• anamethatisnt@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I definitely feel the pain when it comes to worthless results nowadays. Though in this case DDG comes through:

    Adding documentation to the search makes the “correct” page soar to the top:

    • drathvedro@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Haha, nope. The links points to a table of contents after which you are on your own. The right link should point to a specific page instead, but the problem here is that postres docs are poorly optimized for search engines. If you click on the top link from google, you would see there’s a notice that the page is outdated, with a link to a current version, but said link is dead. It’s not an issue I’ve ever experienced with mysql docs for example.

      And yes, w3schools, despite how terrible it is, is still above the official docs because it is more popular with newbies. I remember a time when I just started, I preferred sites like it, because they were simple and on point, rather than technically correct and comprehensive like the official docs are. If you forgot the feeling, try learning math on wikipedia (assuming you don’t have a math degree).

      For the rest I cannot argue. Generated/AI shit is indeed ruining the internet and search engines giving up and joining them isn’t helpful either.

      • anamethatisnt@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        After which ctrl+f " in" takes you to the correct chapters. I do agree that a direct link would be more helpful.
        And for learning postgresql I agree it isn’t very helpful - using their tutorial links, w3schools or something like udemy if you prefer video format is the way to go in that use case.

        I remember back when you were told to learn to work with the documentation, not memorize it, because you will always have access to it as a reference. Maybe bookmarking reference books/documentation will make a come back as the search engines degrade.

          • anamethatisnt@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            " in" appears 25 times on the page to be exact, with 16 of those being in the table of contents and 9 being in the text afterwards.
            “in” appears 54 times, as you know end up hitting “string” and so on.

            Had I known that the functions table of contents was as short as it is I would probably have just scrolled.