in reply to Re^3: Appealing a consideration?
in thread Appealing a consideration?

Single-word node titles wrek havoc with the 'Search' box at the top of your Monastery screen.

I really don't get it with this meme. For example, search for "Perl/Tk question" in the search bar. There are two nodes with that title, and you get a page that says "Duplicates Found"... and all the nodes with said titles... are listed! Fancy that! Praise the technology!

The only problem I am aware of is intrasite linking, however, I think that most people use the [id://nnnnn] form of linking. And that is good. Simply because it just might be that the title may very well change and then your link is in limbo.

It is very, very rare to have a node change its node_id and even then, AFAICR, it has only happened to strangedocs and superdocs or other such beasties. Certainly nothing a mere mortal could produce. So you don't want to link with [blah blah blah] because the resulting link is much more likely to rot over time.

I think that the real solution is to stop freaking out about single-node titles, and rather teach the searchers the asdfasdf trick. That is much more useful. For instance, if you search for grinder in the search field, you hit my home page. But what if you have a dim memory of an obfu that someone posted way back when, and had grinder in the title? In that case, the search bar isn't going to help you, and you are going to have to burn cycles over at super search.

But there is a lightweight solution, just add some chaff to the the seach term, e.g. grinder asdfasdf and you get a different set of results... along with the one you were looking for. Notwithstanding any eventual corrections tye will make on subtleties I've misssed, single word titles are not bad; they do not wreak havoc with searches.

And if anyone puts either of those Perl/TK questions up for consideration, do me a favour and vote Keep, ok?

- another intruder with the mooring in the heart of the Perl

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^5: Appealing a consideration?
by eric256 (Parson) on Feb 22, 2005 at 21:30 UTC

    Another point of view might be that a list of single word titles as search results is useless. Then new more verbose title is quite informative all by itself as a search result. Also single word titles are more likely to duplicate than multiword titles. Also if it is a single word "Haxml" and somebody searches for it then they get directed immediatly to this Haxml node instead of being given a list of nodes related to Haxml. Is this broken behavior? Maybe. I think the advantage of discriptive titles and better searching is far more important than single word subject lines. Then agian thats just my view, although it looks like its a majority view since these changes keep getting voted through.


    ___________
    Eric Hodges
[reply]
      Another point of view might be that a list of single word titles as search results is useless. Then, by all means, fix the search functionality. It shouldn't report something that's considered useless.

      Also single word titles are more likely to duplicate than multiword titles. Yes, and? One should realize that titles are just, uhm, titles. They are not a list of keywords to an index. If books can have 30 long chapters with one-word titles that don't screw up the index, certainly a one word title for a node of a few lines should be ok.

      Also if it is a single word "Haxml" and somebody searches for it then they get directed immediatly to this Haxml node instead of being given a list of nodes related to Haxml. Is this broken behavior? That depends. If it's the only node with "Haxml" in the title, it's not broken. If it's a top level node whose title consists of just "Haxml", and there are no other top level nodes with "Haxml" in the title, it's not broken. If it's an 11 level deep reply, and there are other nodes with "Haxml" in the title, I'd sure call that broken behaviour.

      I think the advantage of discriptive titles and better searching is far more important than single word subject lines. Now you are implying two things I disagree with. First you are implying that one word titles could not be good subject lines. That I disagree with. It doesn't mean that any one word subject line is good, but it's certainly not true that any one word subject line doesn't describe the node accurately. The second thing you imply is that the search functionality is good, and people getting send to the wrong pages, or presented a wrong list of options, is caused by people using one-word titles. I'd say, the search functionality is broken. (I haven't bothered with "search" for years - I always go straight to super search. Search seldomly gives me what I want). Don't blame the data if the algorithm is broken.

[reply]
        If it's an 11 level deep reply, and there are other nodes with "Haxml" in the title, I'd sure call that broken behaviour.
        Not broken, but a victim of the (desirable, IMO) conflation of search and goto functionality. The search box allows you to:

        enter a full title, and go directly to that node, or a list of nodes if the title is duplicated; otherwise

        go directly to a title containing the search words, or a list of titles if there are more than one.

        The search functionality is really secondary, but is blocked when people use overly general node titles (read: one-word).

        On a completely different front, replies that have the previous title and Re: completely removed I find obnoxious; if you want to change the title, I like to see it done with "New title (was: Re: parent title)" or "Re: parent title (new title)".

[reply]
        Then, by all means, fix the search functionality.
        Patches welcome.
        One should realize that titles are just, uhm, titles. They are not a list of keywords to an index.
        In fact, quite the opposite is true. The node titles are keyword lists (in addition to being plain titles). Understanding this fact should go a long way towards understanding why site policy regarding titles is the way it is. Which is why your protestation that:
        it's certainly not true that any one word subject line doesn't describe the node accurately.

        is entirely beside the point. Good titles should be able to serve as abstracts of the node or thread (just as Mr. Lee suggests, elsewhere in this thread). "HaXml", like most one-word titles, fails miserably in this, because it doesn't tell me anything about the node — other than, perhaps, that the word "HaXml" also appears in the node body. The title ought, at the very least, to mention "Haskell", don't you think?

        In addition, I believe that, as a general rule, node titles which look like root node titles (i.e. there's no "Re:" in front) should only be used on nodes that look like root nodes. One recent breach of this standard is Shorter code. Such a title conveys zero information about the node's content. In fact, one must resort not only to ancestor nodes in that thread to discover the context, but to other non-ancestor nodes in the thread. That's a crappy retitling indeed... and it doesn't even suffer from the "one-word title" disease. "HaXml" is that much worse, because it does.

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