All posts in the topic Search Prototype (Short link)
Summary
- There are 27 posts — by 4 authors — in this topic.
- Latest post made by Michael JasonSmith at 2007 Sep 24 04:32 UTC
| From | File | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Richard Waid | Search in Firefox.tiff | 2007 Jul 06 22:56 UTC |
| Michael JasonSmith | feed-indicator.png | 2007 Jul 08 22:07 UTC |
I have been working on a new search interface for GroupServer. The new system has enough features and enough stability to allow me to demonstrate the prototype, even though it is far from finished. You can access it from http://groupserver.org/groups/development/search_prototype Currently, only topics are searched. * The results are displayed in temporal-order, with the most recent item at the top, as is typical for GroupServer. * The metadata displayed about each topic should be familiar: subject, group, number of posts, and the date of the last post. This is the same information as is displayed on the Topics page for a group http://groupserver.org/groups/development/messages * In addition to the standard metadata, six keywords for each topic are displayed. The keywords are extracted using the TF-IDF algorithm. This algorithm states that a good keyword appears frequently in one document (a topic, in this case) but does not occur frequently in all other documents. This works surprisingly well, but it is not perfect. Currently, the keywords are displayed with the best keyword first, but this may change to alphabetical in the future. A search may be limited to just a group, which is not the case with the current system. To do this, click on a disclosure button below the search result, and click on the link “Only search the group…”. Clicking on “Search for [related] topics” will display the results of a search that uses the topic-keywords as the search text. As is standard with searching, multiple keywords are allowed (separated by spaces). The results are combined with an inclusive-or: a search for "email post" will return all topics that contain the word "email", and all the topics that contain the word "post". This causes quite a few items to be returned when performing a related-topic search, so I may look ordering the topics by relevancy in this situation. Only individual words, not phrases, can be searched, but this will probably change in the future. However, phrase searching will be *very* slow. Only the first six topics are returned at the moment, but this will change in the future. In addition, I will add the ability to view the previous and next chunks, like the latest topics page, and the latest posts page. My schedule of items to implement is as follows. 1. Searching files, 2. Searching individual posts, 3. Integration with the rest of GroupServer, and 4. Searching user-profiles. The ultimate aim of the integration is for every topic, file, post and user-list to be generated from the same search code. So the list of topics on the site and group homepages will be a search, and clicking “View more” will take you to a search-page. It is *very* unlikely that GroupServer will support an “advanced search”, which will allow the use of Boolean operators. Most users cannot write queries with Boolean operators correctly, and those that can rarely find what they are looking for when they do. However, I will publish the API, which can be used to perform weird and wonderful searches that are not supported by the Web interface.
It is great to see that folks will be able to select a specific group to
search. Being able to sort results by date and relevancy makes sense. I look
forward to taking a look.
We have had folks say they've been pleasantly surprised to learn about similar
issues in other local issues forums via the search, so tweaking the everything
display would have value.
Will search result queries result in linkable queries? If it can look really
simple, that would be best. A google like extension would be to dump new
results into a web feed AND I've always thought it would very useful to give
group/site members (particularly for web-only folks) that ability to be
notified via e-mail when a new post on X group or across all public groups has
a set of keywords. This is how I get the Governor's staff to follow the forum -
let them get drawn in everytime his name is mentioned (almost all elected
officials or people for that matter would set a tracker on their own name.)
> Will search result queries result in linkable queries?
I think I understand what you are asking, Steve :)
1. I promise to only use HTTP GET requests for searches. The
upshot of this is that all searches will be able to be
bookmarked.
2. The posts and files results will have a link to the Web
feed for that search. I intend that the user will eventually
be able to add searches to the site homepage.
Hi All! As we have a few new members, I thought I better make a "where we are
up to" post.
I am afraid that the roll-out of search is taking a bit longer than we would
like. Currently the posted-file search is holding us up, as we have decided to
change some of the underlying infrastructure while we are at it.
Posted files are odd, as they are split in two parts: data and metadata. The
data is stored in a standard file-system. For various reasons, the metadata is
stored in a relational database (RDB) *and* the Zope object database (ZODB).
The underlying change that we are trying to make is moving all the metadata
about files into the RDB.
Hi, all! I would like to announce the alpha-release of post-searching. http://groupserver.org/groups/development/search_prototype/index.html?viewTopics=0&viewPosts=1&viewFiles=0&viewProfiles=0 Like topics and files, the posts returned by the searches are ordered by time, as generally more recent information is the more useful information (just like news). The data retuned by the search is much the same as you would see on the latest posts page for a group, such as the one GroupServer Development http://groupserver.org/groups/development/messages/posts.html However, I have also added a snippet from the body of the post. The snippet is either the first line of the post, or the first line that matches the search string http://groupserver.org/groups/development/search_prototype/index.html?searchText=search&viewTopics=0&viewPosts=1&viewFiles=0&viewProfiles=0 Currently the posts are grouped in “chunks” of six, but this will probably be raised in a subsequent release. What it will be raised to is something that I am still trying to decide, but for now you can alter the chunk-size by playing around with the "limit" argument to the search: http://groupserver.org/groups/development/search_prototype/index.html?searchText=search&viewTopics=0&viewPosts=1&viewFiles=0&viewProfiles=0&limit=12 http://groupserver.org/groups/development/search_prototype/index.html?searchText=search&viewTopics=0&viewPosts=1&viewFiles=0&viewProfiles=0&limit=24 http://groupserver.org/groups/development/search_prototype/index.html?searchText=search&viewTopics=0&viewPosts=1&viewFiles=0&viewProfiles=0&limit=48 http://groupserver.org/groups/development/search_prototype/index.html?searchText=search&viewTopics=0&viewPosts=1&viewFiles=0&viewProfiles=0&limit=96 What would you like it set to? Like most search engines, post-search supports “phrase searching”, where a number of words can be grouped together to form a phrase, such as "disabling delivery" http://groupserver.org/groups/development/search_prototype/index.html?searchText=%22disabling+delivery%22&viewTopics=0&viewPosts=1&viewFiles=0&viewProfiles=0 Be warned, using phrases slows down the search: you are usually better off searching for separate words http://groupserver.org/groups/development/search_prototype/index.html?searchText=unsubscribe+leave&viewTopics=0&viewPosts=1&viewFiles=0&viewProfiles=0 Unlike most searches, we provide a system for altering the parameters of the search to particular values: parametric search. For posts, the results can be restricted to a particular group or author. Rather than provide a lists of all visible groups, I created an interface that allows you to refine the results based on the posts that have been returned. For example, if you click on ▶ Refine under the last post in the above example, you will see the link Show only posts by Michael JasonSmith Clicking on this will display the following page http://groupserver.org/groups/development/search_prototype/index.html?searchText=unsubscribe%20leave&authorId=michaeljasonsmith&viewTopics=0&viewPosts=1&viewFiles=0&viewProfiles=0 Which is all the posts that I have written, on GroupServer.Org, that contain the words "unsubscribe" or "leave". You can perform similar refinement for posts in groups: * All posts in GroupServer Development http://groupserver.org/groups/development/search_prototype/index.html?groupId=development&viewTopics=0&viewPosts=1&viewFiles=0&viewProfiles=0 * All posts in GroupServer Development written by Steven Clift http://groupserver.org/groups/development/search_prototype/index.html?groupId=development&authorId=stevenc&viewTopics=0&viewPosts=1&viewFiles=0&viewProfiles=0 The parametric-search is our greatest departure from the norm, when it comes to searching, so I would really appreciate feedback on it. There are a few things that I have not done (yet). I hope to have these done by the end of the week, unless something gets in my way. 1. The style of the page is pretty ugly. All the "span" and "div" elements are there, with class attributes set, but I have not had time to apply the styles to the page. 2. I do not have an ATOM feed of the post-search. The idea is to allow users to subscribe to a Web feed of a particular search, such as all posts by me, or all posts in a particular group that contain the words "governor". 3. I have not made a view of the results that uses a table, or list, to structure the page. Future feature enhancements that I am thinking about — but doubt that I will get around to implementing — are stemming and ordering the posts by something other than date. Stemming is the process of determining the root of a word, such as “post” for “posting” or “posted”. A search that used stemming would return more results than one that did not. However, it would require a significant amount of work to add stemming to our system, and we have bigger fish to fry ☺ It would be nice to allow the user to order the results by something other than time, such as the relevancy score of the post or topic. However, with the ability to refine the results by author and group, the need to reorder the results should be reduced.
On Jul 3, 2007, at 9:45 PM, Michael JasonSmith wrote: > Hi, all! I would like to announce the alpha-release of post-searching. > http://groupserver.org/groups/development/search_prototype/ > index.html?viewTopics=0&viewPosts=1&viewFiles=0&viewProfiles=0 Michael: Looking very good. I like the "refine" options. I am also excited about the ATOM feed of specific searches. I can envision making some interesting uses out of that, once I've had a chance to see it in action. Keep it coming..... Tim Erickson
As Tim asked so nicely, Web feeds for post searching is now going. There are
still *many* improvements that I need to make, but you will get the basic idea.
Michael: I know that this is still in progress, so I won't go into detail on the "issues" that I've noticed. BUT, I thought that you might be interested in at least a few comments for now. > The feed-link is up now. If you look at a post-results page with a > sane > browser (Firefox, IE 7, Opera 9, Safari) you will see the link to the > feed to the right of the URL. #1) I'm not finding this (feed-link) in either Firefox or Safari (for Mac). Might just be me. I'm attaching a screen shot from Firefox, in case I'm just not seeing it - See Below. #2) I usually work in Firefox, when I opened Safari I think that the search was working at first, but then after I tried playing with the "limit" it appears to have broke (only in Safari, still works in Firefox). Now, when I do a search in Safari, I get the same results every time and the URL looks like this: http://forums.e-democracy.org/search/ index.html?------------0xKhTmLbOuNdArY%0D%0AContent-Disposition:% 20form-data;%20name=%22searchText%22%0D%0A%0D%0Apiano%0D% 0A------------0xKhTmLbOuNdArY%0D%0AContent-Disposition:%20form-data;% 20name=%22viewTopics%22%0D%0A%0D%0A1%0D%0A------------0xKhTmLbOuNdArY% 0D%0AContent-Disposition:%20form-data;%20name=%22viewPosts%22%0D%0A%0D %0A0%0D%0A------------0xKhTmLbOuNdArY%0D%0AContent-Disposition:% 20form-data;%20name=%22viewFiles%22%0D%0A%0D%0A1%0D% 0A------------0xKhTmLbOuNdArY%0D%0AContent-Disposition:%20form-data;% 20name=%22viewProfiles%22%0D%0A%0D%0A1%0D% 0A------------0xKhTmLbOuNdArY%0D%0AContent-Disposition:%20form-data;% 20name=%22groupIds%22%0D%0A%0D%0A['']%0D%0A------------0xKhTmLbOuNdArY %0D%0AContent-Disposition:%20form-data;%20name=%22authorId%22%0D%0A%0D %0A%0D%0A------------0xKhTmLbOuNdArY--%0D%0A #3) FINALLY - Are you ready for these kinds of comments/observations? Or should I hold off until you get it more stable?? Tim Erickson
> I'm attaching a screen shot from Firefox, in
> case I'm just not seeing it - See Below.
I did send the attachment last time. But, it did not come through.
I'm trying again.
Tim Erickson
On Fri, 2007-07-06 at 11:52 -0500, Tim Erickson wrote:
> #3) FINALLY - Are you ready for these kinds of comments/observations?
> Or should I hold off until you get it more stable??
I think I speak for everyone on the development side of GroupServer when
I say that if you find bugs (and the two issues you have reported are
definitely bugs), they should be reported.
Sorry, just a test to see if the attachment goes through correctly for
me.
--Richard
On Sat, 2007-07-07 at 10:51 +1200, Richard Waid wrote:
> Sorry, just a test to see if the attachment goes through correctly for
> me.
Aha! This particular domain (@groupserver.org) was setup to use a
seriously legacy email processor ... it just stripped attachments :) (I
recognise the irony).
Attachment should come through this time!
The following file was added to this topic:
Back to the topic of searching :) Tim, you are quite right in that the first search page does not have a feed. http://groupserver.org/r/file/807746-2007-07-06T225623Z A feed is only available for post-searches, and the first search-page displays topics and files, not posts. If you go to a post-search page http://groupserver.org/groups/development/search_prototype/index.html?authorId=richardw&viewTopics=0&viewPosts=1&viewFiles=0&viewProfiles=0 you should see the link to the feed in the location bar of your browser. To answer your other question, I would love any feedback you can give me!
The following file was added to this topic:
The search-prototype is now generating the latest topics-list on the homepage of GroupServer.Org http://groupserver.org/index.html For performance reasons, the latest-topics list is loaded after the rest of the page, using AJAX magic, thanks to the Prototype JavaScript library. I have tested it in Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Opera, and it gets a "works for me" :) Each entry in the latest-topics list contains three lines, and was designed to look similar to Google, Yahoo! and MSN. The topic-title is first. If the topic contains posts with files, then the file-icons are listed after the topic title. This gives a very quick way of seeing which topics that contain files, and which topics contain a particular file-type. The icons themselves link to the post, in the topic, that contains the file. The next line lists the tags (alias keywords) in the topic. As before, the tags are automatically generated, and are listed in order of importance. Richard has performed some optimisation miracles to get the tag generation quick as possible. The final line contains the rest of the metadata related to the topic: the group that contains the topic, the size of the topic, the name of the last user who posted, and the date of the last post. The date is a mess — to be frank. Richard and I plan to attack dates with the Stick of Internationalisation on Monday (NZST).
Richard and I have fixed the dates, so they are formatted nicely, and use the
correct time-zone. While the search-results prompted us to change how we
present dates, all dates should have been altered.
While I have you attention, I would be *very* appreciative if people could test
out the homepage for GroupServer.org, and tell me if the latest-topics list is
visible. I tested the page under Windows XP (IE7, Firefox, Opera, and Safari)
and Linux (Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, and IE6 on Wine) and it all seems to
work, but I have had a report of the page causing an error in Firefox on
Windows.
On Jul 13, 2007, at 12:33 AM, Michael JasonSmith wrote:
> The next line lists the tags (alias keywords) in the topic. As
> before, the tags are automatically generated, and are listed in
> order of importance. Richard has performed some optimisation
> miracles to get the tag generation quick as possible.
I've been thinking about this for a while and just decided to reply
now - with some feedback. Great work overall, but I'm a little
confused about the "user task" (sorry - I just had to say that) in
displaying the tags on this page:
http://groupserver.org/index.html
I can see where the tags might be very helpful in searches. BUT, on a
page like this, it seems to me that the automatically generated tags
offer very little to the visitor and take up valuable space.
When you compare http://groupserver.org/index.html to http://forums.e-
democracy.org/
I like the additional white space on the Groupserver page, but I
think that each entry could get by with only two lines.
Summary of Posts -- GroupServer Development
1 post — by Michael JasonSmith at Jul 23 23:42 UTC
Search Prototype (File Icon here) -- GroupServer Development
15 posts — latest post by Michael JasonSmith at Jul 16 06:33 UTC
This would save lots of space. If the tags were generated by a human,
I might see the value of listing them, but as long as they are
automatically generated, I don't see them adding much value to this
page.
Anyway, this is just some feedback. Eager to hear if I'm missing the
point. :-)
Tim Erickson
Thanks for you feedback, Tim! We really appreciate it. The user of the tags is an infrequent, or first-time, visitor to the site. The task of such a visitor is to determine what is discussed on a site, or in a group. The subject-line helps with this task, and the tags reinforce, supplement, or correct the topic title. What I was aiming to increase the "information scent" of the page, to take a term from the information foraging model of Web browsing. Take the Canterbury Issues Forum as an example http://forums.e-democracy.org/s/index.html?&g=canterburyissues&t=1&p=0&f=0&r=0 The "Traffic Congestion" topic discusses what? Traffic congestion probably, but from the tags we also know that public transport is covered, and that the discussion is talking about congestion in a city, rather than roads being blocked by cows being moved to a milking shed. What about the "Richard West" topic? From the topic title we know that it contains posts by, or about, Richard West, but from the tags we also know that it is also a traffic-related topic. Automatically generated tags are not perfect. Like all computing systems they run by the principal of Garbage In, Garbage Out. The "Access" topic, in the above example, contains few posts, and none of the tags exemplify the topic. (It is quite fascinating to read the topic, and try and figure out why "people" is the top tag.) However, in this example, the metadata from the user ("Access") is also not particularly good either, neither is the title of the topic "Richard West". Overall, I have found that the tags add value as they help find information, and give a good impression what is discussed in topics, groups, and sites. I do concede that the name "Tag" is misleading. I suggest that we drop the name altogether, and format the tags in a monospace font, such as Courier. That will give the impression that the words are from the topic-content, and remove the source of confusion. The reason the group name is on a line by itself is to make it easier to scan the list of topics for groups. A common task is to go the homepage of a site and establish what is being posted where. Placing the group name at the end of the topic title makes it harder to scan, as all the group-names are located in different positions both horizontally and vertically, rather than just vertically. (It causes layout issues with the size of different parts of the line.) I hope this addresses your concerns, Tim :)
I have added a prototype file-search to the search interface on OnlineGroups.Net. I have not added a link, but you can get to it by playing with the URL http://groupserver.org/s/index.html?s=&g=&a=&t=0&p=0&f=1&r=0&i=0&l=6 Comments are welcome ☺
As I have received no comments about the prototype file-search, I will roll it
out across the board later today :-)
I haven't had time to review in-depth to formulate a response, but was
wondering if you compared Google search responses to your own as a test of
sorts.
Also, since this group only attracted a small number of folks so far, perhaps a
"test it" query should go more widely (perhaps you did).
Steve
Michael JasonSmith wrote:
> As I have received no comments about the prototype file-search, I will roll
it out across the board later today :-)
On Sun, 2007-09-23 at 20:45 -0500, Steven Clift wrote:
> I haven't had time to review in-depth to formulate a response, but was
> wondering if you compared Google search responses to your own as a
> test of sorts.
I'm curious as to how that would that work exactly? Google doesn't index
the majority of our groups, or even a good minority of groups with files
to formulate any kind of useful comparison, as far as I can tell.
Google is also incapable of narrowing the search by group or author
(since it doesn't has no ability to determine how those are defined in
our context).
Thanks for your response, Steve. First, I will reiterate Richard's query: how
do you envision the comparative test with Google? Second, I am not worried
about the roll-out, as it introduces a rarely used feature, that has little
chance to cause harm for most users ☺
Richard Waid wrote: > On Sun, 2007-09-23 at 20:45 -0500, Steven Clift wrote: >> I haven't had time to review in-depth to formulate a response, but was >> wondering if you compared Google search responses to your own as a >> test of sorts. > > I'm curious as to how that would that work exactly? Google doesn't index > the majority of our groups, or even a good minority of groups with files > to formulate any kind of useful comparison, as far as I can tell. > > Google is also incapable of narrowing the search by group or author > (since it doesn't has no ability to determine how those are defined in > our context). > I am interested in whether our users will find what they are looking for. My gut tells me that searches started from a specific group should start with results just from that group, then have the option to broaden. Here is one: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_qdr=all&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=graffiti+site:forums.e-democracy.org&spell=1 From GS: http://forums.e-democracy.org/s/index.html?s=graffiti Also, I am often searching months back in our Board group for files/items. Displaying an option to display results from specific months might be nice. When it comes to scanning for results I wouldn't mind an option to list more results. Note how DGroups allows you to see 100 posts and sort by subject and author: http://www.dgroups.org/groups/dg-os-study/index.cfm?op=dsp_bydate&listname=dg-os-study&cat_id=2378 Here I can see 30 results quickly: http://marc.info/?l=zope3-users&w=2&r=1&s=plone&q=b One idea for navigating older stuff, add a Topics stat line and make the number clickable to results: http://groupserver.org/groups/development/stats.html
I agree that people should be given the *option* to search within a group, but Nielsen says scoped search is dangerous as a default http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010513.html Adding the group-search option will require Alice and I to finish our rebuild of groups. I will add group searching as an option once this done. The limit on the number of search results is set to a low value to stop the server being overwhelmed. It can be extended, by setting the "l" (limit) value in the URL http://groupserver.org/s?l=60 Indeed, the link to "More topics…" on the site home page does just this! Not being able to search a period is a limitation that I am happy to live with. First, we do represent documents in a temporal order, so the month is able to be found. Second, temporal-period selection interfaces are complex, and I wanted to avoid "advanced" search. Finally, people are poor at remembering dates… It appears that “dates usually are not explicitly represented in memory”, even though autobiographical memory is a chronology (Larsen et al., 1999). Research into using time as a cue shows that people are not good at remembering when an even occurred, but are good at remembering the order of events (Michon, 1972; Loftus and Marburger, 1983; Wagenaar, 1986; Larsen et al., 1999; Anderson, 2005). Czerwinski and Horvitz (2002) found that people over-estimate time periods by 144.9%, while Larsen et al. (1999) showed that people are able to remember the exact date of an event 10% of the time. Anderson, C. J. (2005). Calendar and reverse calendar effects: Time peaks in memory as a function of temporal cues. Memory, 13(2):113–123. Czerwinski, M. and Horvitz, E. (2002). Memory for daily computing events. In Faulkner, X., Finlay, J., and Detienne, F., editors, People and Computers xvi: Memorable Yet Invisible, pages 230–245, London, United Kingdom. British Computer Society, Springer-Verlag, New York, New York. Available from http://research.microsoft.com/users/marycz/ hci2002final.pdf. Larsen, S. F., Thompson, C. P., and Hansen, T. (1999). Time in auto- biographical memory. In Rubin, D. C., editor, Remembering Our Past: Studies in Autobiographical Memory, pages 129–156. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom, paperback edition. Reprint of the hardback edition (1995). Loftus, E. F. and Marburger, W. (1983). Since the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, has anyone beaten you up? Improving the accuracy of retrospective reports with landmark events. Memory & Cognition, 11(2):114–120. Michon, J. A. (1972). Processing of temporal information and the cognitive theory of time experience. In Fraser, J. T., Haber, F. C., and Müller G. H., editors, The Study of Time, pages 242–258. Springer-Verlag, Berlin. Proceedings of the First Conference of the International Society for the Study of Time, Oberwolfach (Black Forest) — West Germany 1969.
On Sun, 2007-09-23 at 21:39 -0500, Steven Clift wrote: > I am interested in whether our users will find what they are looking > for. My gut tells me that searches started from a specific group > should start with results just from that group, then have the option > to broaden. Well, obviously we are interested in that too ;) I have proposed the same thing, regarding the expectation that users will have if the search is started within a group. > Here is one: > > http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_qdr=all&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=graffiti+site:forums.e-democracy.org&spell=1 > > >From GS: > http://forums.e-democracy.org/s/index.html?s=graffiti Yes, I see that. To my mind the google search results were much less useful, given that visitors to a site are typically interested in the more recent events. The equivalent post search returns this, BTW: http://forums.e-democracy.org/s/index.html?s=graffiti&p=1&t=0 I've actually used post and topic searching quite frequently, and it has typically done a pretty good job. > Also, I am often searching months back in our Board group for > files/items. Displaying an option to display results from specific > months might be nice. See below. I'm far from convinced that specific months is useful, but time ranges almost certainly are (I have no idea what I would have talked about in January this year, but I know that we discussed search sometime in the last 6 months, for example). > When it comes to scanning for results I wouldn't mind an option to list > more results. Note how DGroups allows you to see 100 posts and sort by > subject and author: > http://www.dgroups.org/groups/dg-os-study/index.cfm?op=dsp_bydate&listname=dg-os-study&cat_id=2378 Yes, that's just an interface change, the feature itself is supported already. > Here I can see 30 results quickly: > http://marc.info/?l=zope3-users&w=2&r=1&s=plone&q=b 30 almost completely irrelevant results ... From a quick flick through those results, only about 30 actually had *anything* to do with plone. Note that I actually had to click on every single link to find which ones were relevant... I find our results *much* more useful for that use case (searching for a broad term): http://groupserver.org/s/index.html?s=plone I can immediately see from the keywords of the topics which ones are most relevant to me, and the posts view of the results gives me even mor relevance. I may be completely biased, but I know which one I'd prefer to use from those two... > One idea for navigating older stuff, add a Topics stat line and make the number clickable to results: > http://groupserver.org/groups/development/stats.html We don't have any significant 'advanced' search options *yet*. I do suspect that Mike may have something to contribute when it comes to temporal ordering, given that his 196 page PhD thesis was entitled "The Temporal Organisation of Documents and Versions: A User-Centred Investigation" ;) Thanks for that Steven, it was a worthwhile exercise. I agree there are still some tweaks to be made -- to *me* it feels as if we're on the right track here anyway.
On Sun, 2007-09-23 at 21:39 -0500, Steven Clift wrote: > One idea for navigating older stuff, add a Topics stat line and make the number clickable to results: > http://groupserver.org/groups/development/stats.html Mike and I were just discussing this, and have decided that this would, in fact, be pretty darn cool :) Basically, on the 'results' page, have a little clickable histogram of the posts by date, clicking along it would result in suitably refined results. Goes someway to solving the problem of not being able to remember when a post was actually made.
The interface Richard and I are talking about is similar to “Sparklines” by Edward Tufte (Wikipedia came through for me http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_tufte ). It is a cute idea, and could be quite useful, but I do not see any of us having a chance to implement this until after GroupServer 1.0 has released. I have an idea for a barking mad overview+context interface, but that is something for much later — such as Granita http://groupserver.org/groupserver/roadmap/#granita ☺