Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 12:57:06 -0700 From: "Steve Franks" <stevefranks@ieee.org> To: "John Baldwin" <jhb@freebsd.org> Cc: doc@freebsd.org, "Simon L. Nielsen" <simon@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: The search box on www.freebsd.org.. Message-ID: <539c60b90705101257p35faaa9fm1d5f1db8561c92da@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <200705101421.16420.jhb@freebsd.org> References: <200705101146.56279.jhb@freebsd.org> <20070510170755.GB1835@zaphod.nitro.dk> <200705101421.16420.jhb@freebsd.org>
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On 5/10/07, John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org> wrote: > On Thursday 10 May 2007 01:07:57 pm Simon L. Nielsen wrote: > > On 2007.05.10 11:46:56 -0400, John Baldwin wrote: > > > SUCKS/BLOWS CHUNKS/etc. > > > > > > Really, it's bad. I just typed in 'logo' to find the page about logo > usage, > > > and it returned 0 results, not even http://www.freebsd.org/logo.html. > That's > > > exceedingly lame. Its worse than having no search box at all because > people > > > will try to _use_ it and then get frustrated. It should either be killed, > or > > > it should be replaced with something that actually _works_ (probably it > > > should make use of Y!, Google, or Rambler.ru something to do the search). > > > > I think most people agree with that, the problem is that it takes some > > time to get right and there currently aren't that many active doc > > committers since they over time seem to gravitate towards src... > > > > doc are unfortunatly not as good as src, and even more ports, at > > getting new people. > > Then perhaps we should at least turn it off for now until we can fix it? > > -- > John Baldwin > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-doc@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-doc > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-doc-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" > Just my unneeded opinion of assent - as a newbie, I frequently get my questions answered on freebsd-questions, and the answer is often "read this handbook page", which, of course, never came up in the search I just did for topic X. Unfortunately, takes a very smart human to make a computer as smart at guessing what another human is asking as another human. I've yet to try an "advanced" google search, and confine it to the freebsd handbook pages, but I suspect that might be a good option. Another bias I have found personally to work in my advantage at most times is to always prefer a "browse" option to a "search" option. Probably I should try that with the handbook also, although I have to rely on my understanding of the topic of each chapter... Google being the rather open company they are, I'm sure we could add a link to the (top, in my opinion) of the search results page, titled, "not finding what you are looking for? try: <link>", with several of these ideas, namely, "http://www.google.com/search?as_q=&hl=en&num=10&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freebsd.org%2Fdoc%2Fen_US.ISO8859-1%2Fbooks%2Fhandbook%2F&as_rights=&safe=images" One could be added for the manpages online as well - amazing how many newbies have crying babies, etc. in the background and never even bother to click the "documentation" link if the search fails ;) Steve
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