constrain User Search with the "showtype" param

Dear Monks,

sometimes, dealing with a specific problem, I remember that <insert your name here> wrote a meditation about it which I happened to stumble upon, but I don't remember its title. How to get at it? There's Super Search you say.

Ok, I go there, leave "Match text containing" text box empty, "Match authors" gets <insert your name here>, then "Search the following sections: [X] Meditations", further down "[X] Don't include replies" has to be set, then I hit "Search" and I please am patient after submitting my search.

But then, there's the showtype parameter to Perl Monks User Search, except that there's no combo box where you could select e.g. "Meditations" from. You have to add the parameter to the URL as e.g. &showtype=perlmeditation to constrain the search to Meditations.

With a Node Type combo box in Perl Monks User Search, all I had to do is enter the monk name, select the Node Type and hit "Search".

I wonder why it is not there. Adding a combo box for Node types to constrain the search would be trivial (just a bit of code reordering). The layout of the paramenter table could be

   Author: |________________|                     show |__50| nodes
 Order by: |_Newest_First_|v|              starting at |___0| .
Node type: |_All_Types____|v| [ ] Show categorised Q&A (Why?) |Search|
[download]

which doesn't increase the vertical table size.

Of course, as ysth notes, "adding additional filters means the sort-by-reputation becomes even more revealing of node reputations than at present" - but would that be bad somehow?

Has this been proposed before? Is this proposition a desirable change? What do you think?

update: Patch submitted and (after killing bugs) applied. Thanks, tye. See What's New.

--shmem

_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                              /\_¯/(q    /
----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}

Comment on constrain User Search with the "showtype" param Select or Download Code

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Re: constrain User Search with the "showtype" param by jdporter (Paladin) on Apr 30, 2007 at 13:52 UTC
On the other hand, I'm not sure why Perl Monks User Search allows to order by node rep in the first place. I feel that, at the very least, either the ability to constrain by type (or anything else), or the ability to order by rep, should be eliminated from Perl Monks User Search. Of course, if the latter is eliminated, then it becomes merely a special case of Super Search, in which case it may as well simply go to Super Search, rather than being a separate function node. A word spoken in Mind will reach its own level, in the objective world, by its own weight	[reply]
Re^2: constrain User Search with the "showtype" param by shmem (Chancellor) on Apr 30, 2007 at 14:21 UTC
I feel that, at the very least, either the ability to constain by type (or anything else), or the ability to order by rep, should be eliminated from Perl Monks User Search. So you feel that, but why? Is it evil to search for meditations only? Or does evil stem from ordering someone's nodes by reputation? Or does the evil only come forth with the combination of both? In any of these cases, what exactly is the evil? Why is sorting some nodes by reputation (Best Nodes) and Monks by XP (Saints in our Book, Other Users Nodelet) tolerable, while sorting just one Monk's meditations or obfus by reputation is not? --shmem _($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo. G°\ / /\_¯/(q / ---------------------------- \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."· ");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}	[reply]
Re^3: constrain User Search with the "showtype" param by tye (Sage) on Apr 30, 2007 at 14:54 UTC
Patch nodes-by-user (that node with the really stupid name that makes it sound like a place to search for PerlMonks users) to sort by something other than reputation if the type is constrained and I'll apply your patch. - tye	[reply]
Re: constrain User Search with the "showtype" param by jdporter (Paladin) on Apr 30, 2007 at 17:16 UTC
Why is sorting some nodes by reputation (Best Nodes) and Monks by XP (Saints in our Book, Other Users Nodelet) tolerable, while sorting just one Monk's meditations or obfus by reputation is not? Well, let's ignore the ordering monks by XP question, because it's completely different and not related to the issue at hand. The general consensus of senior monks has been that letting people know the rep of a node before voting on it unfairly skews voting, in that it can lead to "bandwagon" voting. There are numerous old PMD threads in which this idea was expressed. As you know, the site has implemented safeguards against it only inconsistently. The question I have for you is, Why do you want to know the reps of a user's nodes? If you don't particularly want to, then Super Search gives you everything you need. A word spoken in Mind will reach its own level, in the objective world, by its own weight	[reply]
Re^2: constrain User Search with the "showtype" param by hossman (Prior) on Apr 30, 2007 at 22:56 UTC
The question I have for you is, Why do you want to know the reps of a user's nodes? If you don't particularly want to, then Super Search gives you everything you need. I don't see any request to know/see the rep of any nodes .. what i see is someone pointing out that the UI for Super Search is complex (and rightly so since it is a "Super" search interface) while the UI for node#6364 is clean and perfectly suited for the usecase described ... except that it can't restrict by nodetype. If the solution is to replace links to node#6364 with links to Super Search where the username is pre-filled and all of the other options preselected then that works to ... but there is something to be said for simple interfaces for simple use cases.	[reply]
Re^2: constrain User Search with the "showtype" param by shmem (Chancellor) on May 01, 2007 at 09:17 UTC
The general consensus of senior monks has been that letting people know the rep of a node before voting on it unfairly skews voting, in that it can lead to "bandwagon" voting. Ah. As with Best Nodes - By the way — Please don't upvote these nodes just because other monks thought they were good. If you do, their node reputations will increase — but then we won't really be showcasing the best nodes. But then, if "bandwagon" voting, or "voting ad hominem" are such an issue, let's disable the "Highest/Lowest Reputation First" options in the "Order by" combo box on Perl Monks User Search, if the invoking user and the user param are different. That would be consistent. OTOH, that sorting feature has been in place for some time now, and if somebody is somehow driven to downvote lowest / upvote highest node in reputation for a user, they would certainly not constrain the search to e.g. meditations, but would look at all kinds. Furthermore, I've seen some links in homenodes having "My best nodes" and "My worst nodes" linking to Perl Monks User Search with `orderby=hr` and `orderby=lr` respectively, and we would break that if we removed sorting by rep. Why do you want to know the reps of a user's nodes? I don't want to. I just want a way to constrain the type of nodes as you pointed out, for something like the following URL chain: I read a node, find it interesting, go to the Monk's homenode and read it; next I want to know what else she wrote and click on the link next to "Writeups:". Then, in Perl Monks User Search, I often want to constrain the search to the node type I've read in the first place. Sorting those by rep won't tell me what reputation a particular node has, except if I've already voted on its two adjacent nodes and those nodes have identical reputation. Of course, by sorting I'd know which node of that particular author is the most cherished by the general public. I'll modify the patch. Ordering by Reputation will only be possible if there's no constraint on the node type (i.e. `showtype` is unset) except if `getId($user) == getId($USER)`, as with `$showrep` - someone might want to have a look at their own meditations, and see which got highest/lowest rep. --shmem _($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo. G°\ / /\_¯/(q / ---------------------------- \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."· ");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}	[reply] [d/l] [select]