this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
116 points (90.8% liked)
Showerthoughts
29707 readers
1896 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- Avoid politics
- NEW RULE as of 5 Nov 2024, trying it out
- Political posts often end up being circle jerks (not offering unique perspective) or enflaming (too much work for mods).
- Try c/politicaldiscussion, volunteer as a mod here, or start your own community.
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct-----
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'm guessing your understanding skipped the part about the PageRank system
Yeah it's a monopoly now, but back then it was a couple of Stanford kids with a good idea on how to make search engines suck less by ranking web pages. And it worked.
But as always, with great power...
As an added bonus: if I recall correctly (which I may not, it was a while ago now), the hilarious thing is that despite its success, the original PageRank system was based on flawed maths :D
Sort of, I don't know enough (or think I know enough) to speak to the specifics of the PageRank system stuff, which is why I glossed over it. From personal experience with however it works, earlier or now, I've not really felt like it suited the way I wanted to search for things, nor allowed for it.
On a really basic level I gather it was (and may still be) related to how often some sites were linked to from other sites, with some extra background weighting this way or that to help surface presumably relevant results. To put it crudely, sort of a popularity contest, give or take the weighting details. That tends to suck though for new or less popular/obscure stuff, the latter of which I tend to prefer (unintentionally, but somewhat intentionally).
You can't say I don't know enough and then critique a system.
You absolutely can. I did, and plenty of other people do all the time about a variety of systems, search engines included. That's not to say they'll be good critiques, but that's irrelevant to whether or not they can.
And in that vein, I'm not suggesting mine is a good critique. However it is reflective of my opinions from my experience with their system and my admittedly rough knowledge of it at the time of writing. Instead of adding to dismissive replies, how about we all get together and read the PageRank wikipedia page and learn together.
Usually people educate themselves on a topic before trying to talk about it as if they have a clue.
"But this is just, like, my opinion bro"
We're not in /c/technology nor a tech themed instance, it's a showerthought post (so the vibe should be casual), maybe learn to read a room?
Edit:
Also, it's not as if I was speaking authoritatively, I was speaking to my experiences and I was upfront about the limits of my knowledge. Instead of bothering to constructively correct me, you flatly went, "Yeah, no." and your entire entry into the convo was pretty condescending for no apparent reason.
To quote a certain highly educated someone, we’re not in /c/technology nor a tech themed instance, it’s a showerthought post (so the vibe should be casual), so why would we go into technical details? maybe learn to read a room?
Except the stated one....
People are not gonna bother educating someone who won't educate themselves, especially when what is said is so completely incorrect they have no idea where to even begin.
Yeah, no.