Slashdot Mirror
Where to Ask if not Ask Slashdot?
Rick the Red asks: "It seems that 3/4 of the Ask Slashdot articles are met with "Ask Google" answers. So, where do you go for answers (besides Google)? Advice (besides Dear Abby)? Opinions (besides ePinions)? If you want to know how to network one of those 4-in-1 printers, how do you find someone who's tried it? If you need help with some discontinued merchandise, who do you ask? If your pet project hits a snag, what do you do? Come on, all you "Ask Google" critics, fess up -- where do you think people should turn instead of Ask Slashdot?"
The forums at Tom's Hardware or anandtech are some of the best places to get answers to tech questions. Especially if its a question about which hardware to buy.
Another good way to go is to find a slashdot user who will probably have your answer, and check their journal/e-mail.
And of course usenet is great. And you can use google for that too!
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Jesus. Stop posting these obvious questions! Just type them into Google:
where do I ask my questions other than slashdot
That results in this link:
ask.slashdot.org
Sheesh.
Yeah yeah go ahead mod me down before you read the full reply, for having an unpopular opinion...
but here it is anyway....
The reason for asking a question at ask slashdot is to get the help of people how have done it before. This is a plain stright forward simple truth. Yes in many cases you can go "ask google" however...you might get a page or two with in formation on the howto's...you will not get the life expirence information on how everyone did do it(as opposed to the one or two ways that google might give you)...the information that ask slashdot response will give you are the gotcha's the alternative approches, and so forth...
Its a community folks, personally I would rather ask the people who have done it and have the expirence that I can ask questions of during my implimentation...than trust it to some googled web page that may or my not even be currently maintained. Asking slashdot can also cut through alot of the bullshit that you might otherwise run into because the slashdoters who have bene there before will more often than not point you to the resources that did work for them...
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
I follow about 30 Usenet groups daily, and see some great help (with a client capable of doing some filtering, the signal to noise ratio is better than almost anywhere else on the net).
As a result, anytime I have a question, the first place I will hit is Google Groups.
With the right search terms and narrowing it down to the correct groups, the help can be fantastic. Chances are that if you are having a problem or question, someone else has had the same problem.
When I seach for Mac problem, for example, hitting comp.sys.mac.* with a search will give me quality results about 99 out of 100 times.
The other nice thing is that there are questions and answers for almost any subject you can imagine, from networking a four-in-one device to turning left on red.
[Yes, so maybe it is part of Google. But I am guessing that a lot of people submitting "Ask Slashdot" questions are not hitting that before they submit.]
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman