Re^3: Appealing a consideration?

[davido]

From what I can tell, castaway followed protocol with regards to You can use HaXml for munging XML in Haskell. The node fell short of meeting the common sense and practical requirements of an effective node title: Single-word node titles wrek havoc with the 'Search' box at the top of your Monastery screen. So people frequently consider such titles for improvement.

The vote probably went to the affirmitive (though I didn't witness that part). castaway then edited the title to the more sensible "You can use HaXml for munging XML in Haskell", and added proper attribution: "20050219 Edit by castaway: Changed title from 'HaXml'".

You then removed the Janitor's attribution, put the title back to how it was originally, and posted this complaint.

Did you ask castaway or any of the Janitors why your single-word title might have been considered for alteration? What was the outcome of that conversation?

[grinder]

Single-word node titles wrek havoc with the 'Search' box at the top of your Monastery screen.

I really don't get it with this meme. For example, search for "Perl/Tk question" in the search bar. There are two nodes with that title, and you get a page that says "Duplicates Found"... and all the nodes with said titles... are listed! Fancy that! Praise the technology!

The only problem I am aware of is intrasite linking, however, I think that most people use the [id://nnnnn] form of linking. And that is good. Simply because it just might be that the title may very well change and then your link is in limbo.

It is very, very rare to have a node change its node_id and even then, AFAICR, it has only happened to strangedocs and superdocs or other such beasties. Certainly nothing a mere mortal could produce. So you don't want to link with [blah blah blah] because the resulting link is much more likely to rot over time.

I think that the real solution is to stop freaking out about single-node titles, and rather teach the searchers the asdfasdf trick. That is much more useful. For instance, if you search for grinder in the search field, you hit my home page. But what if you have a dim memory of an obfu that someone posted way back when, and had grinder in the title? In that case, the search bar isn't going to help you, and you are going to have to burn cycles over at super search.

But there is a lightweight solution, just add some chaff to the the seach term, e.g. grinder asdfasdf and you get a different set of results... along with the one you were looking for. Notwithstanding any eventual corrections tye will make on subtleties I've misssed, single word titles are not bad; they do not wreak havoc with searches.

And if anyone puts either of those Perl/TK questions up for consideration, do me a favour and vote Keep, ok?

[eric256]

Another point of view might be that a list of single word titles as search results is useless. Then new more verbose title is quite informative all by itself as a search result. Also single word titles are more likely to duplicate than multiword titles. Also if it is a single word "Haxml" and somebody searches for it then they get directed immediatly to this Haxml node instead of being given a list of nodes related to Haxml. Is this broken behavior? Maybe. I think the advantage of discriptive titles and better searching is far more important than single word subject lines. Then agian thats just my view, although it looks like its a majority view since these changes keep getting voted through.

[Anonymous Monk]

Another point of view might be that a list of single word titles as search results is useless. Then, by all means, fix the search functionality. It shouldn't report something that's considered useless.

Also single word titles are more likely to duplicate than multiword titles. Yes, and? One should realize that titles are just, uhm, titles. They are not a list of keywords to an index. If books can have 30 long chapters with one-word titles that don't screw up the index, certainly a one word title for a node of a few lines should be ok.

Also if it is a single word "Haxml" and somebody searches for it then they get directed immediatly to this Haxml node instead of being given a list of nodes related to Haxml. Is this broken behavior? That depends. If it's the only node with "Haxml" in the title, it's not broken. If it's a top level node whose title consists of just "Haxml", and there are no other top level nodes with "Haxml" in the title, it's not broken. If it's an 11 level deep reply, and there are other nodes with "Haxml" in the title, I'd sure call that broken behaviour.

I think the advantage of discriptive titles and better searching is far more important than single word subject lines. Now you are implying two things I disagree with. First you are implying that one word titles could not be good subject lines. That I disagree with. It doesn't mean that any one word subject line is good, but it's certainly not true that any one word subject line doesn't describe the node accurately. The second thing you imply is that the search functionality is good, and people getting send to the wrong pages, or presented a wrong list of options, is caused by people using one-word titles. I'd say, the search functionality is broken. (I haven't bothered with "search" for years - I always go straight to super search. Search seldomly gives me what I want). Don't blame the data if the algorithm is broken.