http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=820172

Good day monks,

I was wondering if anyone else thought it might be useful to add the option to order super-search results by either thread reputation or by the initial posting reputation. Perhaps this is already a component of the search algorithm?

For instance a non-monk friend of mine just spent 30 minutes or so this morning sifting through "do vs. require" results and eventually got frustrated and left. He may not have used the most optimized search strings, but if there was a system to rank the value of the thread to its topic (by reputation), it may have steered him in the right direction more quickly.

Cheers, Hok

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Super Search by XP
by ambrus (Abbot) on Jan 28, 2010 at 17:23 UTC
Re: Super Search by XP
by LanX (Saint) on Jan 28, 2010 at 17:09 UTC
    > I was wondering if anyone else thought it might be useful ...

    Yes, at least once! -> Sorting "SuperSearch" results by votes?

    Me personally I think now that google rating produces even better results...

    You may want to consider searching by words to find more similar discussions.¹

    Cheers Rolf

    ¹) this line was appended

Re: Super Search by XP
by molecules (Monk) on Jan 28, 2010 at 16:37 UTC
Re: Super Search by Reputation
by graff (Chancellor) on Jan 30, 2010 at 03:07 UTC
    It seems to me that threads can vary widely in the amount of readership they attract (and number of votes they accumulate). Threads that get "front-paged" to The Monastery Gates tend to collect a lot more votes, regardless of any other factor. So basing anything on just the raw reputation scores is going to risk missing some good material that happens to be in relatively obscure threads.

    Something that might prove effective would be a variation on the color-shading that we see in the Recent Threads display, where node age is the property of interest, and things are bolder/darker the more recent they are.

    If the prominence scale for display is based on something like "relative node value within the thread" (possibly weighted by the overall magnitude of positive votes in the thread), the most prominent search results will usually (or often) be those that gave the best solution to a given problem (with perhaps some bias given to nodes/threads that attracted a lot of appreciative attention).

    Given that this has already been done for node age, it might not be too hard to do it for node reputation.

Re: Super Search by Reputation
by Argel (Prior) on Jan 29, 2010 at 00:30 UTC
    Reputation is heavily based on how many monks with votes left see the nodes. Because of that, there are many great nodes that have a low reputation. Just posting a question on a Saturday will likely result in lower rep (or over the holidays, etc.). It would probably be more useful to have Super Search show only nodes by e.g. merlyn, ikegami, and BrowserUK than sort based on noderep.

    Elda Taluta; Sarks Sark; Ark Arks

      Is it stored somewhere whether a node made it to the "best nodes of the day/week/month"-list?
      If yes, that info could be used in addition to the reputation to compensate for low-traffic time...
      Just an idea by Rata

        "?node_id=3989;a=%5Bikegami%5D%20%5Bmerlyn%5D%20%5BBrowserUk%5D"

        And what exactly is that supposed to do other than include the mentioned authors?

      "Super Search show only nodes by e.g. merlyn, ikegami, and BrowserUK than sort based on noderep"

      I hope you are not implying that only nodes written by BrowserUk ikegami and merlyn are deemed to be the most suitable, I'm sure they would be the first to admit that they are not always right!

        No, "e.g." is shorthand for "for example". I picked three Monks that came to mind as an example, but there are obviosuly several more. My point was (and still is) that limiting one's search to nodes by Monks that have a history of being particularly helpful and accurate will yield better results than searching on noderep.

        Elda Taluta; Sarks Sark; Ark Arks

Re: Super Search by Reputation
by hok_si_la (Curate) on Jan 29, 2010 at 15:28 UTC

    I think my main point was lost or misunderstood. Having search results based on thread/post reputation may assist those that are NEW to PM in finding the answers they are looking for more quickly. Just about everyone who had been a PM member for a while can find the answers or old posts they are looking for one way or anther. People who have never visited this site, and who stumbled across it by searching for an answer to a Perl question etc, would not know the difference between Merlyn and Wassercrats and they wouldn't know without a bit of exploration where to find the best nodes pertaining to their subject of interest.

    I do understand what Argel mentioned, and of course no reputation system could actually quantify the value of each thread, however I think that for the most part, the threads that withstand the test of time (multiple responses over weeks) would probably have the most to offer, and would probably have some of the better answers.

    Hok
      I understood your point. Mine was that there are better ways to approach this. New Monks may not know who the most prolific and helpful Monks are, but e.g. we could take the top 25 Monks based on XP that have been active recently and offer an option to only show nodes by them. I'm certain that would prove more useful than trying to use noderep directly (of course ruffling feathers, ego, etc. are potential downsides to this approach).

      Elda Taluta; Sarks Sark; Ark Arks

        Your suggestion, being XP based, is basically a reflection of the reputation approach. Reputation searching would miss gems but it would be extremely helpful overall. Setting a threshold might be nice. Only nodes 10+. That would miss few, if any, of the gems while weeding out lots of noise.

        If I ask an Excel question, I probably want an answer from jmcnamara. If I ask an inline C question, I probably want an answer from syphilis. If I ask a Moose question, I probably want an answer from stvn. If I ask an Ajax question, I am vain enough to suggest I probably want an answer from myself. None of these monks is in the top 25 or even 50.

Re: Super Search by XP
by jdporter (Paladin) on Jan 28, 2010 at 21:06 UTC
      Read & Updated
Re: Super Search by Reputation
by Xiong (Hermit) on Jan 29, 2010 at 13:10 UTC

    I humbly suggest that one should not take node reputation seriously. Voting should be taken with thought but not always is; and there are probably more nodes than votes.

    It is a nice idea, though.