0979: "Wisdom of the Ancients"

[jpk]

There was a single reply that made my co almost break down in tears "just google it."

What makes these sorts of responses even worse is that there is literally zero reason to assume the person hasn't already googled it.

Have you ever, in your life, looked at the questions people ask on forums? There are a lot of questions which are best answered by entering the exact question asked into your favorite search engine - sometimes you might have to add some qualifying word, like. "tutorial" or something. Someone on a java forum asks how JOptionPanes work. You will not be able to give them a better answer than the one provided by the first answer returned by "joptionpane tutorial" - and that's one of the searches that google prompts for you, so you don't even have to think about it. Since you can't type "joption" into a google search box without being prompted for the search that will answer your question, it's actually impossible that this person has exerted even the faintest effort to help themself on this question. So, to use your inane formulation, there is "literally zero reason" to assume that the person has already googled it.

Jesus, why do I even bother to reply to people who say things like "there is literally zero reason"? I know it's like talking to a wall from the start...
And of course the response will be "wah, wah, the grammar nazi's picking on me!". Sorry, no, this is the "putting together words in a way that makes sense" nazi speaking. Grammar nazi is down the street with a pot of white paint getting rid of superfluous apostrophes. And when he's done punching out people for addressing objects or persons not present in the scene, he's going to fix the grocer's punctuation, which is atrocious, but that's another matter entirely.

[Mardeg]

There was a single reply that made my co almost break down in tears "just google it."

What makes these sorts of responses even worse is that there is literally zero reason to assume the person hasn't already googled it.

Jesus, why do I even bother to reply to people who say things like "there is literally zero reason"? I know it's like talking to a wall from the start...

Are you asking the literal or figurative Jesus?

[scarletmanuka]

Several days ago my co-worker asked me for help with an error he could just not fix. After trying a few solutions he didn't think of we relented and Googled it. The only result was a forum post from 2002 with the same error. There was a single reply that made my co almost break down in tears "just google it." Made from his account there from back then.

This made me laugh.

[addams]

There's one thing worse: a single followup reading just

Never mind, I figured it out.

Oh. That is funny. That is the reason that computer nerds can track your computer within 100 feet anywhere on the planet.

You Figured It Out?! We Know Where You Are!

[neferset]

I joined just to say, GOOMHR.

[Kpyolysis32]

This happened to me recently. I was trying to get LAN working for Master of Orion 2 for Windows 7, because GameRanger got me excited by having it on their supported games list, but it ended up only working on XP and lower.

I eventually did figure out the issue: The game needs DirectPlay to do LAN, and DirectPlay isn't supported by Vista or 7, which is an issue I don't even know if it's possible to fix. I ended up just using Virtual PC to do it

[sworisbreathing]

Here's a good example of why it's a bad idea to lock threads on a help forum:

This morning, using Gmail, I stray-clicked the "Always display images from this sender" link, and was looking for a way to turn it back off. I came across this posting on the help forums: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=013c5dcafc35e1ac&hl=en

Gmail's UI has now changed and there is no "Show details" link anymore. I finally figured out how to turn off the per-contact image display in the new user interface and went back to the forum to post an update with the new instructions, but noooooooo.... someone decided to lock the thread. So, now I'll have to start a duplicate thread for the same issue. Good job, Google.

[Wallace]

Okay I just had this problem^2.

Encountered a problem, could work it out, did some searching. The only result is an unanswered form post from several years ago. The guy posting it had a really similiar problem to m.. oh wait, that guy who posted the question IS ME! Turns out I had the same problem a while back when working on a different project. Obviously I never figured out the solution then either

[Pingouin7]

What's even worse is to discover that that old lonely post was actually made by myself, many many years ago, and I forgot all about it. And no one had ever noticed.

This actually happened to me once.

[rmsgrey]

The one that irritates me the most is the ancient thread where, in response to "I need to FROBNICATE in ADA, and all I can find on Google is to FOO, and I've tried that but it doesn't work", after the usual "Rewrite it in COBOL" and "Have you tried doing FOO?" and "The official website says this is a known problem and the solution is FOO", and "Yeah, FOO doesn't work for me either", you get the post saying "Try the advice on this link: www.pierredefermat.com/extendedpythagor ... index.html" followed by a bunch of posts saying "Wow, I never would have thought of that. Great link. Thanks" and "Cheers. Problem solved", but when you click on the link, you get a "margin too small" error, or find that the site is now a link-farm or a tribute to Google ads, and there's no sign of the long-dead solution...

The other variation is when Google finds a link to a blog post from 2007, which says "In an earlier post I showed you how to FROBNICATE in ADA when FOO doesn't work. Today, I want to talk about how to do it in COBOL" and the "earlier post" link (which from the URL points back to 2004) is dead...

Note: names of languages and websites have been changed to save me having to go dig up an actual example.

[ConMan]

The one that irritates me the most is the ancient thread where, in response to "I need to FROBNICATE in ADA, and all I can find on Google is to FOO, and I've tried that but it doesn't work", after the usual "Rewrite it in COBOL" and "Have you tried doing FOO?" and "The official website says this is a known problem and the solution is FOO", and "Yeah, FOO doesn't work for me either", you get the post saying "Try the advice on this link: http://www.pierredefermat.com/extendedp ... index.html" followed by a bunch of posts saying "Wow, I never would have thought of that. Great link. Thanks" and "Cheers. Problem solved", but when you click on the link, you get a "margin too small" error, or find that the site is now a link-farm or a tribute to Google ads, and there's no sign of the long-dead solution...

The other variation is when Google finds a link to a blog post from 2007, which says "In an earlier post I showed you how to FROBNICATE in ADA when FOO doesn't work. Today, I want to talk about how to do it in COBOL" and the "earlier post" link (which from the URL points back to 2004) is dead...

Note: names of languages and websites have been changed to save me having to go dig up an actual example.

Which can sometimes be dealt with by using the Internet Wayback Machine, as long as the site allowed the Internet Archive's bot to grab its content, and it was in a format that the bot could handle (no stupid cgi with useless parameters or entire pages of content hidden in images that don't get grabbed).

[Thibaw]

So anyone found a solution yet?

[bmonk]

So anyone found a solution yet?

I found one--but the reference got lost again.

[wwjd_kilden]

Yup... always a fun situation....

Equally fun:

When you post: "I am a beginner (/absolute noob) at X, can someone give me an example of how to do Z?"
...and then someone shows you a solution that you need a masters degree in the subject to understand...