General Moderation Topic

Some of their responses to it were though. :frowning:

12 Likes

Seriously though, posting Let Me Google That For You isnā€™t exactly any ā€˜advancementā€™ to the discourse; I basically stopped using it myself back when I joined this forum because I realized that it was not productive for actually communicating with the community here.

Itā€™s just another way to be a dick, needlessly.

24 Likes

Like I said in the thread, we are nobodyā€™s subcontractors here to do the work for them. I mean, look how much effort we had to put into that.

19 Likes

Also, as someone whose job consists of, in no small measure, Googling shit for people, I have come to understand and respect that Googling information requires a nontrivial investment of intellectual, temporal, and emotional energy, which unacknowledged reality is the silent ā€œfuck youā€ behind LMGTFY.

25 Likes

Personally, I actually missed most of the melee this time; I mainly saw the cleanup and the latter resulting half of the ever useful phrase:

I completely agree.

Please donā€™t get me wrong; back in the day when I did use it, it was in almost always in reply to obvious bad faith actors who were ā€˜just askingā€™ the same exact questions over and over again, in an effort to derail the conversations at hand.

Here on BB, the majority of the community engages one another in good faith most of the time, (whether we actually agree or not) so such a counter-trolling tactic is no longer needed on my part.

20 Likes

In this case, for instance, the first hit on google was a wikipedia article that quoted things as a ā€œcityā€ the way they said, but if you actually looked any further, it was one of those directly connected municipalities where itā€™s semantics whether people count them as a separate city or not. So in googling that for Melz they actually did a pretty poor job on top of being condescending.

18 Likes

As someone whose job is, in no small measure, helping people discover better ways to find out better things than Google, Iā€™m aware that it might not actually be useful, might be contradictory, might be pages of content farm SEO chum, Markov chains, LLM generated stochastic parroting, hijack sites which you shouldnā€™t click on anything, multiple instances of unsourced (PR) copy pasta in mutual networks etc. etc. etc.

Oh, and if you do Google it for me, your results will be different to mine as there is no such thing as a vanilla search result.

19 Likes

Hard agree ā€“ this is exactly what I was trying to get at with my comment. Typing the words into Google is only the first step in a rather complex intellectual exercise that involves contextualizing, resource evaluation, and a bunch of other heavy lifting. Not only is LMGTFY an obnoxious brush-off, it actively devalues the hard work that goes into the evaluation of information and suggsts that Google somehow magically gives correct answers to every query.

16 Likes

Yes, often. I never do it anymore because itā€™s come to feel like a hassle, but depending on the situation, it can mean something like, You know, youā€™re expecting someone else to look up an answer that you could easily look up yourself in about 5 seconds.

15 Likes

Not just googles. We get reminders all the time ā€œplease donā€™t ask the departmental admins to find (policies/documents/etc) that you can locate on the website yourself. They arenā€™t your servants.ā€

Itā€™s a sign of disrespect.

18 Likes

ā€¦ ā€œthe marketplace of ideasā€ :roll_eyes:

16 Likes

Cleanup on aisle 6!

16 Likes

User Jjjjj has been shown the ddddoor.

Things to avoid when trying to have a constructive conversation in general:

1 - those who disagree with you are not ā€œattackingā€ you, and those that you disagree with are not deserving of polite attacks in return, no matter how innocuous you attempt to make them

But more importantly,

2 - do not, when confronted with a counterargument, attempt to redefine the meaning or semantics of a language. That is eerily reminiscent of other bad actors weā€™ve had in the past, and it literally sent shivers down my spine trying to moderate your comments.

We love constructive debate. Declaring all contrary views to either be misunderstanding the basic tenet of language or attacks is not constructive and ultimately wastes the time of those who attempt to debate your position in good faith.

27 Likes

giphy (3) (1)

17 Likes

I Remember Reaction GIF by CBS

16 Likes

ā€¦ is that Pavlovā€™s dinner bell :confused: or the shrieking of Russellā€™s teapot when it reaches a boil?

14 Likes

ā€œHow do we define eyes, really? Are they truly useful to human perception? If not, can you loan me a melon baller so I can scoop yours out?ā€

16 Likes

Hear the loud alarum bellsā€”
Brazen trŠ¾lls!
ā€¦
Yet the ear distinctly knows,
In the jangling,
And the wrangling.
How the danger swift unrolls,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the trŠ¾llsā€”
Of the trŠ¾llsā€”
Of the trŠ¾lls trŠ¾lls trŠ¾lls trŠ¾lls,
TrŠ¾lls, trŠ¾lls, trŠ¾llsā€”
In the clamor and the clangor of the trŠ¾lls!

ā€“Edgar Allan Poe, TrŠ¾lls (what he would have written, probably)

23 Likes

User Ken_Flowers banned for believing in only one definition of a word. I hope the user has a ball elsewhere.

18 Likes

So heā€™s taking his not-a-ball and going home?

17 Likes