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  • 4
    your utter and abitrary rejection of Google as a primary source makes this.. hard to take seriously. The reality is, 99% of people type something into Google first.
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Jan 3, 2012 at 20:57
  • 5
    @JeffAtwood Arbitrary? Have you tried reading my answer (if it's too long, focus on the parts in bold)?
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Jan 3, 2012 at 21:00
  • 1
    I humbly submit that you are Homo Logicus, and these rules you outline to arbitrarily reject Google as a primary source ... are not really applicable to most folks. codinghorror.com/blog/2004/09/…
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Jan 3, 2012 at 21:21
  • @JeffAtwood Of course I'm caricaturing. Most my Stack Exchange answers involved Google at some point (though sometimes only to find URLs to use as references). But my point stands: just because there are Google hits with the keywords in the question doesn't mean they're relevant, or reliable, or comprehensible.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Jan 3, 2012 at 21:30
  • Well, correct, that is why searching with google is the first of 3 evaluation steps in the flow chart. But it is absolutely and always the first step...
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Jan 3, 2012 at 21:49
  • @JeffAtwood My main beef with the flow chart is that it doesn't take the reliability of the search result (as perceived by the asker) into account.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Jan 3, 2012 at 22:01
  • @JeffAtwood Google customizes our results based on our previous searches. If I searched for some stuff I was uncertain about, it's very unlikely I'll get the same results as you outside of a handful of very highly-ranked pages (like Wikipedia, which is a real General Reference). Because of this, one person's Google-based-General-Reference is not another person's, for the exact same search, making it unreliable. Because of this, the consensus we've come to over on SciFi.SE is, if it's easily Googleable (but not GR), that's a fair reason to downvote - but not VTC.
    – Izkata
    Commented Oct 28, 2012 at 4:49
  • 3
    +1 for The motivation for closing questions as “general reference” is that you do not need a human being to answer this question, because the answer can be found in the obvious place. (Hence the question is a waste of time for the asker, for the answerers and for future readers.)
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Commented Jan 26, 2013 at 19:14
  • @JeffAtwood: Google is a first step in research but that doesn't make it a good primary source for actual information. It's an indexer for primary sources. Indeed, that is its actual official job in the world.
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Commented Jan 26, 2013 at 19:15
  • At least in Computer Science there are recurrent questions on e.g. proving that a language isn't regular, or how to analyze an algorithm. There are standard techniques, wich are discussed and exemplified in separate reference questions. Sure, there are cases where the standard techniques don't apply, or require a special twist. But pointing OP at them to try first, and come back if they don't help, is worthwhile, in my opinion.
    – vonbrand
    Commented Oct 25, 2015 at 2:19
  • @vonbrand We deal with this by closing as duplicate of these reference questions, which I think is a good solution. That doesn't always apply to other cases where the reference is external (dictionary, manual, ...), though it can be done by having a reference question that lists dictionaries/explains man/...
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Oct 25, 2015 at 11:36