Skip Google For Research

Skip Google for Research

As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse.  It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms 

As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable.  As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.

Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.

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Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free

Wattpad's TOS are actually criminally hypocritical and ridiculous the more you read them. The website is literally just:

"Give us all your content for free to do with as we please and let us expose you to 493737573 website cookies and advertisements but also if you change the color of our logo we'll sue and if someone gets inaccurate medical advice from your fanfiction and sues we're also going to sue you for exposing us to risk."

Wattpad can mine your content but you can't mine Wattpad.

Wattpad can sue you for absolutely anything they perceive as "damaging" or "breach of terms" but the moment you make an account you release them of any and all claims, damages and responsibility.

If Anne Rice 2.0 does happen, Wattpad has so kindly declared that they reserve the right to be the sole defense, so they can throw you under the bus and then charge you for any and all fees incurred including legal and "related" costs. Oh, and you have to co-operate because, guess what? You agreed to!

In the instance you do wind up in a legal battle for your own content you're shit out of luck because Wattpad will have no part in it other than making sure its absolved of any responsibility and costs, and you're restricted to attending Court only in the Province of Ontario.

Like. How anyone still uses Wattpad is beyond me. Completely. It so obviously nothing more than a for-profit content theft facilitator. I feel like we've just moved so far beyond the need for Wattpad. Its so outdated even if you don't look at the TOS.

Cripple is a slur. Please don't use it if you're able bodied

I have repeatedly stated that I am disabled.

You are a proshipper but you are for threatening a real person only because this person does not correspond to your views. You're only targeting Rowling because she's a woman. If she were a man you would behave differently. Nobody touches homophobic, transphobic and misogynistic men. All the proshippers around me told me that they are against harassment that they are against any threats. You are undermining the values of proship. You give the anti food they want

Hello, this is the Victim Card Helpline. We're reaching out to you today because we noticed you've made 5 transactions to the same account. We're just letting you know that we've approved 2 out of the 5 transactions but unfortunately your balance does not cover the final 3. We're also letting you know that spending while anonymously does not automatically guarantee that the account won't recognise you're the same idiot after the 2nd transaction.

Your Victim Card balance is now empty. If you'd like to top up your account, please let us know.

where the hell are minor proshippers supposed to go?? like just not post or make anything till they 18 or

The unfortunate reality is that a lot of proshipping revolves around adult topics and topics which are largely, by law, age restricted. Exposing minors to or engaging with minors regarding or even providing minors with access to such things can come at a very real, very legal cost.

And yes, yes. I know. Minors aren't fragile little glass things who shouldn't know about kink and sex until they're 80, but the law is the law, and even the people who acknowledge that someone who is 17 is absolutely looking at porn and having sex do not want to be thrown in jail or fined.

That and muppets on the internet will see anyone over the age of 18 interacting even casually with someone under the age of 18 and start dragging them across the internet as a rampant pedophile, so.

That said, there are a fair few minor-friendly proshipper based or friendly blogs also. You just have to sift through and look for them, and I do highly recommend thoroughly checking them out and keeping a hawk's eye on them because a lot of the time they're "infiltrated" by people looking to deliberately cause trouble.

This is a common complaint minors in fandom spaces as a whole have (which is vastly understandable). I'm considering creating a masterlist of minor-safe spaces and blogs potentially in the future.