gsandler writes “Here is a story from News.com which describes a reporter’s test of how well web sites answer questions."
Search engines are great for pointing people to information that can help them find a good deal on a laptop, the correct spelling of an obscure French writer’s name and the latest news stories on the Iraq war. But how well does the Web do fully answering questions that involve some research or critical thinking? I posted five questions to six of those increasingly popular answer Web sites. Rather than use reference Web sites that help people find answers by directing them to other online resources, I focused on Web sites where people answer the questions. In less than 24 hours, I received about two dozen responses from so-called experts, librarians and helpful Web surfers.
Questions were admittedly “open-ended,” or, in other words, unanswerable.
Not a good article
The article was poorly written and the questions asked were so subjective as to be meaningless.
Failing to read the ask a librarian policy at LOC demonstrates poor research skills on the author’s part.
A 30 second search on medlineplus.gov located a research report (big pdf) that provides evidence that marijuana is addictive.
It seems that this article was designed (albeit poorly) to show that these services are of little use. However it did not do a good job of that by using such questions, nor did it offer a viable alternative – librarians.
All in all a disappointing exercise by the 4th estate.
Good question, good answer
Another internet-bashing article. As with anything, if the Internet does not fulfil your needs, then don’t use it! The other point is that the questions have to be specific to get a more accurate answer. You put forward a bad question, you aren’t going to get a good answer.
Re:Good question, good answer
Which really boils down to the lack of a reference interview. If you don’t have that dialogue to clarify the question you are going to get a substandard answer.