| ??? 03/16/08 16:34 Read: times |
#152301 - Do you think that's a good thing? Responding to: ???'s previous message |
Craig Steiner said:
The problem I have with having message categories is the following:
1. A question or discussion can easily cover multiple categories so I don't think it's reasonable to have a message assigned only one category. They'd have to be allowed to select multiple categories. 2. In reality each message would have to be assigned categories because if a single question can touch on multiple categories, it's possible that subsequent replies could touch on one or the other--or touch a category that wasn't originally at issue. Forcing users to category every message sounds like a bit of a pain. Do you consider it desirable that a single question can address multiple issues? 3. If someone categorizes a message wrong then it potentially makes it even harder to find it if someone restricts their search based on categories. I'd consider it a benefit to have the O/P tell us what the nature of his/her question is. Far too many such queries aren't really specific enough. They generally don't include the weather and politics, along with religion, but they do often wander about in a manner remarkable for just a few sentences. A single query shouldn't be allowed to cover power supply, clocking, peripheral control, and pricing, should it? 4. The only use for categories would be to make it easier to subsequently search the site by designing the search facility to allow the user to specify the categories to search. The problem with this is that it depends on messages being properly categorized. We also have the issue that we have about 10 years/140,000+ messages already in the system without any categorization. This severely would limit any potential benefit of the categorization system even if we implement it now. The only alternative would be to have teams of volunteers to go little by little through the old messages and give them categories. Sounds tedious and boring. If we have teams of people willing to do tedious work, I'd be much more interested in having them help enter data for an up-to-date device/part database. The benefit of having the O/P select a category and asking him/her to limit his query to one category at a time, would be to force him/her to congeal his/her thinking to such an extent that the query is actually answerable. Wo many of our threads wander all over the place, containing lots of useful information that ultimately becomes cumbersome to retrieve if it's wanted. What I can assure everyone is that the 8052.com search facility will be much more useful in the new system. It won't find partial word entries (i.e. searching for "for" will not return words that contain "forth"). There will also be an optional date range limitation. So while the categories would be even better if we had good categorization of all messages, I'm hopeful that even without it the search facility will be adequate to find things that people are looking for.
I'm also trying to come up with ideas to make the search find more relevant responses. I'm thinking (feedback welcome!) that when a user searches for terms, the search will provide a list of threads that have messages that contain those terms. When the thread list is provided, clicking on the thread will take the user to that thread; but there will also be an "expand" button for each thread that, when clicked, will expand to show a list of all the messages in that thread that contain the term--and maybe the sentence containing the search time. By displaying initially a list of threads we don't immediately produce 800 results for a simple search term. By allowing them to expand each thread returned and see a sentence of each relevant post within that thread, we allow users to drill down into the search results a little more easily. Thoughts? Regards, Craig Steiner 8052.com Webmaster Maybe post-tagging would be the answer. Unfortunately, that requires moderator time and effort. If one is discussing PCB layout, it's easy to get off into EMC, power supply distribution, signal loading, board quality, costs, etc. Most replies, one would hope, deal with only one issue. If there are 15 posts, within a thread of 100, that deal with one issue, it would be useful to find them based on the keywords, but it would also be helpful to find them based on the context within which they arose. Some of the best information I've encountered, here and elsewhere, has been part of a discussion of a quite unrelated subject. I freely admit I'm somewhat influenced by the many times I've searched for an item and had hundreds of hits in none of which the search term was to be found. RE |
| Topic | Author | Date |
| New Forum: Opinions | 01/01/70 00:00 | |
| constructive criticism | 01/01/70 00:00 | |
| Public | 01/01/70 00:00 | |
| no score | 01/01/70 00:00 | |
| disagree | 01/01/70 00:00 | |
| What good has it done to members till date | 01/01/70 00:00 | |
| Not quite what I meant | 01/01/70 00:00 | |
| perhaps another category ... | 01/01/70 00:00 | |
| Feature already exists | 01/01/70 00:00 | |
| it is not easy ... | 01/01/70 00:00 | |
| Categories | 01/01/70 00:00 | |
| Keep It Simple & Stupid, please. | 01/01/70 00:00 | |
| Do you think that's a good thing? | 01/01/70 00:00 | |
| That will be fixed | 01/01/70 00:00 | |
| Something to absolutely avoid | 01/01/70 00:00 | |
| Already there | 01/01/70 00:00 | |
| hiding scores | 01/01/70 00:00 | |
| Bug | 01/01/70 00:00 | |
| "Next Page", "Previous Page" links | 01/01/70 00:00 | |
| just stumbled on this one | 01/01/70 00:00 | |
| Subjective | 01/01/70 00:00 | |
I do not insist on the phrase ... | 01/01/70 00:00 |