Search Architecture

[ToonArmy]

The accuracy of search is based on content. The accuracy of tagging is based on arbitrary information entered by a user. Every seen YouTube's tags?

That is no reason not to include the functionality.

[jwxie]

The accuracy of search is based on content. The accuracy of tagging is based on arbitrary information entered by a user. Every seen YouTube's tags?

Youtube is an example of "lame and useless tag" because (1) it is only for video, (2) people go on Youtube for fun. They don't care what tag means and viewers only goes to see videos. They use the side-list video to get to another video, not through search or tags.

But as a community, people will somehow come to a point and realize a good way to tag, and this is why (as I suggest) we need to make tag open to users to edit, not a privilege to OP.

My point is not to get accuracy - this can never be done. Funny how when I type in my gmail into google search, and returns nothing when I use it for almost any website that requires an email address.

We need another alternative that can be a bonus to the regular search. Remember, tags are use for quick search. A lot of sites also implement tags because they do come to optimizations (instead of running through everything). I will leave tags to expert to explain why it may be good, especially people who have written tags mod for phpBB3 (like Highway).

A good modern tag is ( each [] is like a box)

[php] x 10000
[mysql] x 2393
[header] x 453

if we can do a tag search like
[php] x [mysql] x [header] you probably can get down to very good result in the shortest time (compare to a regular search). I do not know how accurate my statement is, but logically yes, assuming those contents are pretty close to what I am looking for (based on the tag definition)

[Phil]

The accuracy of search is based on content. The accuracy of tagging is based on arbitrary information entered by a user. Every seen YouTube's tags?

That is no reason not to include the functionality.

I agree however relying on it for searching as was suggested is just plain senseless IMHO.

To be quite honest jwxie you are lying to yourself if you say that tag-based search alone can be more accurate for specific searches in all reasonable instances. I have seen boards that rely on tagging for various things and the tags tend to either be inaccurate or nonexistent. Perhaps as a supplemental feature, sure, but to rely on it for searching will end up very poorly -- a far better method would be to use a more powerful backend like Lucene which is far more accurate/full-featured.

[jwxie]

lol I never said to replace the regular search with my tags. (I hope this is not a heated discussion - I don't want people to stop our discussions)


I said to include tags can be alternative. Whether users use it or not, that's not our concern. The concern is to build a better search. I do not have any comment on the current search architecture, since it is a very complicated thing.
But as I have suggested, there could be million ways to implement tag search

You can do
[php] x [mysql] x [tutorial] to be your main focus (like in regular search, you can specific which forums to be searched), and then you can enter some detail keywords. This is one way.

or another way, any user can just click on
[php] and get all sorts of posts with php (yeah this is not search, I don't why this user want a huge search for php, but that's not our concern)

The problem is how can we help to build better search. One feature to be considered is definitely tags. As someone has mentioned how Google sorts with keywords and their frequency. IMO, tags can be use for that purpose, in some ways.

But back to the main point - the implementation is a technical debate, but the objective itself does help search. And I must emphasis this, if we ever want to include tags into phpBB4, we MUST make tagging A PUBLIC THING, both users and OP can edit them.

[Phil]

I'd honestly rather see that as an available search backend type of thing rather than anything inherently enabled/required/standard. I've yet to see tagging work in any kind of common forum setup.

[jwxie]

[php] x [mysql] x [tutorial] to be your main focus (like in regular search, you can specific which forums to be searched), and then you can enter some detail keywords. This is one way.

Treat this thought (my idea) like a regular search, a new idea about tags in search process

[php] x [mysql] x [tutorial] < ---- these are like selected forums in a regular search

Now I only want to search certain keywords, for example, "login+session"
You may think this is redundant, but I am really narrowing down some contents - of course not as good as regular search (well my example is lame anyway).

Another good reason to have tag is that we can introduce the idea of "search suggestion" to phpBB4.
Search engine like google, as users type something into the search bar, "wik", Google will instantly suggest a list of possible good keywords, let say, wiki, wikipedia, etc.

As someone has mentioned how Google sorts with keywords and their frequency. IMO, tags can be use for that purpose, in some ways.

Rather we include tags or not, my latter idea (suggesting keywords) can be useful sometime. But you see how I can branch off this from tag system? There are many ways to implement tags. One reason people don't see tags useful is because most sites have use the wrong tag architecture. They did not build it right, did not use it right and did not implement it right.

[Eelke]

Search suggestions could be done now, with the native search; it already contains a search word list

[onehundredandtwo]

I said to include tags can be alternative. Whether users use it or not, that's not our concern. The concern is to build a better search. I do not have any comment on the current search architecture, since it is a very complicated thing.
But as I have suggested, there could be million ways to implement tag search

Remember that phpBB is designed to just be a bulletin board, not everything else. Besides the fact that not many people actually use tags, I don't see the problem with tagging becoming just a MOD or component - is it really a necessary feature? AFAIK tagging isn't really a commonly requested feature in phpBB3, and I don't see any reason why it should be in phpBB4.

Just my opinion.

[Eelke]

"Tagging" doesn't have to be free tagging, where users come up with the tags. You could also given them the option of picking from a certain set of tags. What I have often thought about is the ability to put a single topic in different forums. That's really the same thing, in a way. This is not really related to search anymore, though.

[Phil]

"Tagging" doesn't have to be free tagging, where users come up with the tags. You could also given them the option of picking from a certain set of tags. What I have often thought about is the ability to put a single topic in different forums. That's really the same thing, in a way. This is not really related to search anymore, though.

That's more of the canonical-type tagging that something like Vanilla emphasises, no?