Improved Searching

[CharlieT]

One of the most impressive things about SOS is the massive amount of information it contains. Many of its members have done an impressive amount of research and have an impressive amount of knowledge about how to build models, and I often use it to find out what they know. The difficulty is that it's often difficult to dig this information out. This difficulty is not unique to SOS, but to all other ship modelling forums as well.

One of the biggest problems I have is that when I search for something, I often get a large number of "hits", many of which are of limited relevance. I am wondering, therefore, if it would be possible (and not cost prohibitive) to add a feature that makes it possible to use Boolean operators. The ability to use these operators is typically found in large databases, and using these databases would be nearly impossible without these operators. Let me give a trivial example of what I mean.

Let's say I'm interested in how to make a build board. Clearly, if I search on "build" or "board" I will get a massive number of irrelevant results. I can narrow them down a lot by using Boolean operators, which are AND, OR, and NOT. For example, with these operators, I can search using the terms (build AND board). This brings up all entries that use the phrase "build board." It won't bring up all relevant entries, though, because some folks call it a building board, and others call it a construction board. So, to account for this, I can search on (build OR building OR construction) AND (board). This will give me a pretty clean and comprehensive set of results.

You can use these operators for all kinds of searches, ranging from the deck planking on the HMS Victory to whether I should use CA glue to keep the ends of my rigging lines from fraying.

I don't know whether it would cost too much to add this functionality, but it would be very helpful, so I thought I'd ask. Thank you in advance for your replies.

 

[Dave Stevens (Lumberyard)]

this is a problem with all forums information gets buried very quickly or a tip or instruction gets lost within a thread. Another problem is if you do not know the term such as how to shape a garboard plank if you do not know what a garboard plank is you cannot search for it. The best idea was long ago there was a Yahoo model ship forum that had a librarian. What he did was when new posts were added and there was a good tip or piece of information he would take snips copy and paste them into a data base. There were categories such as paint, glue, tips on rigging, deck planking etc. it was a long searchable list of topics. The idea was brought up here a few years back but the problem was no one was willing to fill the position of librarian or to create a library staff.

 

[Corsair]

The other option is to use quote marks (") around the phrase. So you can search for "building board".

 

[CharlieT]

I'm finding this a fun discussion so, at the risk of being obnoxious, I'd like to make a couple of additional comments.

What I'm suggesting is not a new idea. ALL of the big databases that contain articles use Boolean operators. I'm most familiar with PubMed, but similar databases exist for engineering, all of the sciences, economics, and more. These databases each contain millions of articles. Using a librarian to read all of them and sort them into relevant topics isn't possible. Besides, the way a librarian divides things into different compartments would heavily depend on which librarian was going through these articles because different librarians might think different topics are important and, therefore, that different topics are worth cataloging, or may catalogue them in different ways. Using a librarian also depends on the librarian having the ability of knowing which topics are important to everybody, and I don't think it's possible to anticipate what everybody is going to search for. So, I'm just not convinced that using a librarian is the best way. It certainly isn't the cheapest.

Using quotation marks is also limited. For example "building board" does not pick up "construction board" or "build board." Further, it's really difficult to find a phrase I can use to search for the deck planking pattern of the HMS Victory, because I have to enclose exactly the right phrase in quotes, or the search won't find it.

Certainly, there will be people who don't know the phrase garboard plank (I think back to how long it took me to figure out what a wing transom was), but there will be at least some people who do. I understand, therefore, that using Boolean operators will not improve searching for everybody, but it will improve searching some people. In my opinion, this is better than improving things for nobody. There is a lot of important information that is buried and lost on modelling forums, and that's a shame.

I know I'm fighting a losing battle here, but I really thank you for the opportunity to air my views.

 

[Corsair]

Using quotation marks is also limited. For example "building board" does not pick up "construction board" or "build board." Further, it's really difficult to find a phrase I can use to search for the deck planking pattern of the HMS Victory, because I have to enclose exactly the right phrase in quotes, or the search won't find it.

yes, you are correct and I was aware of that. I work(ed) in IT.
You can also use math operators such as building+board as an example.