Improvement Suggestion: Better Search

[DarleneFFXI]

I understand this is a thread-based bulletin board. That means that thread are indexed by time, and over time get lost in the ether that is .. page 2-100... that has the fewest audience. But what about the good information that is posted here and is useful? I understand that indexing the information and making it useful is beyond the software. And just using the "sticky" function would give us five pages of stickies...

Anyway, I made this suggestion about "indexing" the user-defined guides that everyone writes, and Sculli said it would be too much coding he'd be willing to commit to to change. However, he suggested using the Wiki style sight where Encyclopidia styled information would be added, and modified by our users to supply its information. I can see it being populated almost immediatly with tons of information thats already here.

Therefore, I ask the question... how many people would like to see an indexed listing of information?

 

[hellstorm]

be intresting maybe would have less repeteive threads

 

[DarleneFFXI]

Wiki forums have to be monitored more regularly. If nothing else, they can be referred to a discussion thread if things are in dispute. But they are very nice methods of organizing information.

 

[Alyada]

This would be a great addition to QCDN. We could have the users edit and create new information based on quests, missions, BCs, items, what have you. It'd be a great project (if we can get it running) for the community to work on. Great idea, Darlene.

 

[Sculli]

I sort of tried to do that with Job Guides
A Wiki would be an option, though it wouldn't be possible to tighly integrate it with vBulletin. The access to the Wiki could be limited to a few caretakers who update the info posted there as new info is made public by authors.

Alternativly I could create a new forum that at the most has 20 threads and is read-only for all but those who maintain it. Those 20 threads could then contain references to other threads much like my previous job guides link.

 

[DarleneFFXI]

Proper Indexing is the key...this comes from writing software for as long as I have. People want to get quick access to their information. I suppose if it was a seperate sight, the search engine wouldn't have to be as limited? (guessing here..never used bulletin software).

 

[Sculli]

I guess at this point I am not entirely sure what exactly you mean by "proper indexing".

 

[DarleneFFXI]

Yeah >.< sorry... I tend to use terms that make sense in my mind and no others. Okay.. lets see if I can explain this without making more people confused.. sorry if I repeat the obvious, but I really enjoy "hearing" myself talk. Forgive the dry reading...

What I mean by proper indexing is when an organized list of topics meet an organize user interface.

For instance, here is how things work now with the Bulletin Board format: If I wanted to find an old thread someone started on "paladin's keeping hate" (sorry..only one I can think of that I had to search) I knew it was in General Topics, but it was pushed back several pages, and many more pages every day because people always add new topics. I could use the search function if I could remember some key word that was in that thread (and not too many others) or I could search for the person who started the thread or I could search for the title. However, all of these require me to remember a great deal about the thread, and would still give me a LOT of "false positive" hits that aren't what I'm after (to demonstrate this, do a search for "Tank AND hate" and see how many topics you get). And if the author is like Sculli, for instance...searching through a huge list of topics he started. Or, I could page one at a time through all of the "General Discussion" pages to find what I'm after. Each option is full of problems that will make it harder to find anything, but makes perfect sense for a general BB.

How when Indexing these topics would be to add key search words to each topic. I belive the 3WC standard is to use <meta> tag, but I have no idea what is available for Bulliten boards work. But these tags would key in on the search engine, and cut down the "False Positives" and make it that much easier to find things.

Where Indexing meets User Interfaces, there would be a menu item to select on specific topics to find these meta tags and find what you're looking for. There is little danger of these topics getting "pushed" to new positions and can easily be found, even if you never knew the title or author of the article or any key word in the article.

Hope that clears it up.

 

[Kotsu]

Kotsu reads Darlene's post.
Kotsu begins to foam at the mouth.
Kotsu then drops to the ground in convulsions.
Kotsu is pronounced dead at 10:53 AM EST.

lol :B I get what yah mean. File away good posts and let the un-important ones remain in a standardized forum. Am i right?

 

[DarleneFFXI]

Kotsu reads Darlene's post.
Kotsu begins to foam at the mouth.
Kotsu then drops to the ground in convulsions.
Kotsu is pronounced dead at 10:53 AM EST.

/cry MEANIE!!!

[size=-3] nobody understands kitty >@.@<[/size]

 

[Sculli]

Hope that clears it up.

Yeah I know exactly what you mean now.

There are two issues with this though. In most systems the quality of the keywords depends on the person who files the entry. So here, those who started the thread would have to create the keywords, and those who make a post as well? Some have a difficult time to come up with a descriptive thread title, I am not sure they would go through the trouble of creating a meaningful keyword list.

If the keyword index is created by some automated way, then the algorithm would have to be pretty sophisticated to actually work properly. I mean just because someone uses Paladin hate 181986219 in one post doesn't mean the topic is any good, or actually has much to do with Paladins holding hate.

It's an interesting problem. vBulletin is pretty widespread, I am sure if someone were to make a plugin that allows for indexing (manual, or auto), it would be well received by the admin community.

http://www.vbulletin.org would be a good starting place to get some advice from people who actually know vBulletin coding inside and out.

 

[DarleneFFXI]

Submitted for your approval

Kinda a starting point..hehe...see who /salute's... I threw together a sorta list, listing in a tree format an idea of how I saw the user interfact would go. I had no idea what the limits were here and the file got pretty big, so I threw it on geocities (just remember, geocities limits bandwidth..if its unavailable, just wait an hour and it'll be available again). This is just an idea, and I make no claim as it to be "the best". But I did throw together some ideas as to topics.

In the strictest sense, what I see as nessesary for this sort of support beyond what is currently available is: 1) a "Front End", where people would select the topics they want, and hyper link to the topic threads; 2) Expanded Capacity to store information in a thread (or at least a template); 3) A limited ability to edit each topic; 4) A system to promote information to the guides section.

Essentially, we would have to nominate specific content as to be "noteworth" and preserve it (it would also allow it to be cleaned up). All other discussion topics can remain in the normal areas.

I looked at the sights, and nothing jumped out immediatly, but I didn't look too hard yet.

 

[Kotsu]

Kotsu's right arm flails in salute as the corpse continues to wither, and also continue to foam.... somehow...

:B hehehehe I'm just kidding yah. /salute though.