Why so many old threads?

Sad Professor

The date filters are pretty limited. More would be nice. 6 months, a year, 2 years, all time, etc. Maybe make 2 years the default so as to discourage bumping of very old threads.

I also found the sort filter (Best Match, etc) easier to use when they were separate links rather than in a menu.

Skid X

Boards.ie: Rónán wrote: »

Is it a case that users are unaware that the current filters exist? Are they too limited (day / month / year)? Is it a user mentality issue as opposed to a limitation of search, that perhaps needs to be addressed in the UI as opposed to in core search behavior?

When the search throws up something reasonably close to what the user searched for, I doubt if most users look to further refine the search. Particularly when they are using search to identify if a thread exists about a topic which they wish to post about.

As has been suggested above By changing the default return to 'Newest First' rather than 'Best Match' you would make the search function more conducive to the 'Old threads bad' philosophy which is ingrained in Moderators psyche.

It would not dilute the search function in any way, and it would result in significantly less locked threads.

Liam McPoyle

On another, albeit much smaller, forum I use,when you try and post in an old thread,(think it defaults to 6 months but will check when I get to my laptop) a little script appears that says "thread has not been active for x days, do you wish to continue"

Perhaps something like that may be an option to add though I don't know how easy/difficult that would be to implement.

Duggys Housemate

Boards.ie: Rónán wrote: »

Some quick input on search; the relevancy / boosting algorithms used on search were always interesting, and with 37,266,063 posts currently indexed (spanning over 15 years) I don't think we'll ever get it perfect.

My main issues with some of the above comments revolve around limiting search's phrase matching relevancy in order to boost posts that were made relatively recently, when that functionality can be provided by using the available "Date" filters.

The power to search boards for information relating to an event that happened up to 15 years ago is amazing (I randomly tried "Nice Treaty" just there). I'd be against "diluting" that potential to combat some of the issues mentioned previously.

Is it a case that users are unaware that the current filters exist? Are they too limited (day / month / year)? Is it a user mentality issue as opposed to a limitation of search, that perhaps needs to be addressed in the UI as opposed to in core search behavior?

Search is on the list for a revamp (although it will be some time until we get around to it) so any further feedback is very welcome.

You're thinking like an engineer, not a user. On the mobile site I searched for Dr. Who which got me a result, by default, which was 7 years old. That's impressive and fast in terms of the engineering but what I wanted was the most recent. Best match seems to always go back years as it happens.

Sure users can then change the setting to Most Recent but that's forcing the user to compensate for a UI problem. And to a certain extent a backend problem - best match seems to search too far back.

Boards.ie: Rónán

Duggys Housemate wrote: »

On the mobile site I searched for Dr. Who which got me a result, by default, which was 7 years old. That's impressive and fast in terms of the engineering but what I wanted was the most recent. Best match seems to always go back years as it happens.

That's the crux of the problem, every user will have a different opinion of what a relevant time-frame is depending on whatever their search requirements are at that particular time.

You're suggesting we limit the core functionality by setting default restrictions based on a pre-defined, accepted, "relevant" time-frame. I don't think that's the solution.

Duggys Housemate wrote: »

Sure users can then change the setting to Most Recent but that's forcing the user to compensate for a UI problem. And to a certain extent a backend problem - best match seems to search too far back.

Would it not be better to leave the core functionality as is but improve the means with which a user can set the parameters of their search. It means a much more powerful, accessible tool for all users.

Duggys Housemate

Boards.ie: Rónán wrote: »

That's the crux of the problem, every user will have a different opinion of what a relevant time-frame is depending on whatever their search requirements are at that particular time.

You're suggesting we limit the core functionality by setting default restrictions based on a pre-defined, accepted, "relevant" time-frame. I don't think that's the solution.



Would it not be better to leave the core functionality as is but improve the means with which a user can set the parameters of their search. It means a much more powerful, accessible tool for all users.

That's an odd answer.

1)Most users see the search as broken and hence the thread - and the reason why people are resurrecting old threads.
2) a 7 year old result for "Dr Who" is broken. That's not really subjective.
3) changing the parameters is not relevant to what is default. If sort by date were the default you wouldn't have to change your algorithm, and you can allow refinements regardless of what is default. And on the mobile site thee are 2 options anyway. And that's it.

I would expect a search online or in an app - like a mail app - to be sorted by relevance ordered by date descending. If relevance is by default.

That's probably industry standard.

nesf

Boards.ie: Rónán wrote: »

That's the crux of the problem, every user will have a different opinion of what a relevant time-frame is depending on whatever their search requirements are at that particular time.

You're suggesting we limit the core functionality by setting default restrictions based on a pre-defined, accepted, "relevant" time-frame. I don't think that's the solution.



Would it not be better to leave the core functionality as is but improve the means with which a user can set the parameters of their search. It means a much more powerful, accessible tool for all users.

When I search for things it genuinely is nearly always date dependent in some way. I find having search results ordered with no thought to time very strange for a webforum. I just searched for Enda Kenny, the first 8 results were all over 2 years old, one was 7 years old. If I'm searching for Enda Kenny on Boards nearly all the time I'm interested in recent posts not old posts, if I'm looking for older posts it'll be something more specific like "Enda Kenny, Bruton heave, leadership challenge" or whatever.

Boards.ie: Rónán

We do take the date of a post into account when sorting. If I search for a phrase "Enda Kenny" and it generates an identical score on two different posts, the more recent post will score higher than the older post and will be presented higher up in the overall results. We "boost" a post based on its creation time, the more recent the post the higher the boost.

The tricky part is finding the balance between the search phrase relevancy and the creation time boost. Boost too much and you get more recent posts showing up high in results with less relevance to the search phrase "Enda Kenny", boost too little and you get older results (but you're always guaranteed high relevancy in your results).

Reading some of the posts above and looking at the current filters available it probably makes sense to bump up the boost on post creation date. I'll hopefully be able to take some time tomorrow to tweak the algorithm and see if I can make some improvements.

nesf

Boards.ie: Rónán wrote: »

We do take the date of a post into account when sorting. If I search for a phrase "Enda Kenny" and it generates an identical score on two different posts, the more recent post will score higher than the older post and will be presented higher up in the overall results. We "boost" a post based on its creation time, the more recent the post the higher the boost.

The tricky part is finding the balance between the search phrase relevancy and the creation time boost. Boost too much and you get more recent posts showing up high in results with less relevance to the search phrase "Enda Kenny", boost too little and you get older results (but you're always guaranteed high relevancy in your results).

Reading some of the posts above and looking at the current filters available it probably makes sense to bump up the boost on post creation date. I'll hopefully be able to take some time tomorrow to tweak the algorithm and see if I can make some improvements.

I think you're biggest problem is the site is divided between usually extremely time sensitive forums like Politics and forums which are not usually based around current events like the Languages sub-category.

Cabaal

emmeygirl wrote: »

ii) start a new thread on the same subject (this takes up room on the server, and in any case in some sections we are expressly asked not to do so)

You know that the data a new thread takes up on a server is next to meaningless in the scale of things so this is hardly a negative point for starting a new thread.

Dades

I have to agree with those suggesting not enough weight is given to how recent a thread/post is within the "Best Match" search.

Fair enough if I'm looking to find out how to get a stain out of my curtains, then date is irrelevant... but any search I've done recently I've switched to the "Newest First" option as the default offers a lot of old results I know will have less relevance for whatever reason.

Boards.ie: Rónán

I've significantly bumped the boost on post date earlier this morning. Good examples of the potential swings can be found searching for:

"manchester united" - with the resignation of Alex Ferguson this morning the "Next Manchester United Manager?" thread jumps to the top over any of the match / mega threads.

"dr. who" - only 4 of the 15 results are related to Dr. Who, the fact that the majority of the Dr. Who related content on boards is years old means that the relevancy of this search suffers greatly.

I'll leave the current algorithm run for a few days and see how people get on with it. Any further feedback please let us know.

Raphael

Well a simpler fix there would be to tweak the search bar so that when you type in dr. who is suggests the doctor who forum. Dunno if Alias' are possible in that though.

Dades

An even simpler fix would be to add inverted commas and search for "dr who".

A search for that now does still bring up a lot of old threads, but to be fair, the "Most Recent" option brings up a lot of irrelevant mentions of 'dr who' and not much else.

I find choosing to search thread titles only a good way of sorting out a lot of crap with something that returns a lot of results.

TherapyBoy

Boards.ie: Rónán wrote: »

Reading some of the posts above and looking at the current filters available it probably makes sense to bump up the boost on post creation date. I'll hopefully be able to take some time tomorrow to tweak the algorithm and see if I can make some improvements.

Why not just have the default changed to 'sort by date' rather than relevance? It seems like the simplest solution. If someone wants to search by relevance instead of date they can select it from the drop-down menu like we do for 'sort by date' at the moment.

Boards.ie: Rónán

TherapyBoy wrote: »

Why not just have the default changed to 'sort by date' rather than relevance? It seems like the simplest solution. If someone wants to search by relevance instead of date they can select it from the drop-down menu like we do for 'sort by date' at the moment.

Anything that scores against the search phrase no matter how loose will display in order of date created, all ordering by relevancy goes out the window. Which is more of a filtered "latest posts" as opposed to search.

El Guapo!

Would it be practical to implement a system where, when a user enters a search term and clicks "search", a pop-up box appears and asks something along the lines of......

"How would you like to sort the results?"
And then the user can tick an option like....

"Sort by most recent"

"Sort by most relevant"

"Optimum Atari Jaguar Search" (a mixture of the first two options.)

TherapyBoy

Boards.ie: Rónán wrote: »

Anything that scores against the search phrase no matter how loose will display in order of date created, all ordering by relevancy goes out the window. Which is more of a filtered "latest posts" as opposed to search.

Right, but its still 'latest posts' regarding whatever the subject is. If the subject term entered brings up 'loose' results it might force users into putting more thought into what term they enter in the search engine. To search smarter!

It'd be just a guess (because it has happened to me once or twice) but if a user searches for something they'll start at the top of the list of results & work down. That the results aren't ordered chronologically is not expected. I think the default should be searching chronologically if for no other reason than to cut down on the amount of people posting in very old threads because IMO they haven't realised that the first result on their search list is 7 years old.

I've never had a problem with a search on Boards.ie bringing up irrelevant results. I have read through pages of posts on a thread before realising that half the posters have closed their accounts & I'm reading something from 2007.

coffee_cake

I did an unrelated search for something yesterday and noticed the "most relevant" was a bit more time filtered
I'll still switch to "newest first" most of the time and I still think that should be a default but good improvement