Comments on: Search 2.0: Now Better, Faster, Stronger http://blog.pbworks.com/2008/07/28/search-better-faster-stronger/ Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:52:00 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: J. http://blog.pbworks.com/2008/07/28/search-better-faster-stronger/comment-page-1/#comment-148101 J. Fri, 08 Aug 2008 11:23:10 +0000 http://blog.pbwiki.com/?p=468#comment-148101 Hi! I like the new search - two quick notes on what I think could be improved: 1) When my search string is somewhere in the text, the current settings shows one word prior to the string, so it's hard to guess the context. Example search for "horse" would be * Transportation * by horse! This of course was difficult at best. I believe a few more words before the query string would help make sense of the result. 2) Minor thing: I use the wiki in German, where capizalization of words is common. When searching, I still use lowercase. Correctly, the search finds upper- and lowercase occurences, but offers me to start a new page "horse" although the page "Horse" exists. No problem to ignore, but I can't think of a situation where this would be helpful, so I say: Check case-insenstive wether to propose a new page. Apart from that: Way more intuitive! Hi! I like the new search – two quick notes on what I think could be improved:
1) When my search string is somewhere in the text, the current settings shows one word prior to the string, so it’s hard to guess the context. Example search for “horse” would be
* Transportation *
by horse! This of course was difficult at best.
I believe a few more words before the query string would help make sense of the result.
2) Minor thing: I use the wiki in German, where capizalization of words is common. When searching, I still use lowercase. Correctly, the search finds upper- and lowercase occurences, but offers me to start a new page “horse” although the page “Horse” exists. No problem to ignore, but I can’t think of a situation where this would be helpful, so I say: Check case-insenstive wether to propose a new page.

Apart from that: Way more intuitive!

]]> By: David Weekly http://blog.pbworks.com/2008/07/28/search-better-faster-stronger/comment-page-1/#comment-145381 David Weekly Fri, 01 Aug 2008 22:22:40 +0000 http://blog.pbwiki.com/?p=468#comment-145381 Erin, Hi! Thanks for taking the time to write in and help us improve our search algoirthm. The old search algorithm certainly didn't use stopwords and we're considering adding them into the product. Feedback from folks like you with specific stories and links, as you provide, will help make this happen and help overall make search a better experience. Incidentally, the reason why your phrase search failed is because of a colon. The entry you were trying to find was "Wyoming: Courage in a Lonesome Land". We'll have to look into whether it makes sense to ignore punctuation in phrase searches, but this seems to be a case for it. You've inspired me to do some algorithmic tuning this weekend to produce some better results for your wiki next week. Continued specific feedback is going to help us very quickly make this the best wiki search on the Net! Erin,

Hi! Thanks for taking the time to write in and help us improve our search algoirthm. The old search algorithm certainly didn’t use stopwords and we’re considering adding them into the product. Feedback from folks like you with specific stories and links, as you provide, will help make this happen and help overall make search a better experience.

Incidentally, the reason why your phrase search failed is because of a colon. The entry you were trying to find was “Wyoming: Courage in a Lonesome Land”. We’ll have to look into whether it makes sense to ignore punctuation in phrase searches, but this seems to be a case for it.

You’ve inspired me to do some algorithmic tuning this weekend to produce some better results for your wiki next week. Continued specific feedback is going to help us very quickly make this the best wiki search on the Net!

]]> By: Casey http://blog.pbworks.com/2008/07/28/search-better-faster-stronger/comment-page-1/#comment-145362 Casey Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:48:27 +0000 http://blog.pbwiki.com/?p=468#comment-145362 Hi Erin, Thanks for bringing this up! We'll look into it right away. Casey PBwiki Support Hi Erin,

Thanks for bringing this up! We’ll look into it right away.

Casey
PBwiki Support

]]> By: Erin http://blog.pbworks.com/2008/07/28/search-better-faster-stronger/comment-page-1/#comment-145357 Erin Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:45:40 +0000 http://blog.pbwiki.com/?p=468#comment-145357 Oh, and why is it that when I search it as a phrase, it tells me it isn't there? If found it yesterday. http://wiki.wyomingauthors.org/FindPage?SearchFor=%22wyoming+courage+in+a+lonesome+land%22 Oh, and why is it that when I search it as a phrase, it tells me it isn’t there? If found it yesterday.

http://wiki.wyomingauthors.org/FindPage?SearchFor=%22wyoming+courage+in+a+lonesome+land%22

]]> By: Erin http://blog.pbworks.com/2008/07/28/search-better-faster-stronger/comment-page-1/#comment-145356 Erin Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:43:08 +0000 http://blog.pbwiki.com/?p=468#comment-145356 I want the old search back. Haven't you heard of stop words? Why is it searching for words within words? That's just silly. When I search for 'wyoming courage in a lonesome land' it searches the letter 'a' in every word. SO not helpful. http://wiki.wyomingauthors.org/FindPage?SearchFor=wyoming+courage+in+a+lonesome+land Erin I want the old search back. Haven’t you heard of stop words? Why is it searching for words within words? That’s just silly.

When I search for ‘wyoming courage in a lonesome land’ it searches the letter ‘a’ in every word. SO not helpful.

http://wiki.wyomingauthors.org/FindPage?SearchFor=wyoming+courage+in+a+lonesome+land

Erin

]]> By: David Weekly http://blog.pbworks.com/2008/07/28/search-better-faster-stronger/comment-page-1/#comment-145346 David Weekly Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:31:52 +0000 http://blog.pbwiki.com/?p=468#comment-145346 15,000 pages, eh? Damn, we'd better work on making our service even more snappy and scalable! You're going to put us to the test! ^_^ 15,000 pages, eh? Damn, we’d better work on making our service even more snappy and scalable! You’re going to put us to the test! ^_^

]]> By: cy http://blog.pbworks.com/2008/07/28/search-better-faster-stronger/comment-page-1/#comment-145176 cy Fri, 01 Aug 2008 07:18:26 +0000 http://blog.pbwiki.com/?p=468#comment-145176 Thats much better, excellent and quick response. I'm impressed :) Thanks for the complement, but we haven't really started yet, expect something in the order of 15,000 pages by the time we've finished. Cy Thats much better, excellent and quick response. I’m impressed :)

Thanks for the complement, but we haven’t really started yet, expect something in the order of 15,000 pages by the time we’ve finished.

Cy

]]> By: David Weekly http://blog.pbworks.com/2008/07/28/search-better-faster-stronger/comment-page-1/#comment-145116 David Weekly Fri, 01 Aug 2008 00:38:06 +0000 http://blog.pbwiki.com/?p=468#comment-145116 Cy - take a look at your searches now - you'll notice that HBMS Victory and Great Britain both return results as expected. Thanks again so much for your feedback in making search better!! :) Cy – take a look at your searches now – you’ll notice that HBMS Victory and Great Britain both return results as expected. Thanks again so much for your feedback in making search better!! :)

]]> By: David Weekly http://blog.pbworks.com/2008/07/28/search-better-faster-stronger/comment-page-1/#comment-145085 David Weekly Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:35:08 +0000 http://blog.pbwiki.com/?p=468#comment-145085 Cy - whoops! Looks like you have a pretty big wiki - 2,184 pages! Totally awesome. What's happening is that our search engine is timing out trying to chew through all of your pages; we've got some changes coming out today and next week that should speed things up and allow us to return much more complete results. Our apologies for the lack of complete results in the interim! Cy – whoops! Looks like you have a pretty big wiki – 2,184 pages! Totally awesome. What’s happening is that our search engine is timing out trying to chew through all of your pages; we’ve got some changes coming out today and next week that should speed things up and allow us to return much more complete results. Our apologies for the lack of complete results in the interim!

]]> By: Rachel http://blog.pbworks.com/2008/07/28/search-better-faster-stronger/comment-page-1/#comment-144670 Rachel Thu, 31 Jul 2008 01:28:30 +0000 http://blog.pbwiki.com/?p=468#comment-144670 Hello Aegis, When you signed up to update your wiki at www.pbwiki/2 you should have gotten an email walking you through the update steps. I'll contact you directly with instructions. Rachel PBwiki Support Hello Aegis,
When you signed up to update your wiki at http://www.pbwiki/2 you should have gotten an email walking you through the update steps. I’ll contact you directly with instructions.

Rachel
PBwiki Support

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