Happens way too damn often

one forum thread
5 years ago
"Fixed it, nevermind!"
- One posted question
  5 years ago
  “Closed, redundant”
- relevant xkcd
- Or the dreaded “here’s a quick step-by-step solution in these screenshots” followed by every single image link being dead/purged/removed by forum moderators.
  And this is exactly why I refuse to be that person. I go back to my old posts and do a full write-up on how I fixed the issue. Hell, in many cases I’ll even post step-by-step screenshots in a follow-up comment, (though I’ll still explain everything in detail, in case the forum purges the images some day in the distant future.) If I had to do some basic scripting for the fix, I’ll include the script with full comments and sources cited for how the script works.
  Hell, in some cases I’ve even included .bat files as attachments, (in a separate standalone comment, in case forum mods get twitchy about scripts being shared and delete the comment) along with instructions on how to use them (or how to modify them for your own use.)
  My hope is that the comments can be a lighthouse for some lost and lonely person who is struggling. Because I’ve been there, and I know exactly how frustrating the “fixed it, never mind” comment is.
  
  Or the dreaded “here’s a quick step-by-step solution in these screenshots” followed by every single image link being dead/purged/removed by forum moderators.
  All those people who purged their Reddit accounts better have just been shitposters..

Welcome to enshittified search, many have noticed it's approach for years. Although this specific issue indicates you may be going about things ass backwards, if no-ones done it you're either a pioneer who should be aware or you're on hard mode coz you didn't think it through or do your research.
It all boils down to content farms for advertising dollars and SEO borking search engines for profit, not going away soon. Two approaches to mitigate, git gud at prompting llms like GPT or find a better search solution. Apparently kagi gives some good results, or at least has a lot of stans. I stood up a personal SearxNG instance, so now I get results from multiple engines and have the ability to blacklist content farms, and a whole bunch of other things (personal bangs!), it's significantly better, not 2010 better, but better. A local 8x7B mixtral helps quite a bit as well.

Second only to the hatred I feel for the cheeky fuck who says "why would you possibly want to do that that's dumb" to someone looking to do something niche
- To be fair, sometimes that answer can lead you to finding out that it was never supposed to be done that way and will never work
- Literally my experience last night trying to change something with Firefox.

Don't worry guys I fixed it

On my 30 years on the internet, I noticed I rarely return to explain problems I solve if I have to make an account.
If I'm logged into GitHub or SO, no problem. Answer or code away.
But typically it's on random forum or some blog I never heard of, and to create an account... Bleh.
- I was like this because I didn’t want to use my email address. It inevitably just means more spam.
  But check this out: https://port87.com
  You can give out an address just for them, then block it when they spam you (or just for fun).
  (Full disclosure: I wrote this service and run it.)

What's that? You're having problems with tremed32.exe using too much CPU time?
Well many people have problems with tremed32.exe using too much CPU time. Here is a complete solution to the problem.
Step 1.
Download a suspicious piece of software from our website.
Step 2.
Pay for it.
Step 3.
So long motherfuckers.

"Hmmm, let's do a search to see if anyone else has this problem. This post on Reddit looks promising. This person has the exact same problem as me.
"Wait, it is me."
- In a game I had this issue
  In planetside 2 I play NSO (long live the sand drinkers all hail the clankers) and I was trying to figure out which weapons are good. And wouldn’t ya know the only piece of Information that wasn’t either just stats or people saying “play a different faction” was my post which was helpful but I wanted more info and compare answers and stuff
  Kinda went on a bit of a rant there lol

Step 1: Don’t use google
- Step 2: Learn how to write a proper search query.
  
  Step 3: realize you're trying to solve your problem the wrong way
  
  Even that is becoming less useful, now that Google is full of sites that are primarily focused on SEO instead of actually providing a useful service to the user. Even on proper searches, the top three or four hits will be spam/irrelevant/blatant AI-generated SEO to get ad views.
  
  What does a proper one look like? I knew that there was a correct way to do it but I never understood what it was
- Got any viable alternatives? Duckduckgo just doesn’t cut it for me.
  
  You can always use !g ‘bang’ on the searchbar which will open results from google
  You can also try searx, or searxng
  https://docs.searxng.org/ https://searx.thegpm.org/
  
  Give kagi a shot, it has worked great for me
  
  You can always use !g ‘bang’ on the searchbar which will open results from google
  You can also try searx, or searxng
  https://docs.searxng.org/ https://searx.thegpm.org/

Then you switch to ddg and the solution is the first result
- oh how the tables have turned

Who was DenverCoder9?

I once wanted to make a Qt application with QML capability on an industrial Windows CE device.
I only found one forum entry, where a Russian and a Chinese guy were discussing the issue, and I joined in. Google translate was a life saver.
But figuring out, that this specific Qt build somehow expected a hardcoded folder structure (fucking 20 folders deep with specific naming) during compilation...to this day I thank those two guys, having the same problem in the whole world

Oh sometimes this happens with an error message, and I’ll find one post by one user. That single post has a single comment on it, by the same user, that reads, “Never mind. I fixed it.”