[TheRealDunkirk]

I don't get it. I think I'm batting .005 with getting a good result from Reddit's "hive mind." And Reddit spams my search results so much that it frequently takes up several of the top slots. The net-net is that I often include "-site:reddit.com" in my searches.

[elicash]

I was JUST researching whether air ducts should get cleaned from dust, and google results while mixed were mostly pretty good and gave a quality EPA page as result number one -- not a marketing blog. (Though the question and answer part of google was mixed with the number two question being answered by saying to have them cleaned every 2 to 3 years, which is crazy. Also, I think this crowd is savvier than most about knowing when a website is just marketing and when to ignore it.)

But reddit still had much better information than google overall explaining experiences and why you almost certainly don't need them cleaned minus the 3 reasons EPA mentions.

[xkbarkar]

I sometimes get poor quality reddit score higher than good quality stackoverflow results. I need another internet. The current one is broken.

[crowbahr]

I'm curious what the 995 bad results you're getting from reddit are.

[addingnumbers]

Reddit is big on cargo-cult troubleshooting, you can't show them a TCP windowing problem or path MTU detection failure without "try changing your DNS servers" or "disable auto-negotiate on your Ethernet port" getting a hundred upvotes.

[crowbahr]

Ah, I see.

Yeah I would never look at reddit for troubleshooting: That's what the various stack-exchange/overflow sites are for... or even better what the specific web forums dedicated to that topic are for.

But I also rarely encounter a problem that doesn't have an answer ready to hand.

My experience with searching Reddit mostly comes for looking for basic shopping suggestions, specific item reviews, general knowledge type info.

If you're looking for detailed and complex analysis of what's going on an open forum that rewards broadly appealing advice and answers is very obviously not the solution.

[TheRealDunkirk]

> Yeah I would never look at reddit for troubleshooting: That's what the various stack-exchange/overflow sites are for

You've hit one of my big beefs with the site. There was a window of a couple of months where it seemed like the ENTIRE first page of results for my programming searches were links to Reddit, which are WORSE than useless. It was clear to me that Reddit was spending INORDINATE amounts of money to have their results pushed to the top. I can't imagine what that had to be to beat out StackOverflow, but that's beside the point. I was already mad about their consumer product "review" cargo culting, but this experience put a chip on my shoulder about ALL of their results now.