DIYbanter - View Single Post - What is it, no one seems to know how to read a newsgroup or do a search?

wrote:
Doesn't anyone even bother to read some of the recent postings or do a
Google Groups search before asking the same question?

This happens ALL the time. Take the recent Sony low volume sound
issue. There has been a thread going for a couple of days with all the
information for the common problem, and someone posts the exact same
question for an almost identical model number today. A quick Google
search for "Sony low volume" brings up lots of hits as well.

Either people are too dumb or lazy to read recent posting, or they
simply do not know how to use a computer search engine. I am not sure
I would want anyone trying to fix a tv set that cannot figure out how
to read or use a search engine. It does take some basic minimal
technical skill to use a search engine, far less than actually working
on a tv set.

Certainly, laziness plays a part, but there are other issues.
One is the ability to conjure up the correct keywords to search.
In many cases, I've found that the terms I use to describe the problem
are different from the terms used by the person who solved it.
If you don't search for the right keywords, you don't find the info.

Then there's the sheer volume of irrelevant data to wade through.
My classic example is to try to find information on a zip drive.
If your primary keyword matches a zillion other things, you'll get
a zillion hits. And if it ain't in the first half a zillion, you
probably won't find it. I typically have to search thru a few hundred
hits to find relevant information. It's all in the keywords...assuming
they're unique...which they probably aren't. And this doesn't even
account for people who put a thousand irrelevant keywords in their
pornsite just to get more traffic.

I see a lot of RTFM bitches in the linux groups. Yes, the answer is in
the FM...but if you don't know enough to find the correct manpage or
interpret it or know about all the other little gotchas that "everybody
knows".

I'm getting off topic, but manuals and helpfiles are typically written
by people who know too much about the subject. They make unconscious
decisions based on what they know. This leads to small, but serious
omissions that may make it very difficult for the newbie to understand
the WHOLE problem/solution.

So, when someone asks the question for the hundredth time, and I know
the answer, I just tell 'em. And I add information about relevant
stuff that they may not have considered in approaching their problem.

It's a lot easier for me and a lot more useful to them than for me to
bitch at 'em.
mike

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