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Comment by adql | Hacker News Reader

> What case is there when you want to find a package in NPM, and information about that package, using Google?

Coz you might want results not only from docs but stackoverflow and other places ?

> Essentially, there is no overlap in the Venn diagram of "searching for a package" and "searching for information about a package". You want one or the other, not a results page with links to both.

Of course there is. I want docs, examples, and maybe opinions vs alternatives if I look to solve problem X with external dependency.

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Coz you might want results not only from docs but stackoverflow and other places ?

Of course there is. I want docs, examples, and maybe opinions vs alternatives if I look to solve problem X with external dependency.

You don't need the link to the package in NPM to be in the results for either of these examples.

You're trying real hard to tell people how they _shouldn't_ be doing their work, maybe accept that your opinion, while valid, is just that - your opinion - and that others have their own equally valid ways of approaching their work and their searching?

I'm suggesting that it wouldn't be a problem if NPM switched off indexing, and if the article is correct that half of packages are spam then it'd actually be significantly beneficial.

The broader point is that by expecting Google to be a single interface to the entire internet, and refusing to accept that there might be some places you need to go to directly, we make the problem of spam worse. Using Google for navigation when you know what site you want rather than using that site's search feature incentivizes spammers to abuse things they would otherwise ignore.

But I want a single search bar that just magically gives me the right results. Given the enthusiasm for GPTn I think a lot of people do too.

Whether that incentivized spammers to spam, or Google et al to improve their software (or risk being outcompeted), doesn’t really seem like a “me” problem. I can’t change these things.

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