For most use cases, web search engines are fine. But I am wondering if there are alternative ways to finding information. There is also the enshittification of google and tbh most(free) search engines just give google search result

Obviously, the straight is just asking other people, can be in person or online, in general forums or specialised communities

Libraries are good source but for those that don’t have access to physical libraries, there free online public libraries(I will post the links for those that I found below)

Books in general, a lot of them have reference to outside materials.

So, I been experimenting with an AI chat bot(Le chat), partially as life coach of sorts and partially as a fine tuned web search engine. To cut to the chase, its bad. I when its not just listing google top results it list tools that long gone or just makes shit up. I was hoping it to be fine tuned search engine, cuz the google works, if what you want is not the top 10 websites, your on your own.

So yeah, that all I can think. Those are all the routes I can think of for finding information and probably all there is but maybe I miss another route.

  • IndigoGolem@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    6 hours ago

    You can try to not use a search engnie at all, but the Web relies a lot on them. If that’s really what you want, you’re limited to surfing. Go to a site, follow links, and hope you get where you need to go. Surfing is great for finding things you didn’t know you were looking for, and not so great for finding particular things you need information on. For that, either try whatever libraries you have access to or cave and use a search engine.

    There are plenty of search engines that aren’t Google. Some don’t use the same search index (big list of web pages that it shows you when you search stuff). I currently use Qwant as my primary engine, and before that i used Startpage. I’m also fond of Marginalia when a big, normal engine isn’t giving me helpful results.

    Or you can ask people, like you said. Forums, chatrooms, whatever Lemmy is, maybe email somebody if you think they know stuff about whatever field you’re interested in. Or you could sit down in a coffee shop with a sign that says “Tell me about electrical engineering” or whatever it is you want to know, and see how that goes.

    Wikipedia is good, if you don’t mind that it has a search bar with an index consisting of its own pages. You shouldn’t trust everything you read there, but every good article (and most bad ones) cites sources, and you can follow those citations.