To those that mock you with "Why couldn't you Googles that"?

The utility of a search engine such as Google largely depends on your skill in choosing key-words to search for. Some people are pretty good at selecting just the right key-words to set up a productive search. I am, for example, since I've been working in IT since the '70s. Others don't have those skills, and would be better off asking questions on the forum.

Because seeking the answers is 90% of the fun, brah.  You might learn something that changes your entire orthodoxy.  It's hard to do that with a cut-and-dried "answer machine" like The Google-bots.  That's why humans are great, man.

@Kyriazis:  People that say such about Wikipedia are just repeating something they heard that dates to Wikipedia's early days in the early 2000's, when indeed it was unreliable for a lot of things.  This image was popularized by Stephen Colbert in 2006-07 or so.  

                     Humans are great man. THIS human is relaying breaking news.  8.2 earthquake off the coast of Chile, and Peru. Sumanmi warnings up.

@ Kyriazis and Johnmusascha: So y'all don't think Wikipedia has political biases which could affect the "information" in their articles?

wouldn't worry about political biases - just general ignorance/bias. I've edited Wiki before. I did it once just to prove it in a argument here (I changed I think the Sicilian page and said the Sicilian was unsound). It's so easy, anyone who cares can change it so fast...

I'm not sure what you mean, Timothy?

If a political event occurs where facts are suppressed due to a government wanting to create their own narrative for the event, then wouldn't the government actively involve themselves in the editing of the article/page?

                 If your interested in the free flow of ideas; The O'Bamma admin is giving up control of the internet next yr. Do we want a company or a government to disperse Google??

Exactly! Thats what happens when you start googling stuff.

Answers you get on forums are like answers you get by googling directly...they are answers by human beings. many google searches will take you to forums where questions like your have already been answered.

And like my fellow IT professional answered earlier, googling properly is a skill you can develop. I googled my way out of many, many IT problems and bugs over the years. The type of problems where if I just sat and asked on a forum, it could take hours, or maybe days, but instead I googled and came up with answers in seconds. very often, my google seacrh would take me to a forum where a question identical to mine had already been asked, and answered.

You are trying to draw some sort of artificial distinction betweem googling and humans. The distinction does not exist, because googled answers are provided by humans.

I know Wikipedia very well.  Wikipedia does definitely have political biases.  Those are usually on hot topics or issues involving nationalist or religious conflict (such as articles concerning Israel-Palestine relations, for example).  The bias is not systemic as much as much as opposing camps warring over what the article says.  Government agents and corporate agents also edit Wikipedia, and even pay "professional editors" to do their dirty work for them.

I myself edit mostly pre-1945 European history articles and film related articles, so I've stayed out of those political battlezones on Wikipedia.  As far as the chess articles go, they have a handful of relatively dedicated members that monitor those and should catch any inapprorpriate changes made to them.

I've also started and developed quite a few articles on Wikipedia over the years, such as on Lisa Arch, Rudolf Kastner, and many others.

Or so the machines would have you believe.

As opposed to bias-free articles from [name deleted by the US government] or the type of bias free answers you could get in a forum like chess.com, where posters like [name deleted by the US government] and Ubik42 will provide you with opinons that are free of any bias!

Anyway, atleast in wikipedia the biases will be challenged. Who wil challenge the editorial penned by the newspaper publisher?

Readers challenge the editorials.  By not buying the paper anyone.  There is a distinction between an editorial and an article purporting to be a tertiary source.

Are these readers bias-free?

No.

@rooperi:  It is not just chess.com. Even the almighty stack exchange folk admit that googling is a better way to search inside their Q+A site ! :)

What I meant was, most of the content there shouldn't be affected by political bias. The content that is, is obvious - see what is challenged and what the edits were.

Of course one of my best articles on Wikipedia was this one on "Wolfie Cohen's Rascal House," which was featured in the Burt Reynolds film "The Crew" (2000), as well as having been referenced on the "Golden Girls" many times.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfie_Cohen%27s_Rascal_House

Chess.com's search function is useless. Stack exchange's at least works reasonably well, but there is no way you can expect it to do as well as google.

I wonder how much bias is in this article?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Systemic_bias

Thanks for clarifying:)

@Johnmusascha: Good article. Were you a fan of The Golden Girls?