'Discussion is not about Information'? If I saw people using Google routinely, I would wonder if maybe there's some sort of recentness issue; but I see even sophisticated young techies who literally grew up using Google failing to do so. I can't count how many times on LessWrong, Reddit, Wikipedia, or IRC I have spent 5 seconds in Google and refuted or confirmed someone's speculation. There's a reason LMGIFY is an acronym.
This is certainly true, I often do this myself and notice I could Google something and still don't do it. It's usually when I'm hanging out with friends and we're speculating about something because it's fun to speculate rather than because we want to figure something out.
Update: Please use the most recent thread.
The LW Public Goods Team wants to encourage useful research projects (as well other kinds of projects) for the LW community. If you're interested in doing this kind of work, you might run into a problem that is best solved by good outside assistance. Without assistance you might get discouraged and stop working on the project or never even start it. We want to help you avoid that. Do you
Then, we want to help!
How do you request such help? For now, I think the best way is to post to the discussion section about your problem. That way other interested people can also provide help and be interested in your research. If you feel uncomfortable doing this, you may post to the public goods team mailing list (lw-public-goods-team@googlegroups.com) or if it's not too long after this was posted, post in the comments.
I personally commit to doing at least 3 hours a week of tasks like these for people doing LessWrong related projects (assuming demand for it; I'll be keeping a log) for at least the next month. Morendil has committed to doing at least an hour of this and atucker has promised to some as well.
Our goal is to find out whether this kind of help is effective and encourages people. If this kind of assistance turns out to be valuable, we'll continue to offer it.
If you would like to volunteer some time (a little or a lot), say so in the comments!