google (other search engines are available) is wrong, it is often repetition of the same wrong ideas, written and re written by people all copying from eachother, without any of them actually having tried it themselves. Take your apple tree, many people advocate digging in lots of manure/compost/amendments and then planting the tree, others say never to do that, plant it in native soil only, yet more will say add mulch or don't add mulch. Which piece of advice is right for you google cannot say, but maybe someone a real someone can.

Fie on google search! It works hard to skew your perception in order to sell you crap. You don't realize how much until you do the same search on lesser known engines.

For me, it's DuckDuckGo all the way. A little more commerce-focused than it used to be, but considerably less creepy.

DuckDuckGo! Been using it for a few years. Works fabulously!

r ranson wrote:
Why would someone ask on a forum?

- people are still better than machines and I'm betting that the search engine has never grown an apple tree - not a real one, anyway.

I bet there is more that could go on this list.

I'd like to add to the list. Google (or any search engine) has no soul and can't think critically. I can only speak of Permies since it's the only forum I've ever participated in, but these forums are splendid. Nice people make the community and they aren't stodgy and eager to put people down. It's these people that are genuine, have sincerity and care and take the time to help a fellow human being that just wants some help.

Indeed,  more than once I have asked question here that I know the conventional answer to,  but I an looking for the unconventional.  Hey, I can buy a bottle of Roundup and spray my garden in the fall and again a couple of weeks before planting like any good farmer.  But I suspect there might be another approach.

I think there is often a lot of good knowledge on forums in general.

But lots of forums are about things I don't care enough about to to want to be a part of them on any sort of regular basis... and their search functions often suck. And the user interaction... often kind of sucks too.

And, as mentioned, in many places people are not at all happy to help you find what you need.

AND YET! Even thought google hates forums, and forum search setups are often annoying, I very frequently find good information on forums by simply including the word 'forum' in my search, or in some cases targeting a specific forum if I know of one likely to have what I need to know.

Frequently, this is vehicle related; google would really like me to watch 10 videos of 2-20 minutes each while looking for a single piece of information that could be easily communicated with one picture and 10 words. I have no time, patience, or bandwidth for that shit. Blocking youtube from my search results *and* targeting forums has been pretty good at evading this time sink.

I also will add "forum" to my search terms. When a bunch of my friends were worried about the coin shortages, I thought, "Let's see what the coin collectors think about this--they probably know a lot more than the news articles"--and they did! I love forums! Sure, sometimes I'll run across a forum thread that has no real information in it, but a lot of the time, there's better, more relevant information there than there is in the articles and sales pages google wants to show me!

Agreed, many forums have lousy search functions. (Permies is actually quite good.)

I often use DuckDuckGo to search within a specific site. Like this:
searchterm site:permies.com/forums

D Nikolls wrote:... google would really like me to watch 10 videos of 2-20 minutes each while looking for a single piece of information that could be easily communicated with one picture and 10 words. I have no time, patience, or bandwidth for that shit.

Exactly! I like the way you think.

another reason why someone might come to a forum instead of google: https://permies.com/t/63222/find-answer-don

As someone working in IT it's also very common to use Google and find that the top results are forums where people say, just look it up on Google. 🙃 Google is not magic; somebody needs to actually put the information on the internet first, and it needs to be linked to often enough that the top results are actually relevant.

Meg Mitchell wrote:As someone working in IT it's also very common to use Google and find that the top results are forums where people say, just look it up on Google. 🙃 Google is not magic; somebody needs to actually put the information on the internet first, and it needs to be linked to often enough that the top results are actually relevant.

This, so much! I was looking online for recipes using vine peaches and all I kept finding were the same two recipes somebody posted almost 20 years ago. I did find a forum though where people were discussing that very issue and two people responded with other recipes they thought might work if you subbed in vine peaches for the fruit required. Hooray for forums!

What I really like about forums is that you can ask a very specific question to a very specific audience. Maybe I don’t want to ask how to plant an apple tree, but I want help selecting and planting an apple tree for my zone 4, Midwest, cold winter hot summer, cedar apple rust and fire-blight prone, road salt exposed, clay-loam soil without using synthetic fertilizers or sprays for upkeep. People here on Permies will have suggestions for that. Try googling that. You’d need to look up most of those things separately and try to piece it all together. Look up disease Resistance, then look up USDA zone, then look up drought tolerant, and so on.

"And, as mentioned, in many places people are not at all happy to help you find what you need."
As someone who has answered thousand of questions, I must admit that you can get tired of answering the same question over and over. I ended up created a FAQ and pointing people to read that document first, then ask real questions. Yes, you miss the personal interaction, but time to talk with another person is a premium. I mean, I don't mind taking a little time to answer a question I haven't answered a hundred times already. That's why search bots are useful.
The most common bothersome person is not anyone of these OP mentioned, but people without IT skills that prefer to ask someone directly instead of using informatic tools JUST because they prefer talking with a person instead of a machine (we're not getting paid for this, you know? and we already have friends, thanks). We all use browsers and search engines, but most people are not well educated to use them right. That's why I find these comments so useful:

"I often use DuckDuckGo to search within a specific site. Like this:
searchterm site:permies.com/forums"
and this one:
" Blocking youtube from my search results *and* targeting forums has been pretty good at evading this time sink."

I don't say you can't ask knowledgeable people things that you don't know, but only after searching around with search engines and some basic knowledge on how to do this. You'll find people more amenable if you don't ask them easy to find stuff they've already answered a hundred times.

I haven't tried DuckDuckGo yet, but I have found and like to use the search engine Ecosia.org. This search engine uses their revenue to fund tree planting around the world.

They post their financial reports and there are numerous reviews, youtube videos, and several comparisons to google so it seems to be legitimate.

If I can passively help to plant trees around the world while learning about various permaculture ideas and techniques, that seems like a great idea to me!

Yes, Todd Gerardot! I was just scanning down to the bottom of the string with the intention of recommending Ecosia search engine.  

My daughter literally took my laptop out of my hands a couple of weeks ago when I was about to search for something with Google and switched it over to Ecosia (which I had never heard of) as my default browser.  So far it seems to do everything I want it to do, and you get to see a counter that, as of this moment I am typing, says they have planted over 105.4 million trees.  I'd rather support trees than shareholders :)

I think most of us have seen the posts on other forums where the, I assume, arrogant and grumpy members post the rude remarks when someone asks a simple question.  There is a chicken group on facebook where 2 or 3 times a week someone new asks whether to use sand or wood shavings in their coop.  I bet since I joined last summer that question has been asked about 500 times.  I gave my answer many times the first few months, now I just scroll by because there will always be arguments for one or the other and neither is "best".

In short, if you want to ask a question feel free to ask the question but the more information you can share about your location and situation the better answers you will get.  If you see a question and want to provide helpful information go ahead, but if you don't want to answer the question that was asked a dozen times the last week just scroll on by.  If I ask what color blue would be best to paint a coop telling me that yellow would be the best color is not a helpful answer.  

I like to be helpful when I can answers people's questions no matter how often the question has been asked. We were all new at one time.

If I don't know the answer it is not necessary to post anything though sometimes I will post something like "I don't know the answer" and give them links to threads that will answer their question.

I especially like to follow the "Zero Replies" and try to find the answers or at least say something so that the thread gets bump again and has a chance to get an answer.

Andrea Locke wrote:Yes, Todd Gerardot! I was just scanning down to the bottom of the string with the intention of recommending Ecosia search engine.  

My daughter literally took my laptop out of my hands a couple of weeks ago when I was about to search for something with Google and switched it over to Ecosia (which I had never heard of) as my default browser.  So far it seems to do everything I want it to do, and you get to see a counter that, as of this moment I am typing, says they have planted over 105.4 million trees.  I'd rather support trees than shareholders :)

Ecosia is basically Bing in another wrapper.   Even at the bottom right of the Ecosia, it says MicroSoft aka Bing.

Startpage.com and the Duck are more aligned with privacy type searching.

I've been struggling with google a lot these days.  Trying to look up specific things and finding only pop culture references.  

I figure someone wouldn't be asking on the forums if they had the skills to get a helpful answer from google.  

r ranson wrote:I've been struggling with google a lot these days.  Trying to look up specific things and finding only pop culture references.  

I figure someone wouldn't be asking on the forums if they had the skills to get a helpful answer from google.  

Today's saying is, google is not your friend.   It tends to steer you in their plotted direction vs. having the real freedom to pick and choose.   More than a decade ago, people remember that searching with google, you could turn up 10s or thousands of hits on a search.  Today, you are lucky to get 5 pages of valued content.  google now leaves a person ill informed or miss guided.

I'm not a fan of Bing, but lately their map searching is faster and a bit more accurate.  The Bing translator and the Yandex are on par or better than google.

For searching without being steered via any agenda of query results, and privacy is a need, Startpage.com IXquick.com and duckduckgo.com are what is left.

Now, an early 1990s search engine still is around called dogpile.com  This basically searches ALL the search engines to give you a very WIDE range of direct hits on a topic search.  For more than 2 decades CNET spoke highly of the search engine of all search engines.

 

Here's something I saw today (paraphrased)

Here's a link to a google search, the first link gives you what you want.

What's worse, google shows INDIVIDUALIZED results to each user, so even sharing a link to YOUR search results is unlikely to give the next person the same results.  

It's rude suggesting the person is too lazy to look it up and it's unhelpful.


We want to encourage people to ask questions on permies because it makes a great resource for future people.  And quite often, the answers we give here aren't the same as one finds elsewhere on the internet.  

Talking with someone about this today.  They mentioned that it's getting harder and harder to find real information using google thanks to the excessive AI-generated content farms.  

In another conversation today, someone else was lamenting the loss of forums when real humans can help each other and build a community - even for simple questions (or questions that look simple unless you don't already know the answer).

I feel blessed that permies is here for us.  

I don't stop researching a question I post here but I appreciate the replies from real people with real experiences that are Perma"Cultists" like me.

That's because the Google algorithm has been abused. Web pages fool the searcher by adding exactly what the search engine is looking for, sometimes not adding real content value.
Reddit is still an option, if you find a group with the knowledge you are looking for.

Also, there are many people posting here who know the generally accepted approaches. They are seeking some not so normal approaches.

I'm wondering if "here's what a chatbot had to say" would fit into this.

We all know chatbots exist and we can look it up.  Just like we know google exists.  

But for some reason, we feel that a real human answering the question has more value than an AI.  This is why we ask in a forum.  


From the back end, I have read in a few places, that google is implementing a system to search and send negative googlelove (SEO value to the page) if it has AI-generated content.  

S Greyzoll wrote:What I really like about forums is that you can ask a very specific question to a very specific audience. Maybe I don’t want to ask how to plant an apple tree, but I want help selecting and planting an apple tree for my zone 4, Midwest, cold winter hot summer, cedar apple rust and fire-blight prone, road salt exposed, clay-loam soil without using synthetic fertilizers or sprays for upkeep. People here on Permies will have suggestions for that. Try googling that. You’d need to look up most of those things separately and try to piece it all together. Look up disease Resistance, then look up USDA zone, then look up drought tolerant, and so on.

My thoughts are along these lines.

For example, on forums I can ask a question to a group of people who are all different kinds of experts on that topic, get one answer and then see someone else disagree, and follow their exchange. That is much richer information than I would have gotten from even a great article I found on a search engine.

Another example is if I get an answer on a forum I can ask follow up questions to the knowledgeable person who answered. "Really? What if ___?" "Even when _____?" "In that case, what about _____?" etc. There's no interactivity with a typical search engine result.

Exploring this issue some more, I think it's good to stress that a lot of the problem with this is how things are said.  Intonation is hard to hear on the internet, so it's good to err on the side of caution.


the LMGTFY response

A. Here's what google has to say about your question.  (and nothing else)

B. Wow, that's a great question.  I don't know either, but I asked google and it suggested XYZ.  I can add some more of my thoughts that relate back to your question or my personal expierence

Reply A is pretty rude.  It basically says, "you don't know how to use google, so I did for you you stupid-head"  (unless the person specifically states they are looking for help with search, then A becomes extremely helpful)

Reply B is very different.  Not only is it more than just quoting google, it is adding friendship (that's a great question) and commentary (more thoughts). This is something google says it likes as it gives seo preference to real human generated content vs repeat content from elsewhere on the internet with no value added.