I don't think the forum search engine is very good - anyone agree?
I just realized that every time I use the search on the forum it is an unpleasant experience.
I find it slow and it gives incomplete results.
It is still an invaluable tool but I reckon it could be so much better.
Anyone agree?
I actually think it's pretty good.
Try using the Sibelius forum sometime if you want to really see slow and unpleasant.
-B
Use google!
Type site:cycling74.com in the search box and then your search phrase. Its a lot better
Hi guys - thanks for your feedback. Search is difficult to do well, mostly because Google is the yardstick by which other experiences are measured. I agree with @cronoklee that prepending a regular Google search with "site:cycling74.com" works very well. The only caveat is that the Google indexing is somewhere between 1 day and 1 week late, so you don't get the most up-to-date results.
Ben
I don't think, that the neural net based hightech methods of google are necessary to enhance the search experience.
The searching itself should be easy, but how to do the ranking...?
I think some very simple rules already would be sufficient:
Search result should always be the threads, not single posts.
The date of a thread is its latest entry, the newer, the higher the rank.
If the search terms are in the subject: ranking highest, and then if they are in the body the closer to the first post the higher, and the more often the search term is in the answers the higher the rank for that thread.
For multiple entries always use boolean "and".
("or" never makes sense, as you could easily do two searches)
The only difficulty is to weight these (three) methods for the final ranking, but this can be found with experiments and observation of actual search results and the behavior of those who invoked the search (which thread do they pick in the list, that seems to be the most relevant on first sight...)
I doubt it needs more than that...
Stefan
AGREED! it would definitely make things easier if you could just type in the key word your searching for and it comes up with the threads which contain those keywords. That would also prevent people from posting a question which has already been asked before.
Another good thing in my opinion would be a direct link to the advanced search. At the moment, as far as I know, you have to type a searchword into the textfiled at the left side of the cycling74 page and then after waiting for that first search to complete a link shows up for the advanced search.
Also, in the advanced search, the menu for selecting what perticular forum to search in is positioned over another dropdown menu. But that is a purely cosmetic issue:)
Tom
would definitely make things easier if you could just type in the key word your searching for and it comes up with the threads
it seems like the tags
are here for that very purpose but nobody ever uses them - including vets and c64 staff. there are thousands of threads containing valuable info but they have useless subjects like: "please help fast!!!", "hmmm trying to find a good way", and "me think bug no good to ok be?" so searching by subject alone often yields little.
plus tag search is really fast. try clicking the tag "search" up there ^
the common way is to ignore the search and just ask the same old
questions ("HELP PLEASE SOMEONE BUILD AN APP FOR MY MASTER
THESIS UNTIL YESTERDAY") over and over again.
Just one last thing, and I haven't thought of a brilliant solution for this yet, but half of the knowledge I gained from the forums came from searching an object and having it pop up as text in an inline patch. Now that we do copy compressed that's not even an option anymore. Would be amazing if there was some way to parse the compressed for max objects and include them in the tags.
"the common way is to ignore the search and just ask the same old
questions ("HELP PLEASE SOMEONE BUILD AN APP FOR MY MASTER
THESIS UNTIL YESTERDAY") over and over again. "
Didn't laugh out loud but i did come close.
FRid
one of the few who thinks the search is actually quite good but hey, i also like the rounded-corners :)
Just a trick in case someone is interested.
If you use firefox, you can put the attached file "c74-forums-search.xml" in your directory "~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/default/searchplugins/
after relaunching firefox, you'll have a "C74 Forums search" available as search engine in the toolbar (and with the nice C74 logo), that will use http://www.google.com/search?q=site:cycling74.com/forums