In the meantime I have taken to using only advanced search and selecting 'date'.
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I conclude that your opinion Allen is that date is preferable to relevance?
If so, can I please get you (and anyone else who is interested in this issue) to detail why?
I'm happy to review and change this if possible, if date is agreed to be the preferable result format. However now that we are using Elasticsearch and have 20+ years of results, some of the best being made 10 years ago, I assume there would be great merit in allowing it to suggest which matches it thinks are the best matches. And if it doesn't get that right, it might be better to tune the AI rather than ditch relevance for date.
If so, can I please get you (and anyone else who is interested in this issue) to detail why?
I'm happy to review and change this if possible, if date is agreed to be the preferable result format. However now that we are using Elasticsearch and have 20+ years of results, some of the best being made 10 years ago, I assume there would be great merit in allowing it to suggest which matches it thinks are the best matches. And if it doesn't get that right, it might be better to tune the AI rather than ditch relevance for date.
I can see relevance or promotion as very useful, but not as default. I would expect to see the latest at the top.
A number of email clients have tried clever sorting and grouping over the years. The failure rate of such attempts has been high. 😉
A number of email clients have tried clever sorting and grouping over the years. The failure rate of such attempts has been high. 😉
Perhaps it is the way of the future for the masses, so the least I propose is the option to set a personal default. Everyone's different. My searches are specific and I get relevant results which I'm happy/confident with. I don't know the scope of "XF relevance" but I would be interested in learning to prevent search results being modified by it. Sometimes my 'directional drill' search methods rely on a series of searches and they need to remain clean in order not to stop making sense.
Also, sometimes results ordered by date is the entire purpose of a particular search, regardless.
To be helpful in adjusting the AI, I've been noticing thread suggestions coming up based on joining words in a sentence, or irrelevant words. Random EG: I type "the constrained layer between the panels" and I get "the driver between the vas and the output stage"
Also, sometimes results ordered by date is the entire purpose of a particular search, regardless.
To be helpful in adjusting the AI, I've been noticing thread suggestions coming up based on joining words in a sentence, or irrelevant words. Random EG: I type "the constrained layer between the panels" and I get "the driver between the vas and the output stage"
Ok here is something else to consider.
ElasticSearch in determining relevance actually does use the age of a post as part of its criteria. I remember reading the docs about that. I believe the standard setting is to use a half life of 6 months for that factor. It means that newer content will be pushed to the top of the list purely based on freshness.
To my mind, relevancy (if it works) is a better default than age by itself. Imagine if google just showed your search results in order of newest content. It uses freshness as a factor, as does ES.
How about we add an easy to see and easy to click button on the search results page to change the ordering? I can't quick pick your example, can you post a screenshot of what you mean?
I'd also like to dig right into tuning ES as soon as time is available. You can Google for a lot of articles on tuning. Eg: https://buildatscale.tech/how-elasticsearch-works-internally/ but I'd like to see examples or where it doesn't work well and see if we can get it right.
Adding a preference or having it remember your last preference and default to that for future searches would be a quick win, I think. I have added a request for that development into our internal issue tracker, Allen.
ElasticSearch in determining relevance actually does use the age of a post as part of its criteria. I remember reading the docs about that. I believe the standard setting is to use a half life of 6 months for that factor. It means that newer content will be pushed to the top of the list purely based on freshness.
To my mind, relevancy (if it works) is a better default than age by itself. Imagine if google just showed your search results in order of newest content. It uses freshness as a factor, as does ES.
How about we add an easy to see and easy to click button on the search results page to change the ordering? I can't quick pick your example, can you post a screenshot of what you mean?
I'd also like to dig right into tuning ES as soon as time is available. You can Google for a lot of articles on tuning. Eg: https://buildatscale.tech/how-elasticsearch-works-internally/ but I'd like to see examples or where it doesn't work well and see if we can get it right.
Adding a preference or having it remember your last preference and default to that for future searches would be a quick win, I think. I have added a request for that development into our internal issue tracker, Allen.
Ah, you're talking about the similar thread suggester?
Got it.
Sounds like something we might be able to address with ES tuning. I tried that search in the parts forum and the results look pretty relevant to me.
Attach / attaching being the joining word that is being overweighted? I see your point. You are able to assign weightings, define synonyms, remove words from the index. But for this short phrase both headphone and attachment would appear to be important parts of the search. I can see us perhaps removing "between", maybe not "attachment", but then again maybe we should remove "attachment". I don't know, I don't think the results are that bad for that particular search. I'd like to see more examples.
We might be able to train "attach images" as a separate term that exists by itself (I remember reading about such a setting).
BTW none of this is native XF supported in their ES implementation, we'll need to do some custom work to get under the hood to get into the ES settings proper. But it will be worth doing, IMO.
Got it.
Sounds like something we might be able to address with ES tuning. I tried that search in the parts forum and the results look pretty relevant to me.
Attach / attaching being the joining word that is being overweighted? I see your point. You are able to assign weightings, define synonyms, remove words from the index. But for this short phrase both headphone and attachment would appear to be important parts of the search. I can see us perhaps removing "between", maybe not "attachment", but then again maybe we should remove "attachment". I don't know, I don't think the results are that bad for that particular search. I'd like to see more examples.
We might be able to train "attach images" as a separate term that exists by itself (I remember reading about such a setting).
BTW none of this is native XF supported in their ES implementation, we'll need to do some custom work to get under the hood to get into the ES settings proper. But it will be worth doing, IMO.
I was searching for a duplicate post today, something that I expected to have been posted today, and it reminded me of this thread. Ordinarily there are occasions I'd wantto search for something I know happened at a particular time.
Putting this "On roadmap" in terms of that this will be reviewed and easier access to showing chronological order or using the last default implemented unless there is an unreasonably large technical obstacle.