Timeline for Show Me the Reference!
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
19 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Apr 13, 2017 at 12:38 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://english.stackexchange.com/ with https://english.stackexchange.com/
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| Dec 9, 2014 at 14:33 | comment | added | SrJoven | @Marthaª Also, please clarify what Generally Available is supposed to mean? Assume I didn't know that m-w.com was a dictionary site. How would I find the information to find a site that was considered Generally Available? If I type the search criteria of what I seek in a popular search engine, and one of the results that appears to answer my criteria happens to be a pdf (a pdf of a dictionary? a pdf of school standards?), how would [random initiate] be aware enough that one result is better suited than another to answer the question? The links are equally accessible. | |
| Nov 26, 2014 at 16:06 | comment | added | Matt Gutting | "There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. ... You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after." -- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit | |
| Nov 24, 2014 at 14:00 | comment | added | SrJoven | @JPmiaou Consider what I posted to be the antithesis of the gist of this meta question. That is to say, the majority of questions are posted in showmetehcodez hit and run fashion, with little effort being shown to explain how even a simple web search could assist/isn't sufficient before asking experts. The OQ here says, "why should we expect that? The search results are likely wrong!" Which, fine. Tell us that you're confused by the results. I don't wish to argue the purpose of this site. Just another view different from this meta OQ. | |
| Nov 24, 2014 at 3:47 | comment | added | JPmiaou | @SrJoven, I guess you just have a very, very different idea about what this site is for and how it should work. I'm not sure it serves any purpose whatsoever in your view, and I don't know why you're here, but it's a free internet (for now)... | |
| Nov 22, 2014 at 3:09 | comment | added | SrJoven | This idea of "Google isn't a reference" is like saying "A Card Catalog isn't a source". Well, yeah. but still, navigating arcane search technologies like Dewey Decimal System Card Catalogs used to be a hurdle to overcome whereas we can't be expected for someone to know how to use quotes in a search engine. | |
| Nov 22, 2014 at 3:04 | comment | added | SrJoven | @JPmiaou No? Yes? Sure. I mean, it's a dictionary, right? And on the other hand, there are these things called Libraries and Librarians which have their own definitions of General Reference. There's this whole stack of physical entities called books in a section called "Reference" which, you know, if you walked up to these so-called "Librarians" would take great pains to tell you where to look in these "books". | |
| Nov 22, 2014 at 0:46 | comment | added | JPmiaou | @SrJoven, are you saying that you want to be able to close any question that can be answered by looking it up in the Oxford English Dictionary? (I hope I am misunderstanding your comment.) | |
| Nov 22, 2014 at 0:08 | comment | added | SrJoven | @Marthaª In which case, is OED GR? No. But it would hold the answer. | |
| Nov 21, 2014 at 22:29 | comment | added | Marthaª | @SrJoven: The "general" in GR means "commonly-available", as the full text of the close reason makes clear. A random pdf on a random school's random website is NOT commonly available. | |
| Nov 21, 2014 at 20:19 | comment | added | SrJoven | Even if Google is not general reference, I would expect a cursory check to have been performed for the request, because it's the first thing I'll do to answer. | |
| Nov 21, 2014 at 20:16 | comment | added | SrJoven | @Marthaª I have to accept a school's documentation as General Reference (or, if you prefer, a specific reference.) These are created by experts or, at least, established standards for a notable environment. If a .pdf is what the standard is for being taught, it's either correct or horribly wrong, but it is the standard by which the correct answer is judged for those who follow that standard. If a school is using this to instruct, it has the force of being correct enough to reference. (Yes, even if it's incorrect. But that's a different story.) | |
| Nov 19, 2014 at 8:14 | comment | added | Vogel612 | @Marthaª the "random pdf" mentions a "technical term", which in turn could be easily verified against one or multiple accepted general references. A google search is not just searching once... | |
| Nov 18, 2014 at 3:25 | comment | added | Marthaª | Explain to me how a random pdf found on a random school district's website is a general reference source. Remember, to qualify, the source needs to be designed to answer that type of question, and it must be generally available/findable. | |
| Nov 17, 2014 at 23:23 | comment | added | curiousdannii | @phenry If your point is that the close reason is problematic, I just wrote an answer agreeing on the Google question. | |
| Nov 17, 2014 at 22:35 | comment | added | phenry | Actually, I just did about a dozen different queries that I thought might work and found nothing. And the link goes to a list of terms used in literary analysis, which provides no information about whether the use of a given literary device would be considered "correct" in more prosaic contexts. And it doesn't say it's from the College Board and there's no reason to believe that it is (individual schools often create their own AP study materials). And I've never even heard of asyndeton, which suggests to me as a reviewer to conclude that the question probably isn't GR. | |
| Nov 17, 2014 at 22:22 | comment | added | choster | Google isn't the reference, the College Board is the reference, and even if you didn't turn up that link in a tenth of a second, I'm certain you could find a similar one within ten minutes. I can't speak to the other questions, but I stand by my closevote here. | |
| Nov 17, 2014 at 22:07 | comment | added | phenry | Any search that requires the use of advanced search operators is, by definition, advanced--and is therefore insufficient to establish a question as GR. (Moreover, even people who know the quote operator are likely to search for "without a conjunction" instead, which does not lead to that site.) And of course that site could disappear from the Internet at any time, which is one reason why Google is not general reference. | |
| Nov 17, 2014 at 21:28 | history | answered | choster | CC BY-SA 3.0 |