new search stopwords list

ian! · Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2005 6:42 am Post subject:

Just to keep you informed: I'm currently working on a searchengine replacement. It works pretty well so far even if it's still lacking some features. Expect a public beta test soon. I'll need your help testing it then.
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tecknojunky · Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2005 7:25 pm Post subject:

legine · Guru Joined: 27 May 2004 Posts: 555 Location: Germany

count me in

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drescherjm · Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2005 9:31 pm Post subject:

thoughts · Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2005 3:26 am Post subject:

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20485

thoughts · Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2005 7:53 pm Post subject:

tecknojunky · Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2005 9:59 pm Post subject:

mallchin · Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2005 1:41 pm Post subject:

I searched for 'Google Earth' and none of the results were related, and the all important thread titled 'Google Earth' was ommitted. I only found what I was looking for after starting a new thread and having a mod tag mine to the end of an existing one.

This is a real shame, I hope something get's done soon. I know the information I'm looking for is there, I just can't find it.
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kallamej · Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2005 1:58 pm Post subject:

mallchin · Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2005 2:11 pm Post subject:

Oh, no hope of stopping dupe posts in this category then?
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kimchi_sg · Advocate Joined: 26 Nov 2004 Posts: 3038

blandoon · Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 11:05 pm Post subject:

To paraphrase Beavis and Butthead, the stock search engine sucks worse than anything that has ever sucked before.

An improvement to the search engine would make the forums far, far more usable. It's a necessity at this point - I think there are a lot of duplicate topics posted because nobody can find the original ones.

Here are a few things I know of that would make the search engine more useful (or at least less useless). Most of these have been mentioned by others, I'm sure, but what the hell:

- ability to search titles ONLY (not message text)
- search for phrases in quotes
- a usable NOT operator to exclude words/phrases
- grouping symbols
- better results sorting (i.e. results in titles before results in bodies, etc)
- etc.
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amne · Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2005 8:04 am Post subject:

sigmalll · Guru Joined: 24 Aug 2003 Posts: 332

looking forward to a beta test

phsdv · Guru Joined: 13 Mar 2005 Posts: 372 Location: Europe

whitetux · n00b Joined: 17 Mar 2004 Posts: 20

Yea, I understand the mysql database is obese with the stopwords...but seriously the searches without them SUCK. Every time i go to do a search for something like "software raid installation" only raid comes up...yea ok so I want every freakin post that has the word RAID in it...NOT. Try it, you'll see what I mean. See how long it takes you to find a thread about software raid installation.

The forums are useless without the ability to have a lot of these stopwords...I run into it every time I go to do a search. I hate the forums and the "friendly" and "usefull" community that was the Gentoo forums is now the freakin PITA search through the waste of search returns and MAYBE i'll find something relevant to what i was looking for.

About the only time I find the forums usefull is if I have a specific hardware device name or a specific package. The general ideas and posts that used to make life so easy are gone.

Thanks for your time.

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20485

Merged previous
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whitetux · n00b Joined: 17 Mar 2004 Posts: 20

I'll be looking forward to a replacement as well, I used to love coming to Gentoo forums and spend hours a day, now I avoid at all costs unless I'm just browsing.

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20485

Search isn't that bad. I've have minor problems that aren't common, and manage to find similar problems to figure out a solution. I find the forums more helpful in that regard than Google.
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arnolde · Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2006 5:58 pm Post subject:

I've also been very very frustrated many times at the seemingly totally stupid search. I wondered why the hell I'm getting pages and pages of completely irrelevant stuff which do not contain all the words I searched for, now I finally know why. I really freaked out when I saw things like error, compile, build, etc. in the stoplist. I hope the people saying "frequent ==> useless" here are not still believing that, because thats really stupid thinking, sorry. "mplayer compile error" is NOTHING less useless than "mplayer", quite the opposite, leaving just "mplayer" in the search and NOT EVEN GODDAMN TELLING YOU THAT FACT is like selling empty boxes of chocolate as full ones!

It's been 3-4 months now since Ian said he was working on something and would test it soon, how is that coming along?

Until then, how about a short notice at the top of the search results page, saying "please note we're ignoring half of your search words, (read why <link to this thread>), you might want to use <url to google site search query> instead" ? That sure would have saved me lots of time and frustration...

Please remember, it's mainly people new to Gentoo that use these forums most. Not people who have already read all th posts and know exactly how the search engine doesnt work.

arnolde · Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2006 8:48 am Post subject:

Well, I guess nobody cares... nice to know...

Another thing that sucks about the search is that it doesnt direct you to which page the result was found on. I just tried searching for "gccmakedep" and it appears on several 20+ page threads, but now I have to go through page by page and do a text search on each one :-(

Paapaa · l33t Joined: 14 Aug 2005 Posts: 955 Location: Finland

amne · Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2006 4:02 pm Post subject:

arnolde · Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2006 4:28 pm Post subject:

Of course I understand you cant just sit right down and write a whole new search engine. But I think I made a valid point about a comment warning that the search might not produce the expected results, and what else to try, see 3 posts up. That shouldnt take too long to do, and would save new readers hours of frustration every day.

Not everyone reads the "read this first" part when they just want to search for the solution to one specific problem. (I daresay hardly anyone, but I'm not sure ;-)

)

I know the feeling, when you know the answers and lotsa people dont, it's easy to sit back and say "well, they didnt read the instructions, so its their own fault"... But sometimes I also try to remember how it was when I was new and what would have made it a lot easier...