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<node id="58669" title="Considering Super Search: the Sequel" created="2001-02-15 17:03:16" updated="2005-08-10 15:48:20">
<type id="1036">
monkdiscuss</type>
<author id="33117">
footpad</author>
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[Super Search] is a great tool and I'm thankful for the influence of the steroids.

&lt;P&gt;Recent discussions have suggested a few ideas that might help make it even more powerful:&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;READMORE&gt;&lt;UL&gt;
&lt;LI&gt;&lt;P&gt;Add the ability to search within a range of Reputation.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;This would help zero in on quality posts when doing searches for generalities.  For example, a Super Search for nodes containing the words "cgi security" returns 100 nodes.  It would be nice to be able to limit the search to nodes with Reputations higher than a certain value.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;I envison this as two text boxes: MinRep and MaxRep.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;MinRep would help you ignore posts that were voted down or weren't helpful enough to gain a decent reputation.  It's not perfect, but it would help remove some of the clutter from general queries that might return more than the current limit (100 results).&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;MaxRep would help you locate nodes that were formerly [Best Nodes|Best Nodes of All Time], but have been overshadowed by more recent postings.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;For example, [Ovid] has offered some excellent advice (notably [id://20443] and [id://43389]).  These quickly rose to BNOAT and were later replaced through natural selection.  While I was able to find these again (through the Order By drop-down on [Perl Monks User Search|User Search]), it took some digging.  Fortunately, I knew who wrote them and remembered the titles to some degree, so it wasn't a lot of time.  However, a newer member may not have those advantages.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;I believe adding Reputation criteria to [Super Search] would help.  Note that it's not necessary to display the node's Reputation, just to select on it.&lt;/P&gt;&lt;/LI&gt;
&lt;LI&gt;&lt;P&gt;Number the search results&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;This should be reasonably trivial, simply enclose the current results with &amp;lt;OL&amp;gt; tags.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Aside: Curiously, the current results aren't printed with enclosing list tags.  There is a &amp;lt;/UL&amp;gt; after the criteria table (an interesting place), but no opening &amp;lt;UL&amp;gt; tag.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;This seems a cheap way to show how many results were returned.&lt;/P&gt;&lt;/LI&gt;
&lt;LI&gt;&lt;P&gt;Add a Sort By drop down similar to the one that appears on [Perl Monks User Search|User Search].&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;This would specify the ORDER BY clause of the underlying SQL query (assumption) and would help you zero in on useful nodes more quickly.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;As an example, given that previous query, it would be nice to be able to order the results by Reputation.  This would put the most highly regarded hits higher than the lesser remarks.&lt;/P&gt;&lt;/LI&gt;
&lt;LI&gt;&lt;P&gt;Include the poster's name in the results, much the same way that [Newest Nodes] does.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Continuing the example, this would help you find comments by [Ovid], [tilly], [merlyn] and other experts more quickly during your searches.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;While not completely an indicator of quality, this would help you when you're trying to find a node that you know was posted by someone, but you can't remember its exact contents or context.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;For example, "Someone posted something interesting that discussed CGI security last week.  Where *is* that node?"  [Perl Monks User Search|User Search] can help when you remember who posted the node; this would help when you can't.&lt;/P&gt;&lt;/LI&gt;
&lt;LI&gt;&lt;P&gt;Add a second (or move the current) Search button to the right of the "Words in Text" input area.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;This is strictly an ease-of-use thing.  I often search by keywords first, trying to get a sense of what to search for.  I'm also a keyboard dinosaur, vaguely resenting the times I have to move my hand from the keyboard to scroll or click.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Because the Search button is below all of the selection criteria, it's inconvenient to use keyboard-only navigation to start the search.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Placing it (or a second one) to the right of the Words in Text input strikes, I think, the right balance between flexibility and convenience.&lt;/P&gt;&lt;/LI&gt;
&lt;/UL&gt;
&lt;P&gt;I know this seems like a lot of work and hesitate to take away from our [vroom|fearless leader]'s study time, but I think these would help us find what we're looking for more quickly.  Also, most of them should be relatively trivial to implement.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Thoughts?  Feedback?&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;i&gt;--f&lt;/i&gt;</field>
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