Fediverse

“Check the documentation” should absolutely be a retort though.

One of my least favorite things about the fediverse (and especially Discord and Reddit) is members asking the same simple question hundreds of times because they didn’t bother to do a simple search and didn’t bother to check obvious documentation.

They didn’t know the documentation exists? OK, I will happily show you, and show you how to find it in general. Question only partially novel? Great, I will link an old answer and explain the rest… But I am kinda fed up with how “ephemeral” social media is, which is by design, as that repetitiveness increases engagement dramatically. Many forums should be structured more like a wiki, and its users should reflect that.

It’s too bad ChatGPT will never replace a real Reddit thread:

Yes please don't do this. Google doesn't need more support either from search activity or inclusion into the vernacular. If someone is asking in the fediverse which is still a relatively small community, they are expressing a degree of patience with their answer that suggests they've already tried search and came up dissapointed or they are really lacidasical about their question and won't really mind if you just ignore it and move on. Taking the time to tell someone to websearch something is even more pathetic than a "this" reply.

When I ask someone for clarification via their expertise, I usually reflexively indicate that I cannot trust google because of the incursion of AI slop, and even if it shows THEM accurate results, it is no guarantee that it will show ME those same results.

Just googlw it is unfortunate shorthand for "learn it by doing research and troubleshooting", a skill sadly very scarce. I agree it's toxic and unhelpful. Guiding people to be better at finding information on their own is the way.

Imagine asking chatgpt and it tells you to "Google it"

Recursively google searching is an interesting case of the halting problem.

"Just ChatGPT it" is going to become a thing.