It is clear that the signal to noise ratio of the WWW is getting worse. It’s much harder to find good content when using a good old search engine. And if it’s good it is usually hosted on Reddit or Stackexchange.

So remember, even if it’s easy too Google something (well, it isn’t nowadays), we want to create a fediverse of good content that helps people (I hope). So, it’s always better to write a real answer if you have the time and energy. Please help boost the SNR and reverse the AI fueled information degradation loop.

  • @[email protected]
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    410 hours ago

    If it’s for textual information, I’m personally a fan of covering all bases. Screenshot, link to site, and quoted relevant text.

    Webpages can change, but screenshots can stop being hosted with no warning and any text in screenshot form can’t easily be copy and pasted. Quoted text is essentially the longterm accessible failsafe. Text in comments tends to last much longer than images or links.

    • @[email protected]
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      -18 hours ago

      Yes, its only a problem when folks include an image of text without copying the text and linking to the source.

      I’m not anti-image. I’m anti-ablism and anti-misinformation

      • @[email protected]
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        23 hours ago

        Great point honestly. I was only writing that comment from the perspective of answering troubleshooting centric questions. Not everyone who browses the internet has the same ability to see though, and while I imagine screen readers have some ability to process images (I’ve never used one so I don’t know specifically), I can only assume that actual text is much easier.

        I know that text for me is much easier than screenshots, cause I’ve adjusted the font size and type in my browser to suit my preferences. Can’t do that for an image.

        • @[email protected]
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          12 hours ago

          Its surprisingly rare to have someone as level headed and empathetic as you are on Lemmy.

          Thank you for reminding me that we’re not all 12-year-old, snot-nosed reddiors here.