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What search engine do you use? (programming.dev)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/programming@programming.dev
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Not sure if this is the right community, but I didn't see a general one. What search engine do you use? Besides Google increasingly spying on its users, the quality of its search results seems to have gotten significantly worse over the last decade. What search engine(s) do you use?

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[–] 9 points 2 years ago (13 children)

Does anyone care to explain the possible reason for downvoting this - is there something I am not aware of wrt DDG?

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  • [+] 12 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (12 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (10 children)

    Thank you for explaining! And now I am getting downvoted for asking an honest question, so that I can learn more, sheesh. Ignoring the fact for the moment that the Fediverse is becoming more Reddi-fied all the time... I appreciate you actually taking the time to answer.

    I actually swap back and forth between Google and DDG. For things like local business hours, Image search and Maps, the former finds the better results. For a few things (that it may consider piracy?), Google refuses to find results even on page 10. For most other things, while the SEOs may not have entirely taken over, they at least have risen to an extremely annoying prominence.

    e.g. try searching for the word "inspire", and rather than offer you the dictionary definition, the top hit (for me right now) is the "Inspire" sleep apnea innovation - which nowhere is labelled as an advertisement:-(. I understand that the latter company would like to subvert the normal rules of politeness & etiquette and replace my prioritization so that their name appears at the very tippy-top of the search (possibly locally, or perhaps even world-wide?), but that doesn't mean that that is what *I* wanted. Which is why more & more often these days I go to DDG first and then Google, rather than the other way around which is what I did until very recently.

    But yeah, sometimes I do legit use Google search too.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (9 children)

    And now I am getting downvoted for asking an honest question

    Welcome to programming.dev! 😂I've had the same happen (technical issue, looking for a solution or workaround, get downvoted). I take it as "I'm not interested in this - don't ever show me anything about this again" - well, just scroll on by then, not hard. 🙄

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (8 children)

    'Honest inquiries are not desired here', or like 'You should have researched it yourself first' or some such. Also do not make the mistake of expressing a personal preference for anything other than using Arch Linux btw:-P.

    I can't even recall the last time I downvoted something. It's measured in weeks rather than hours though. On the one hand: to each their own, but on the other, people are so short-sighted they don't see how that acts to stifle conversations - like a personal preference is just that, personal, and for something like this OP, a disagreement expressed via text comment can explain something, and we all (people receiving & offering it & bystanders) can learn from it, whereas a downvote can't even be traced to who offered it atm (except on Kbin). So it's frustrating to have to guess - like is DDG really a bad search engine? Then say that!? And how is it bad? Explanations add to the conversation, while downvoting just seems so... lazy.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    I can’t even recall the last time I downvoted something

    I've downvoted things which I know are wrong (people love expressing opinions on things they have no expertise on - just check out the threads on order of operations! 😂), and upvote correct things (the whole point to up/downvote is to push relevant things to the top), otherwise neither usually. Sometimes I use upvote to indicate I liked something someone said.

    just seems so… lazy

    Yep.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago* (6 children)

    It's true that down-voting is a form of information, in some contexts. I could even say "Who wants tacos today? Up-vote if yes, down-vote if no", and it could be fully friendly. It is just that here, in this situation, I didn't get it.

    Ofc it's this huge tangent from the OP b/c originally there was just a single down-vote, and I was curious if I were missing something wrt DDG, but it sounds like not, just "sometimes people prefer to use Google". Which sounds like it would apply to every non-Google suggestion though?

    And then my asking that meta-question quadrupled the number of down-votes - probably like you said, people consider this tangent not relevant to the OP - but at least as a result of it all I know I am not missing anything important... that anyone is willing to write out:-D. Which seems important, crucial even, info for OP and others to have? About the down-sides to DDG I mean.

    But look how many words and messages we had to use and even number of respondents had to participate just to dig out that truth. Even a comment like "you suck, nerd!" - aside from its unfriendliness & irrelevance to the discussion - does act to disambiguate the reasoning behind a down-vote, whereas simply down-voting with no explanation sends a confusing signal with no clear interpretation (except perhaps in the mind of the sender).

    This is why I may pile on the downvotes, to signal agreement, but if I am the first to take that initiative, I do at least take the time to reply so they aren't left wondering why.

    Remember the human, and all of that:-).

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    It is just that here, in this situation, I didn’t get it

    I scrolled back to see, and I think that initial one was just someone who disagreed with your suggestion, for whatever reason (like I downvote incorrect responses to order of operations questions. i.e. hearsay which contradicts what's actually in textbooks and taught), but then yeah, there was some piling on when you asked for an explanation, and I just write them off as "I don't want to see this" types. At first it bothered me, but in the end I just take out of it that I got more upvotes than downvotes, so just proceed with business as usual then. :-)

    Remember the human, and all of that

    Yeah, there's some keyboard-warriors who forget that. You learn to just ignore the downvoters unless, like in your situation, you'd like an explanation as to why your particular suggestion was downvoted by someone. e.g. maybe they know something that you don't. There was a whole side-discussion about Kagi like that (someone had seen something on a blog, and someone else pointed out the CEO's response to the blog, etc. - I didn't read the whole thing... but I didn't downvote it either ;-) ).

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    Yeah, it seems much more sane merely to scroll down, in the normal use-case, except as you said when there is something else going on or a more extreme reaction is warranted like why are you advocating for genocide in a post discussing what search engine alternatives exist (which fortunately did not happen here, but occasionally such events do pop up...:-P).

    Oh look i found a video of today's event.

    img

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

    I only ever downvote rudeness, active spam, or something I think is off-topic. I explain off-topic downvotes but don't feel DOWNLOAD MY SCAM APP TODAY http://wwe.scamlink.fakesite.com/ deserves an explanation and just needs to be pushed down in visibility + reported. I am too wary of getting into an online fight with the person I downvoted and reported for hurling slurs or being a snarky sarcastic namecalling ass to someone being genuine lest they start coming after me too, so I don't reply to them and explain "I downvoted you because I think you're being unnecessarily unkind." Half the time I do actually try to reply in a way that I think gently calls them out and tries to defuse, only to delete immediately after replying in fear of conflict—that's like 75% of my deleted comments.

    Of course caveats apply, I remember but cannot find this image with an angry person capslocking in understandable disagreement with Hitler saying "but that's just my civil opinion that we should gas all the jews, i do not get why you're so emotional," and sealioning is a thing, but I see way more snark towards people engaging in good faith than I see sealions or awful people who actually deserve it. (And part of why I delete, in case I think it's unnecessary rudeness but it is actually a Hitler tone policing the anti-Hitler guy type situation and I just don't realize it.)

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    In the examples that you mentioned, I do agree. I suppose I should have added a caveat like I "usually" take the initiative to comment, except where it seems obvious so the response is not necessary or helpful for anyone.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 child)

    I also want to do people the courtesy of explaining my disagreement but I also do not want to be that "reasons I downvoted you" Reddit copypasta

    the pastaI just downvoted your comment.

    FAQ

    What does this mean?

    The amount of karma (points) on your comment and Reddit account has decreased by one.

    Why did you do this?

    There are several reasons I may deem a comment to be unworthy of positive or neutral karma. These include, but are not limited to:

    Rudeness towards other Redditors, Spreading incorrect information, Sarcasm not correctly flagged with a /s.

    Am I banned from the Reddit?

    No - not yet. But you should refrain from making comments like this in the future. Otherwise I will be forced to issue an additional downvote, which may put your commenting and posting privileges in jeopardy.

    I don't believe my comment deserved a downvote. Can you un-downvote it?

    Sure, mistakes happen. But only in exceedingly rare circumstances will I undo a downvote. If you would like to issue an appeal, shoot me a private message explaining what I got wrong. I tend to respond to Reddit PMs within several minutes. Do note, however, that over 99.9% of downvote appeals are rejected, and yours is likely no exception.

    How can I prevent this from happening in the future?

    Accept the downvote and move on. But learn from this mistake: your behavior will not be tolerated on Reddit.com. I will continue to issue downvotes until you improve your conduct. Remember: Reddit is privilege, not a right.

    Also I just realized I am replying to a 2-year-old thread! I got here via searching for a new search engine, left it in my open tabs, came back to it, and totally forgot it was an old thread. Thanks for engaging with me anyways!

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