Bernie Sloan wrote
> Regarding Jim's comment that "when something is 'good enough'
> it means that I will stop complaining about it." I don't buy that. I don't
> think "complaining" has much of anything to do with most people's
> view of "good enough". I think most people feel they've found
> something "good enough" well before the thought of
> "complaining" enters in. And if the info they find is good enough to
> help them sort out their questions, who's to judge?
Are you saying that nobody can judge these things objectively? If I find something that tells me that Abraham Lincoln was a Democrat, or that ancient Rome was defeated by the Carthaginians, these "facts" can be determined to be objectively wrong. If I don't know this (and that is the whole reason why I looked it up in the first place), I may believe it. I cannot be the judge of the correctness of this information--by definition. Veracity of information is a major topic for information literacy classes, and is a definite problem for students who are always asking, "How can I believe what I am reading here?" Should it be by feelings? Correctness of information was an important enough topic before the web, but today, with so many people trying to manipulate search engine results so that their page comes to the top of the list, it's more important than ever before.
Basing "good enough" on feelings, i.e. "most people feel they've found something 'good enough' well before the thought of 'complaining' enters in" is a slippery slope, but seems to be the final arbiter today. My idea of "complaining" meant that people who are not satisfied with the results of their search, search again. This means the search was not "good enough" for them; whether or not they actually utter a complaint is beside the point. When someone stops searching, they do so because they are "happy" or "satisfied" with the result--not because they know it to be a good, reliable result, because they can't know that. Of course, they could have just given up out of frustration.
This is why I brought up the library idea of "ready reference" questions vs. more in-depth questions. If somehow we could build something that gave answers for "ready reference" questions, e.g. what does this abbreviation mean? or what is the capitol of Brazil? that come from reliable sources that would be a great thing.
But to think that someone who doesn't know a topic can judge the correctness of a search based on their feelings that it is "good enough" is not logical. In traditional catalogs, searches work completely differently. The entire task is directed toward reliable results, e.g. if you find the subject heading "World War, 1939-1945," you should find everything in the collection about that topic, within certain, known parameters.
Jim Weinheimer
Received on Tue Sep 11 2007 - 01:15:35 EDT