new search default settings

[Robert Lauriston]

In consolidating "search this board" with the overall "search," you've gone back to the old practice of presenting all results back to the beginning of time and sorting by "best match."

So, for example, when I searched for "Italian beef" to find a recent post about a new place in San Francisco, the first five topics were from 2007, 2007, 2004, 2001, and 2008.

Based on past experience, this will result in newbies responding to long out-of-date topics and missing recent reports.

The old "search this board" default of topics from the past year sorted in reverse chronological order is much more appropriate for restaurant discussion boards.

[Melanie Wong]

I would suggest that the default time period be set at last 12 months again. With the menu for refining a search easily visible now, the user can easily expand the period. We've had several posters on the SF Bay Area board say that the search engine results showed no current reports, when in fact there were many but buried under older references.

[rworange]

Yeah, I second the 12 month default and leaving the rest as best match. I didn't find that newest first was really useful in finding significant posts about something.

Or even better if somehow best match was able to work with the most recent date so that the first best match was the most recent.

[Melanie Wong]

Maybe the "best match" algorithm could be changed to give more weighting to threads within the last 2 yrs or so.

Will also mention that this shift might have been in response to requests for "relevance" as the default setting. However, when that request was made, the default was 12 months of data, which meant that newest first as a default setting was redundant. That's no longer the case.

[nsxtasy]

If you don't want long out of date topics to show up in the default search settings, the best way to do that would be to change the default on the DATE, not on the SORT BY. If the default on the date were changed to "past 12 months" (which is what it was before this release) or "past 5 years", that would prevent old topics from coming up (unless you override the defaults, which you can then do).

However, please don't change the default sort order! "Best Match" is a much much MUCH better way of sorting results than "Newest first". The reason you may see older topics first is because they had the search terms in the TITLES - which means they are almost certainly more useful than a topic that just mentions the search term in passing, in a post buried way deep in a topic. It makes NO sense to sort results by "Newest first". If you want an example of this, do a search on "French Laundry". When the results are sorted by Best Match, the topics which are actually about that restaurant appear at the top of the list, where you want them if you're trying to find out what people think about it. However, when the results are sorted by Newest First, you're going to get a lot of topics where the discussion is about some other restaurant and you see comments like "it's not fancy like the French Laundry". PLEASE don't go back to Newest First as the default sort criterion; Best Match is SO MUCH BETTER!!!

[Melanie Wong]

Yes, we are in agreement. "Best Match" + "Past 12 months" as default settings would better serve most folks who are searching.

Here's another poster who tried to search and said only old results came up.
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/728501

[Melanie Wong]

Here's a poster who thinks we haven't talked about sushi on the SF Bay Area board for a couple years.
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/728684
This is happening a few times a day, and those are just the folks who take the time to post. I'm sure that there are dozens more who are silent for each one who speaks up who just go away thinking that this is a lame and out-of-date site. Those people will never come back.

[nsxtasy]

>> Here's a poster who thinks we haven't talked about sushi on the SF Bay Area board for a couple years.
>> http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/728684

I posted a reply there to clarify.

[rworange]

I am glad this was just an oversite. I am glad it is being fixed. In that link you wrote

>>> Huh? When I search this forum for the word sushi, I see lots of topics that were updated within the past year. Granted, the default search settings sort topics so that those whose title is "Sushi" (no other words) appear first, and none of those are from the past year. But when you scroll down to additional results, you can find ... <<<

The deal is that few people look past the two or three search results. Your thought is ... crap, this is all old stuff and it is going to get older.

Which brings me back to the Restaurant and Bars records. When linking was replaced with tags so there was no longer any way to flag significant reports I got a similar reply ... just scroll down. People don't. I don't unless I really, really, really want soething.

For heaven's sake, people don't even scroll down a day's worth of posts on a board where they have a question to see the othe ten posts that say "First time in xxx, what's the best to eat?"

Info has to be as little work as possible to access. At least this in the works to get fixed. I hope that is soon.

[Melanie Wong]

Yep, and I did that search. The first page of results has ZERO from 2010. I scrolled through *3* pages and only saw three threads with 2010 dates. So I think addressing an inexperienced poster with "Huh" is rather unkind given the current state of things.

[rworange]

I restrainted myself from mentioning that last thoght ... but ditto.

[nsxtasy]

>> The first page of results has ZERO from 2010.

That's not true. There are two topics on the first page that were updated in 2010. And another that was updated in the past 12 months (November 2009).

>> >> I posted a reply there to clarify.
>> I think addressing an inexperienced poster with "Huh" is rather unkind given the current state of things.

Well, I went to a lot of trouble to find the most relevant topics to the search, and to post titles and links to them, to try to be as helpful as possible. But clearly, no good deed goes unpunished on Chowhound. Thanks for the kind words of appreciation, Melanie. :(

[rworange]

nsxtasy

No one should have to go through a lot of trouble to find anything on the board and that is just the point.

Seriously Melanie is the last person to be unkind on the board.

Sometimes on the board, because we can't see a person's face or hear their tone, things come across not as we intend.

Melanie didn't react any different than I did to the use of the word "huh?

In the board world it denotes ... to quote an ancient SNL skit .... "Jane, you ignorant slut" (Chevy Chase to Jane Curtan when he was stating how much smarter he was that Jane)

If you left that one word out ... it would have been a nice gesture.

Even nicer, would be acknowledging the problems posters are having such as "I know the search is a little wonkiy and is being fixed. I did some work to get answers and here's some more info"

Or something like that.

When people are having problems, first you have to acknowledge the problem or they won't listen to the rest ... or thank you for your efforts.

[Jacquilynne]

We have a bug ticket open on this, it wasn't an intentional change (the intent was to change it to 1 year limit, most relevant first).

[Melanie Wong]

Thanks for the status.