The failure of the Internet to deliver its promise is particularly noticeable when you hunt for repair manuals for a product from the 90s. Used to be, the information would either be there or not there, finable or unfindable.
Now, there are hundreds of algorithmically generated sites claiming to have it just because it appeared in their search logs, generating potemkin village content traps with endless paging, broken-thumbnail named-like-the-file-you-want but actually-just-ebay-photos bullshit
Even if you find the manufacturer's site it’s more likely than not broken, with a search feature that pulls up what it claims are results but empty divs instead of links, or busted jQuery code from 2013 that prevents anything from loading.
Is it a real but broken site? Is it just another click farm? Does it matter?
@eaton the busted jQuery from 2013 is what gives me hope that it has an answer somewhere if I can only find an old jQuery bundle to inject into the page. It's been around long enough to be before the entire site was made with JS and had the lifespan of a fruit fly.
I still remember when all I had to do was ask Google for filetype:pdf of something and I'd find records...now it's all content farms with PDFs of garbage.
Eaton
Robert Roskam