in reply to Super Search (sometimes) reverses meaning of Starting Date

It says "starting at" not "since" nor "oldest". In fact, if you pay attention to punctuation, capitalization, and even spacing, what it says is a sentence:

Search ( Newest first -or- Oldest first ), starting at <date>.

And the searching does indeed start at the date you specify and proceed in the direction that you specify.

There is no date given for when the search should end in no small part because most searches won't finish in one submission anyway so you can just stop clicking "Next" when you have gone far enough. The amount of searching that will be done for a single submission is strictly restricted so that there isn't even much to be gained by cutting off a submission early based on date (even to the point that if the server is heavily loaded, the amount of searching done will be even less -- never more than about 10 seconds spent searching).

There are also more obscure technical reasons why adding an ending date would be problematic. And even beyond those there are the UI problems which go beyond the fact that most people find Super Search to have way too much UI for their taste at any given moment so adding more to the UI is less likely to be a real improvement.

- tye        

  • Comment on Re: Super Search (sometimes) reverses meaning of Starting Date (English!)

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Re^2: Super Search (sometimes) reverses meaning of Starting Date (English!)
by igelkott (Priest) on Jun 13, 2008 at 08:59 UTC

    While I disagree on the English definition of "starting at", I understand and (of course) accept your interpretation in this context.

    Thanks for the clarification that this was the intentional behavior and not in fact a bug. Not that it matters but I was mislead by the parameter nf=0 rather than simply nf -- certainly allowed but unexpected.

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]

      It isn't a disagreement about the definition of "starting at". It is just that you assumed that the "start" being referred to was the start of the implied date range on the timeline of when the nodes to be searched were originally created. The "at" refers to dates on that timeline but the "start" in question is the start of the process of the search that is about to be done.

      Perhaps I will change it to "starting with" as, reflecting upon it, that seems to be a more common usage when the period being started and the measurement being discussed are from separate timelines. Or perhaps I should restate "searching" to make it clearer. But then, "Start searching with <date>" sounds wrong... or maybe it is most correct despite sounding a bit awkward...

      If you look up the history of Super Search, you can see that originally "oldest first" was not just the default order but the only supported order (due to a limitation in the MySQL optimizer). So nf=1 started out as how to override the order (but wasn't supported at first). Soon after nf=1 became supported, it also became the default. The radio buttons already sent either nf=1 or nf=0 so that was not changed. What was changed was what the absense of any "nf" parameter meant (which also changed the default state of those radio buttons on a freshly-loaded form).

      Further, Super Search tries hard to shorten the short-cut URL to the point of removing optional parameters. So "nf=1", being the default, gets removed. "nf=0" cannot be removed.

      As for "nf=1" giving "inconsistent results", you'd have to elaborate on that before I'd look into it further.

      - tye        

[reply]
        starting at

        Accepting my initial misinterpretation of what was not a bug, I might suggest alternative phrasing ... not that you're asking, but it does seem at least possible to discuss. :-)

        What about replacing "starting at" with "bound by"? Not sure if the majority would accept it but it seems to describe the behavior more clearly to me.

        Alternatively, the whole thing could be boiled down to Search From -or- To  /n  Present -or- YMD (with the GUI elements in the appropriate spots). Still not sure that's any better than what's already there, if I must be completely honest, but it is reasonably simple.

        The completely general case of specifying two dates (From and To) would of course add to the complexity of an already complicated form. I assume that this would be undesired and unacceptable.

        Minimal URL

        I like this minimal URL thing. By coincidence, I use the same logic for the search forms I made at work. Started as just a debug for myself and ended up being a popular little feature. Thanks for the historical explanation for nf=0.

        inconsistent results

        Tried to reproduce what I think I saw as different behavior from nf=1 but haven't been able to do so. At this point, I'll have to mark it up to my own delusion. I shouldn't have used that phrase without a solid example (whether it was true or not).

[reply]
[d/l]
        IMO "Starting from" or "Beginning at" (or possibly "Beginning with") would read better.

        Or the opposite: "With no nodes older than" (or something along those lines). [ Thanks for the correction tye ]

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