Re: [Fwd: Suggestion for Improving Search at PHP.NET]

> This is a message I received yesterday regarding possible work to the > PHP site's search functionality. The author has a history of search > tech work and makes some good points, and I tend to agree with him that > the PHP site's searching could use some work. Anyway, I don't have time > at the moment to deal with this and I don't work on the site anyway, > so I'm throwing it out there for discussion. > > Thoughts? Well, nice idea, but who has the time to implement this. BTW it would be better to also include webmaster@php.net in the "To: field", so webmasters can also answer this (done). Stig also volunteered some time ago to set up a central search server for us at FastSerch, so we can direct all search queries to a common place, and so all sites can do much better searches... But nothing really happened in this field... Goba > -----Forwarded Message----- > > > From: J. Scott Johnson <scott@fuzzygroup.com> > > To: torben@php.net > > Subject: Suggestion for Improving Search at PHP.NET > > Date: 17 Mar 2002 11:50:56 -0500 > > > > Hi Torben, > > > > I wasn't sure who to send this to but since I have talked to you at least > > once and I know you have some relationship to the documentation, I thought > > I'd send it to you. Sorry if its a bother or off point for you. > > > > I'm (fairly rapidly) climbing the learning curve for PHP and what I am > > finding is that my search queries often don't easily match up to functions > > in the manual. For example I searched for "writing to start of file" (no > > quotes) and got a fairly arcane set of responses including one on writing > > PDFs. While this is algorithmically correct from the indexer's perspective, > > from a person's perspective it actually isn't. I'd wager that people use > > the PDF writing abilities rarely as compared to simply writing text files > > and the like. > > > > My experience has been that if you analyze your http logs, you could extract > > the search entries and probably find that a large number of searches are > > actually a relatively small number of common queries. For any language, its > > always the same issues -- writing files, strings, etc. One way to improve > > this is to use a query preprocessor to add a level of human intelligence to > > your search. This works well when you have a fairly constant url structure. > > What you do is manually map queries to pages and then change your result > > list to be a two tier hierarchy (Human Answers and Documents). Thus, your > > results page becomes something like this: > > > > For your search, {insert query here}, we found: > > > > Human Recommended Answers > > a.. search result > > b.. search result > > Documents We Found: > > a.. search result > > b.. search result > > To make this a lot easier, get the users of the site to contribute back > > their problems and the webpage which answered it. I suspect the user > > community would be happy to help. > > > > Note I have a pretty serious background (10 + years) in search and retrieval > > http://www.fuzzygroup.com/about/sjohnsonresume.htm . I do > > know what I am > > talking about here. This is actually pretty much the technique used by > > AskJeeves (which I don't like as a general tool but does work quite well in > > focused knowledge domains such as a language). > > > > If I can help at all with this, happy to... > > > > Scott > > J. Scott Johnson > > > > Physical > > * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * > > 80 Spring Road > > Nahant, MA 01908 > > > > Phone: > > * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * > > 781 592 0262 - home > > 617 970 4719 - cell > > > > Virtual: > > * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * > > sjohnson@fuzzygroup.com > > http://www.fuzzygroup.com/ > > Yahoo IM: fuzzygroup > > > > > >