Search Bar

luckylace222 · Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2011 9:32 am Post subject: Search Bar

Is there any way to make it so that you do not have to type the exact words to find a reasonable search on FAC?

For example, the user FAC MadamePenguin. If I type in "MadamPenguin" on accident without the "e," there is not even a "Did you mean this...?" It just says there are no results.

Can there not just be a general "keywords" for each section instead of having to specifically click "users", "categories," or "pictures?"
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cstdenis · Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2011 6:31 pm Post subject:

[quote]If I type in "MadamPenguin" on accident without the "e,"...[/quote]
That is extremely difficult. The only way Google can do it is that they have a massive amount of data on people typing wrong things in the search box to work off of.

Also, user search seems to be somewhat broken anyway now -- only works properly for site helpers based on some of my recent testing, presumably due to security changes.

[quote]Can there not just be a general "keywords" for each section instead of having to specifically click "users", "categories," or "pictures?"[/quote]
Please elaborate.
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luckylace222 · Posted: Mon Sep 05, 2011 7:55 am Post subject:

[quote]That is extremely difficult. The only way Google can do it is that they have a massive amount of data on people typing wrong things in the search box to work off of.

Also, user search seems to be somewhat broken anyway now -- only works properly for site helpers based on some of my recent testing, presumably due to security changes.[/quote]
Interesting, I did not know that.

[quote]Please elaborate.[/quote]
For example, if I look up "MadamePenguin" in the search bar under "Pictures," it only comes up with 1 picture, only because her username was mentioned in the description. I wanted her pictures. As a regular user, the "user" interface does not work very well, so I have to rely on these indirect links to find her. Would it not be better to link the actual artist's pictures in the "Picture" search category when we look it up? It would be quicker and more convenient for the FAC community.
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Stratadrake · Posted: Mon Sep 05, 2011 8:23 pm Post subject:

Search actually has a lot of undocumented features, but not all of them work correctly. Sad

For example, try adding "BY username" to your search query -- I believe that one works Wink

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cstdenis · Posted: Mon Sep 05, 2011 8:41 pm Post subject:

New version of search in the works has some interesting filter options.

[img]http://s1.postimage.org/i910mbwo8/new_search.png[/img]
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Stratadrake · Posted: Mon Sep 05, 2011 10:35 pm Post subject:

That about covers everything, but boy do they take up the real estate. Should definitely be made collapsible....
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luckylace222 · Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2011 4:51 pm Post subject:

[quote="cstdenis"]New version of search in the works has some interesting filter options.

[img]http://s1.postimage.org/i910mbwo8/new_search.png[/img][/quote]
Great god. YES. I love the specification. I like it A LOT. I do not think I have ever seen any "new" screen shots of what the newer update looks like.

[quote]For example, try adding "BY username" to your search query -- I believe that one works [/quote]
That just comes up with all the recent pictures.
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Stratadrake · Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2011 6:43 pm Post subject:

Yes that's a bug, but try combining it with a normal search term. E.g: "anime by MadamePenguin" should work.

As for misspellings, there [i]is[/i] a function to [u][url=http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.similar-text.php]calculate similarity between two strings[/url][/u], but you can't just call it against the full users database, it needs parameters to narrow down what it compares to. For example, if we assume that you typed a username and at least got the first 1~2 letters correct, then we could query a list of relevant usernames from the database and calculate name similarity based on that....
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cstdenis · Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2011 10:21 am Post subject:

[quote="Stratadrake"]That about covers everything, but boy do they take up the real estate. Should definitely be made collapsible....[/quote]
It is. The "limit" checkboxes expand the bordered areas next to them. The current interface is just a quick hacked together prototype, needs a lot of beautification work before launch.

[quote]As for misspellings, there is a function to calculate similarity between two strings, but you can't just call it against the full users database[/quote]
There are database-side version of that: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/fuzzystrmatch.html

However actually making it work usefully/reliably isn't quite as easy as it sounds.
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