what I would like from the code warriors
is an explanation of the search engine. I have had terrible luck using the search function, resulting in about 50% of my submissions being dupes without my realizing it.
YES I SEARCH. I use what I assume are likely tags, and not-so-likely tags. However, the dupes often have the very tags and/or titles I myself used! Now, Obviously I am doing something wrong as per the search engine but not really knowinbg how it searches and how it uses tags, my only education will be trial and error. As someone pointed out, sift is MUCH bigger now and trial and error is not a good way to educate the masses.
I realize the code warriors are busy with more interesting things but honestly this is starting to get on my nerves: I submitted a dupe of http://www.videosift.com/video/How-We-Met and http://www.videosift.com/video/Web-20-The-Machine-is-Using-Us-very-cool-class-outline (as examples) and yet three searches (for each) with differnt tags netted NO evidence of those vids. I'm not stupid nor am I some kinda intarwebby n00b; I was a code warrior myself back in the days of COBOL. If I just had some inkling of how the search engine works (logic? logic modifiers? exact terms? stubs?) I am sure I could do much better and stop wasting the more seasoned sifters time with tracking down my dupes.
Please... all I want for christmas is no more dupes.
YES I SEARCH. I use what I assume are likely tags, and not-so-likely tags. However, the dupes often have the very tags and/or titles I myself used! Now, Obviously I am doing something wrong as per the search engine but not really knowinbg how it searches and how it uses tags, my only education will be trial and error. As someone pointed out, sift is MUCH bigger now and trial and error is not a good way to educate the masses.
I realize the code warriors are busy with more interesting things but honestly this is starting to get on my nerves: I submitted a dupe of http://www.videosift.com/video/How-We-Met and http://www.videosift.com/video/Web-20-The-Machine-is-Using-Us-very-cool-class-outline (as examples) and yet three searches (for each) with differnt tags netted NO evidence of those vids. I'm not stupid nor am I some kinda intarwebby n00b; I was a code warrior myself back in the days of COBOL. If I just had some inkling of how the search engine works (logic? logic modifiers? exact terms? stubs?) I am sure I could do much better and stop wasting the more seasoned sifters time with tracking down my dupes.
Please... all I want for christmas is no more dupes.
6 Comments
twiddlesIt does not help that searching from different places yields different results, but here are some things to think about when searching:
a) Searching for "How We Met" is not the same as searching for How We Met
b) All search terms must be found in order for a video to be returned in the results (unless using advanced search and prefixing with '-')
c) The default search method is "Most Relevant", but sometimes I get different results when using advanced search and searching by "Newest" ("Most Releveant" will search titles, tags and description; not sure about "Newest")
smibbosee, this is the kind of info that's talking about; with more precise understanding of how the search engine works comes more precise matches. when i searched for "the machine is us/ing us" i got no matches with machine, web, web2 or us/ing... but if i had put it in quotes?
i think perhaps an FAQ on the search engine is all that's needed.
choggieusually, some of the users who have been here a while, suggest that it may be a dupe, in some cases, like yesterday when another user was about to sift a post that was a dupe, when they could not find it because of the title, i happened to be chatting with them, told them the title I had used, and they found it....
The tags should contain the jyst of the post, and iffn yer to associatively dysfunctional, or linear, one may have a hard time finding it.....
Also, smibbo, I found early on, like yourself, that as always, I am about 10 miles and 2 days behind the "what's popular" curve.......Get Creative!!
arvanasmibbo, I would suggest using Google to search VideoSift. I have commented before that I think the on-site search feature is pretty poor; it rarely comes up with much by way of results (including the advanced search).
With Google, you can restrict a search to a particular site using the "site:" search term, so for example a search term of:
site:videosift.com machine using
comes up with 785 results.
MINKmaking antidupe search goodness should be a top priority here. there shouldn't be any need for advanced knowledge or faqs, dupes should just be found, bingo.
smibboarvana thank you, that's a perfect suggestion for dealing with my dupe problem. The larger problem, however, is why even have a search engine if one cannot really use it? Even just an explanation of why kind of engine it is would go a long way in helping.
MINK yes I totally agree, for the good of the sift. Just because some of us can search (now that arvana has given me the secret to success) doesn't mean we should be failing to help those who are new.
I mean, we want to drive traffic here, right? What good will a fancy new layout do if a new person comes here to try it out and gets frustrated or disgusted because they can't net any good vids from a search?
Discuss...
Enable JavaScript to submit a comment.