Stupid Question Asking

[Seshat]

I only just read this thread, so I apologise if I'm a thread necromancer.

I did notice that so far, noone's actually suggested responding with 'Google it with the search terms X Y Z'.

I find I get a lot of grateful responses when I do that. Though I'm more often inclined to say 'try webpage blah, I found it googling search terms X Y Z'.

That way, I've answered their question in a way that still requires some thought and reading comprehension, and which gives them an avenue for further research.


IMPORTANT NOTE: Google gives different responses based on your geographic location. It biases towards pages hosted near the source IP. So just because an American can Google the exact phrase and get the correct answer in the top-10 responses, that doesn't mean an Australian can. And vice versa.
This is useful when shopping, or when research local history, but not when researching, say, another country's history.
If there was a US exploration team called 'Burke and Wills', and I googled that phrase, my responses would be dominated by our own exploration team of that name.

[Andara Bledin]

Well, the post that made me create the thread was along the lines of, "Oh, hey, is thing-I've-never-heard-of one of these things?"

I copied the text verbatim and plugged it into Google, which took me to a wikipedia page with the answer and more as the second return, the first being a site based on the item in question.

Google would have to be broken to give them a different answer.

These are the sorts of questions that would be ok in a chat, but just come off as rather lazy and not very bright in a forum environment.

It's like popping up in a thread about vacation destinations, quoting a bit of a previous post that is only remotely related to the topic, and asking something along the lines of, "Oh, yeah, what was the name of the guy who wrote Where the Wild Things Are?" >_<

^-.-^