Searching takes forever. May 19, 2010 5:49 AM Subscribe
Ponyfilter: Related questions on all the time.
I totally get if this is a google-it-you-moron situation. But I think it would be neat if the related question search that occurs while composing an AskMe question was available all the time. Or if someone has an explanation on how to jury-rig that behavior that’s equally as awesome. In my sample group of me, the related questions function while composing works better and faster than me searching on my own through google or through the site.
I totally get if this is a google-it-you-moron situation. But I think it would be neat if the related question search that occurs while composing an AskMe question was available all the time. Or if someone has an explanation on how to jury-rig that behavior that’s equally as awesome. In my sample group of me, the related questions function while composing works better and faster than me searching on my own through google or through the site.
Take that "my" out of the second sentence there.
And the "probably" from the third, while you're at it.
posted by Grither at 6:26 AM on May 19, 2010
And the "probably" from the third, while you're at it.
posted by Grither at 6:26 AM on May 19, 2010
why the searching function on the "Search" page is so ridiculously hard to use here?
Search has been one of our long-term goals for a while, but it's hard to get psyched about it when Google has a pretty complete archive. The related questions thing is mostly a weighted tag search so if you're comfy with the tag mechanism you might be able to get good results searching tags. At the minimum we should maybe change the Search page to have subsite-specific word and tag searches and maybe some date limiters as well. Search can be sort of a resource hog and my suspicion is that it's also not that much fun to work on, so it's been a back burner project for quite some time.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:58 AM on May 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
Search has been one of our long-term goals for a while, but it's hard to get psyched about it when Google has a pretty complete archive. The related questions thing is mostly a weighted tag search so if you're comfy with the tag mechanism you might be able to get good results searching tags. At the minimum we should maybe change the Search page to have subsite-specific word and tag searches and maybe some date limiters as well. Search can be sort of a resource hog and my suspicion is that it's also not that much fun to work on, so it's been a back burner project for quite some time.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:58 AM on May 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
The related questions thing is mostly a weighted tag search so if you're comfy with the tag mechanism you might be able to get good results searching tags.
Yeah, been doing this. The problem is you can only do one + on an additional tag on a tag search within the site. Unless that's only happening because the results no longer have tags in common and I'm just not picking up on that.
posted by edbles at 7:11 AM on May 19, 2010
Yeah, been doing this. The problem is you can only do one + on an additional tag on a tag search within the site. Unless that's only happening because the results no longer have tags in common and I'm just not picking up on that.
posted by edbles at 7:11 AM on May 19, 2010
The problem is you can only do one + on an additional tag on a tag search within the site.
You're correct—you can only combine two tags to see posts with that combination on the tag pages. We can think about expanding that. I'm concerned that the number of questions tagged with three or more unique tags dwindles fairly quickly, so I'm not sure the utility would outweigh the development time in this case.
I never find anything relevant to what I thought I was searching for.
This might be a problem in the difference between standard search and tag search. The search page is going to match words that appear in the text of posts and comments. The tag pages are going to show you posts tagged with particular keywords chosen by the author. So if you're looking for posts about a particular word, you might be better off browsing through posts with that tag instead of posts that contain that word.
posted by pb (staff) at 7:54 AM on May 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
You're correct—you can only combine two tags to see posts with that combination on the tag pages. We can think about expanding that. I'm concerned that the number of questions tagged with three or more unique tags dwindles fairly quickly, so I'm not sure the utility would outweigh the development time in this case.
I never find anything relevant to what I thought I was searching for.
This might be a problem in the difference between standard search and tag search. The search page is going to match words that appear in the text of posts and comments. The tag pages are going to show you posts tagged with particular keywords chosen by the author. So if you're looking for posts about a particular word, you might be better off browsing through posts with that tag instead of posts that contain that word.
posted by pb (staff) at 7:54 AM on May 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
I guess what I’m saying is the site has a mechanism in existence that seems to work really well. But I’m only allowed occasional access to it, when I haven’t posted a question. Most weeks this isn’t a problem, but it also means that I take the risk of accidentally posting an empty question whenever I use compose a question as a search function, again not a huge deal but it’s inconvenient overall. Would it be possible to get non-compose a question access to the weighted tag search somehow?
But this is mostly a this would be neat thing, I get it if search is not a priority right now.
Yes, it is a slow day at work.
posted by edbles at 8:01 AM on May 19, 2010
But this is mostly a this would be neat thing, I get it if search is not a priority right now.
Yes, it is a slow day at work.
posted by edbles at 8:01 AM on May 19, 2010
You can continue to use that mechanism without posting a question by just typing in a few tags. There's no danger of accidentally posting an empty question because you won't get the "post" button unless all of the pieces are in place. So you can go to the form and type in a few tags and take a look.
I'm not sure that would work well for everyone as a general search tool. Yes, it's weighted by tag frequency, but number of favorites also enters into the picture. And sorting things by favorites is its own can of worms that we don't necessarily want to introduce beyond the scope of that limited feature.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:17 AM on May 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
I'm not sure that would work well for everyone as a general search tool. Yes, it's weighted by tag frequency, but number of favorites also enters into the picture. And sorting things by favorites is its own can of worms that we don't necessarily want to introduce beyond the scope of that limited feature.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:17 AM on May 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
Search has been one of our long-term goals for a while, but it's hard to get psyched about it when Google has a pretty complete archive.
Kill search, let Google do its job. Huge batch of pony requests stillborn, problem goes bye bye forever.
posted by Meatbomb at 9:16 AM on May 19, 2010
Kill search, let Google do its job. Huge batch of pony requests stillborn, problem goes bye bye forever.
posted by Meatbomb at 9:16 AM on May 19, 2010
Tag search is the shit.
posted by cashman at 9:20 AM on May 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by cashman at 9:20 AM on May 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
Thanks for the tips! Is there any reason you don't just have one of those little Google subsite search thingies that is on lots of other websites?
posted by Grither at 9:25 AM on May 19, 2010
posted by Grither at 9:25 AM on May 19, 2010
At the bottom of every search results page is a link to perform the exact same search at Google. If you log out, the search forms become Google searches. And you can always just head over to Google and add
posted by pb (staff) at 9:30 AM on May 19, 2010 [2 favorites]
site:metafilter.com to any search there to limit your results to MetaFilter.posted by pb (staff) at 9:30 AM on May 19, 2010 [2 favorites]
The reason we still have local search and don't rely solely on Google is that there are some things we can do better. For example, we sort all results by date. We show atomic level results including individual comments, Google only points to pages. So there is some utility in having a local version, but you'll get different things from each of them so it's a good idea to try everything out and see what works for you.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:32 AM on May 19, 2010 [2 favorites]
posted by pb (staff) at 9:32 AM on May 19, 2010 [2 favorites]
The local search is still superior for lots of things, like finding duplicate links since it searches within HTML, or for searching tags. Google search is superior when you want to find a specific multi-word phrase in quotes. They both have their uses and neither is always best.
posted by Rhomboid at 9:51 AM on May 19, 2010
posted by Rhomboid at 9:51 AM on May 19, 2010
Kill search, let Google do its job.
Google doesn't do the job well enough for some purposes. It is godlike as a general, broad-scope tool but its archive is full of hole and it does not (arguably cannot) know enough about Metafilter's specific data structures to provide the kind of granularity in search that even our current tools provide.
Both are useful. I look forward to us making our local search even more useful than it currently is in the long run.
Or what they said.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:44 AM on May 19, 2010
Google doesn't do the job well enough for some purposes. It is godlike as a general, broad-scope tool but its archive is full of hole and it does not (arguably cannot) know enough about Metafilter's specific data structures to provide the kind of granularity in search that even our current tools provide.
Both are useful. I look forward to us making our local search even more useful than it currently is in the long run.
Or what they said.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:44 AM on May 19, 2010
i love the site search - i love that you can switch between subsites and that if you search on a specific subsite it will default to just showing those results.
more than anything, i LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the "search activity" feature. if i had a search related pony, it would only be the tiniest pony of adding "search favorites"
if i had a non search related pony it would be to have sign in/out appear at the same part of the page and the same for the blue and the white layout.
posted by nadawi at 12:24 PM on May 19, 2010
more than anything, i LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the "search activity" feature. if i had a search related pony, it would only be the tiniest pony of adding "search favorites"
if i had a non search related pony it would be to have sign in/out appear at the same part of the page and the same for the blue and the white layout.
posted by nadawi at 12:24 PM on May 19, 2010
if i had a search related pony, it would only be the tiniest pony of adding "search favorites"
If you mean "search the posts/comments favorited by, or the favorited contributions of, given mefite x", that functionality already exists. Just click through to the favorites page from that user's profile page.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:39 PM on May 19, 2010
If you mean "search the posts/comments favorited by, or the favorited contributions of, given mefite x", that functionality already exists. Just click through to the favorites page from that user's profile page.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:39 PM on May 19, 2010
well, shit -t hat's exactly what i mean. i had this pony the whole time and didn't know it? he's probably starving by now.
posted by nadawi at 12:41 PM on May 19, 2010
posted by nadawi at 12:41 PM on May 19, 2010
cortex writes "It is godlike as a general, broad-scope tool but its archive is full of hole"
It's amazing how swiss cheese like google's snap shot of the site is. Since I asked this question I've noted lots of google unfindable threads.
posted by Mitheral at 1:19 PM on May 19, 2010
It's amazing how swiss cheese like google's snap shot of the site is. Since I asked this question I've noted lots of google unfindable threads.
posted by Mitheral at 1:19 PM on May 19, 2010
well, shit -t hat's exactly what i mean.
MeFites who almost went to look for the man page for the "shit" command to find out what the -t option does, please raise your hands.
posted by FishBike at 1:27 PM on May 19, 2010 [6 favorites]
MeFites who almost went to look for the man page for the "shit" command to find out what the -t option does, please raise your hands.
posted by FishBike at 1:27 PM on May 19, 2010 [6 favorites]
Wondering in the interim what the "hat" value would mean to that option, yes.
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:33 PM on May 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:33 PM on May 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
MeFites who almost went to look for the man page
Is this like the selective service system? If I don't sign up, will Cortex show up at my door? Or when I click AskMe will it reroute me to Yahoo Answers?
posted by cashman at 1:39 PM on May 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
Is this like the selective service system? If I don't sign up, will Cortex show up at my door? Or when I click AskMe will it reroute me to Yahoo Answers?
posted by cashman at 1:39 PM on May 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
my thumbs are quicker than my fingers (or maybe it's the opposite?), what can i say...
posted by nadawi at 1:53 PM on May 19, 2010
posted by nadawi at 1:53 PM on May 19, 2010
Shit would definitely be a syscall, i.e. shit(2)
posted by Rhomboid at 2:01 PM on May 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by Rhomboid at 2:01 PM on May 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
Boy.
Man.
God.
Shit.
Washa Uffizi drive me to Firenze.
Washa Uffizi drive me to Firenze.
Washa Uffizi drive me to Firenze.
Washa Uffizi drive me to Firenze.
posted by SpiffyRob at 2:05 PM on May 19, 2010
Man.
God.
Shit.
Washa Uffizi drive me to Firenze.
Washa Uffizi drive me to Firenze.
Washa Uffizi drive me to Firenze.
Washa Uffizi drive me to Firenze.
posted by SpiffyRob at 2:05 PM on May 19, 2010
Washa Uffizi drive me to Firenze.
No way! Really? I always meant to look that line up.
posted by danb at 4:55 PM on May 19, 2010
No way! Really? I always meant to look that line up.
posted by danb at 4:55 PM on May 19, 2010
That's the "truth" as reported by Guitar World magazine, but there's plenty of additional speculation.
More
posted by SpiffyRob at 6:39 AM on May 20, 2010
More
posted by SpiffyRob at 6:39 AM on May 20, 2010
Unicorn test track.
posted by fleacircus at 11:20 PM on June 17, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by fleacircus at 11:20 PM on June 17, 2010 [1 favorite]
,,/
/(-\
,---' /`-'
/( )__))
/ // \\
`` ``
posted by fleacircus at 11:21 PM on June 17, 2010 [1 favorite]
,,/
/(-\
,---' /`-'
\/( )__))_
_// \\
posted by fleacircus at 11:21 PM on June 17, 2010 [1 favorite] O G Rposted by fleacircus at 11:27 PM on June 17, 2010
B O Eposted by fleacircus at 11:27 PM on June 17, 2010
Unicorn unicorn unicorn test track!
Unicorn unicorn unicorn test track!
Unicorn unicorn unicorn test track
Watch those unicorns go-oh!
Go you unicorns go go go!
Go you unicorns don't be slow!
Go you unicorns go go go
Or I'll lose lots of dough!
It's a marvellous day
At the unicorn test track!
We'll watch them little uni's run!
The sun the track and unicorns,
A recipe for fun!
(Racing forum Mr. Johnson?)
Thanks Jimmy! Here, get yourself a licorice whip!
Have I got a tip for you boys
This unicorn has to win
He's strong and fast and ready
And loaded up with gin!
I'm putting my money on lightning,
'Cause it says here he's a sure thing
And the odds are five to four!
But I man I hope that he's not slow or
Otherwise then this here Joe
Will be back on skid row!
(Dance Break)
I know that I'm a sinner
But I really need a winner
Or the orphanage will close!
So God if you're above
And it's orphans that you love
Then please help the unicorn I chose!
I'm the slowest unicorn in town
But knowing that don't get me down
It's just that they don't see!
So to avoid their scorn
I'll lead on with my horn
'Cause there's nothing stopping me!
At the unicorn....
U-NI-CORN...
TEST TRACK!
TEST TRACK!
AHHHHH!
AHHHHH!
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
posted by SpiffyRob at 7:04 AM on June 18, 2010 [1 favorite]
Unicorn unicorn unicorn test track!
Unicorn unicorn unicorn test track
Watch those unicorns go-oh!
Go you unicorns go go go!
Go you unicorns don't be slow!
Go you unicorns go go go
Or I'll lose lots of dough!
It's a marvellous day
At the unicorn test track!
We'll watch them little uni's run!
The sun the track and unicorns,
A recipe for fun!
(Racing forum Mr. Johnson?)
Thanks Jimmy! Here, get yourself a licorice whip!
Have I got a tip for you boys
This unicorn has to win
He's strong and fast and ready
And loaded up with gin!
I'm putting my money on lightning,
'Cause it says here he's a sure thing
And the odds are five to four!
But I man I hope that he's not slow or
Otherwise then this here Joe
Will be back on skid row!
(Dance Break)
I know that I'm a sinner
But I really need a winner
Or the orphanage will close!
So God if you're above
And it's orphans that you love
Then please help the unicorn I chose!
I'm the slowest unicorn in town
But knowing that don't get me down
It's just that they don't see!
So to avoid their scorn
I'll lead on with my horn
'Cause there's nothing stopping me!
At the unicorn....
U-NI-CORN...
TEST TRACK!
TEST TRACK!
AHHHHH!
AHHHHH!
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
posted by SpiffyRob at 7:04 AM on June 18, 2010 [1 favorite]
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Then again, I'm probably just an idiot, and don't know how to use it.
posted by Grither at 6:25 AM on May 19, 2010