And so to my final question

AS GA will be but no more, I would like each researcher to come up his or her 
BEST source of information. 

I will award the prize to the the source i think is BEST.

Final Farewell

John Falls
(DPRK007 / MONGOLIA)

---

Clarification of Question by mongolia-ga on 02 Dec 2006 22:49 PST

well the end was far closer than even I imagined. (And I cannot even
add comments !)

Many Thanks to you all who contributed to my question
KEYSTROKE
SCRIPTOR
UMIAT
TAR_HEEL_V
JOURNALIST
THX1138
ANSWERFINDER
OMNIVOROUS
BOQUINHA
PINKFREUD
JUSTASKSCOTT
PAFALAFA
DENCO
HAILSTORM
SUBLIME

All your suggested sources are wonderful and I had a tough time choosing the 
best. I have spent a few afternoon's going through PINKFREUD's IMdb
and ANSWERFINDER's link was also truly intriguing.

However if i were stranded on a desert island I would go with
OMNIVOROUS suggestion and choose the Archives for the New York Times
(along with the 10
discs)

And so OMNIVOROUS , please post your suggestion as the official answer
(if the system still allows it)

And again many thanks to you all for your help over the years.
John

---

Clarification of Question by mongolia-ga on 02 Dec 2006 23:30 PST

Hi Bryan

Yes I was indeed waiting for someone to point my duel identity. Before
GA finally ended my ambition was to ask a question which would
generate 10000
 comments.

I was reading with great interest many of the news articles regarding GA's
demise. One article suggested that ga only had 800 customers!!! So it
looks like many of us at least had duel identities (and perhaps triple
and more identies).


John

(From the colonies)

---

Request for Question Clarification by denco-ga on 04 Dec 2006 10:17 PST

Howdy John,

I think you misread the article.  Over the years, there have been around 800
Google Answers Researchers (GARs) and not clients.

Looking Forward, denco-ga - Google Answers Researcher

---

Request for Question Clarification by omnivorous-ga on 17 Dec 2006 09:51 PST

Mongolia --

I'm waiting to answer this until the auspicious date of Dec. 30.  I'll
have a surprise for you then too ...

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

John ?

My favorite sources are often newspapers because of the quantity of
detail.  For example, I?ve used ship sailings from the New York Times
to track events and have often used stock tables as well. 
Unfortunately few newspapers have done a complete historical archive,
most starting in 1995.  A relative few have indexed information back
to 1980.

My favorite source is the historical New York Times, available at the
nytimes.com site but also for no charge at most public libraries via
the Proquest Historical newspapers.  It is truly extraordinary to do a
free-text search on any topic back to 1851, often tracking the comings
and goings of minor historical figures.  Or to see exchange
rates from the 19th Century.  Or the first reports of the Spanish
Civil War breaking out.

Surprisingly, the Google News archive is becoming a strong source
here.  It was only a couple of months ago, while doing a vanity search
on my own name, that I realized it has articles from a wide variety of
sources back to the 1980s.  I even found references to property
purchases:
http://news.google.com/archivesearch

I?d still like to see the Manchester Guardian or another major English
newspaper with the complete indexing of the NY Times.  I?d also like
to see Google include a complete index of the Wall Street Journal at
some point.

---

I?d like to thank you for the participation in Google Answers over the
4 and ½ years here.  As a token of appreciation, we?ve done a calendar
for 2007, ?365 Days of Google Answers?:
http://dailycalendar.googlepages.com/

It is a database of history, trivia and other information with one or
more link to an event each day ? with a Google Answer for more detail.

It also includes information on search engines and their limitations, 
as well as tips for using Google?s search more effectively.  
 
Some examples from the year include:
*  On January 24, the day the Eskimo Pie was patented in 1921, 
researcher Pafalafa tells the story behind it and the connection to
Russell Stover Candy Company.
*  Tutuzdad -- with more than 20 years experience as a law enforcement
officer -- discusses the triaging of 911 emergency calls on February
16, the anniversary of the first emergency phone service in 1968.

Enjoy!

Omnivorous-GA

P.S. ? If we?re lucky this may be the last Google Answer, as my screen
shows the question expiring at 9:34 a.m. this morning.  The first one
is here:
http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=2

The absolute best source of world information is The Economist.

http://economist.com/index.html

If you want to learn about the world, current events and how life
itself works, The Economist is AMAZING.

The best source of information ... are my friends.

I mean you, fellow GARs.

Thank you for everything.

To be honest, the multitude of sources referenced in GA had fast
become one of my favorite repositories of information, depending on
the topic I needed to research! GA gets my vote!

Mongolia - you have been a wonderful customer. 

Please stay in touch with some of us at http://web-owls.com/category/resources/. 

Also note our new GA alumni site - http://groups-beta.google.com/group/GAalumni
presents itself as a newly-formed gathering spot for all those left
adrift by the demise of Ghoogle Answers, where anyone -- researchers,
clients, peanuts -- can join, converse and stay in contact.

Warmest regards - umiat

I have to agree with Scriptor.  Fellow GAR's have been the ultimate resource.

To all of you, farewell, good luck and Godspeed!

-THV

Hi John

So now you tell us that you have a split personality: Mongo and 007.

No wonder that the end is near ...

I guess that the GA Honchos did some checks and that they found out
that, in reality, they had very few different registered Users. Maybe
less than 20. Well, it was a way of beating the 10 Comments a Day
Barrier, was it not?

All the Very Best

Bryan

The best? Google Answers.

Namaste,
journalist-ga

P.S. Pay no attention to the man behind the final curtain.

One of my favourite resources which was brought to my attention by
pinkfreud is the OneLook Dictionary.

"7,563,812 words in 931 dictionaries indexed"
http://www.onelook.com/

That's probably my last comment on GA, so thanks to all for a great
time.  Probono I'll keep a look out for Kurt Jahnke!  :-)

Thank you one and all!

Dear mongolia / DPRK007,

May I just say thank you to for all the questions and comments you
have made over the years.

What a difficult question. In lieu of GA, I would say for me it is
British History Online.
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/
 
I do a lot of historical research for my website and for GA questions.
I have found British History Online to be an exemplary, free source of
information on British local history. The sites contains primary and
secondary sources and is being added to daily as you will see from the
home page section on ?recent journal entries?.

To show you how detailed it is, here is the history of my village where I live.
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=15559&strquery=kelvedon%20hatch

I would recommend the site to anyone researching British local history.

answerfinder-ga

Really, I'm just bookmarking this question as a resource. But I too
have found GA to be a wonderful source of knowledge and camaraderie.

John --

We'll miss the interesting questions and comments that you posed too.

My favorite source is the historical New York Times, available at the
nytimes.com site but also for no charge at most public libraries via
the Proquest Historical newspapers.  It is truly extraordinary to do a
free-text search on any topic back to 1851, often tracking the comings
and goings of minor historical figures or ships.  Or to see exchange
rates from the 19th Century.  Or the first reports of the Spanish
Civil War breaking out.

I even considered getting my daughter one of these for Christmas:
Signals Catalog
NY Times Front Page Jigsaw
http://www.signals.com/signals/Item_New-York-Times-Birthday-Jigsaw-Puzzle_HB8102_ps_srm.html

Best regards,

O.

*Sniff Sniff*

Thank you to all--dear researcher colleagues and friends, customers,
everyone involved with this phenomenal project. I'm trying not to
think of what might've been. I'm grateful to have been a part.

Sincerely,
Boquinha-ga (a.k.a. Bo, a.k.a. Queen Ha, etc.)

I have answered numerous "identify this movie" questions. One of my
favorite reference sources is the Internet Movie Database. Not only
does the IMDb contain a wealth of detailed info about movies and
television programs, but it has a zillion jillion messageboards
(which, unfortunately, cannot be searched for keywords). Although the
noise-level on the boards is rather high because of trolls and
nitwits, there are quite a few useful and helpful people there, too.
More than once I have found a clue on the IMDb that led to an answer.
And even when I don't find anything useful, I'm still entertained,
which counts for something.

http://imdb.com/

Other than pages for individual movies whose titles are known, the
IMDb feature that I probably use most often is the Movie Keywords
Analyzer (MoKA), which provides lists of movies that are related to a
keyword or combination of keywords. Great stuff!

http://www.imdb.com/Sections/Keywords/

Honestly, my best Internet source of information has been Google and
its various services -- including, as Scriptor appropriately notes,
the people of Google Answers.  But if you want a non-Google answer,
for me it's the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine
(http://www.archive.org/).  At least a few hundred times, I've seen
cached information there which is apparently gone from the current
Web.

Who knows...the GA Alumni Association may turn out to be just the
source you're looking for:


http://groups-beta.google.com/group/GAalumni

Howdy John (DPRK007/MONGOLIA),

The best source of information, currently, is the internet.

The challenge is in how to get the relevant information from that source.

That is where, at least also currently, search engines, for most people, fail,
and will continue to fail.

This is where the human factor, such as the group of people formerly known as
Google Answer Researchers makes the difference, as that is the difference that
is needed to discern the wheat from the chaff.

Looking Forward, denco-ga - Google Answers Researcher

Regardless of what is happening here, my best source of information
was always ://www.google.com

Denco said it perfectly. For the majority of the questions
I answered, I used Google almost exclusively, though GA
itself quickly became another searchable resource to be
checked along with Google.

Best regards...

sublime1-ga

I would like to take this opportunity to remind searchers of the most
simple strategy of all. Learn HOW to use the search engine of your
choice.

There is only one choice: GOOGLE! 

Learn how to use Google to the fullest, using all it's operators,
search strings, and nuances.

I recommend taking the tutorial at the Google Guide:

Google Guide
http://www.googleguide.com/
Choose 'novice' or 'experienced' and learn HOW to get all your results.

Happy Holidays!
~~Cynthia

I'm late to contribute... but I feel that Wikipedia is one of the best
sites to look at for general info and links to related sites.

Google Search Engine of course is a given. 

But the greatest object behind all that would be my own mind, to help
me think of the right search terms about the topic, and ways to find
the thing. And others' minds help too, as Scriptor says.