On Sat, Nov 21, 2020 at 02:41 PM, J_Catlady wrote:

There is currently NO relationship between the search results order and the actual search term.

I believe there is.  It's the order that Elasticsearch found them in the (listed) group-name/description database.

Duane

The bad examples are more frequent than the good ones. In a search on "IBD," three groups that just mention the term tangentially in their descriptions display first. (One of them uses the term simply to say that the group does NOT deal with IBD.) The only group that is *specifically* about IBD (and has "IBD" in its title) comes up last. In this case, there are only four groups total. But in other cases there can be a page or more before the actual relevant group even shows up.
https://groups.io/search?q=ibd

--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

On Sat, Nov 21, 2020 at 12:26 PM, Donald Hellen wrote:

Yahoo Groups seemed to
have a more relevant search results order

Would be hard not to. There is currently NO relationship between the search results order and the actual search term.
 
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

Yes, to me this is important and it doesn't work intuitively like
that.

Donald



On Sat, 21 Nov 2020 06:50:13 -0800, "J_Catlady"
<j.olivia.catlady@gmail.com> wrote:

That's well and good. However, group owners with the search term in their group's name would expect the reverse: namely, not to be displayed pages below a group that only mentions the term in their description, in some cases only tangentially.

----------------------------------------------------
Some ham radio groups you may be interested in:
https://groups.io/g/ICOM https://groups.io/g/Ham-Antennas
https://groups.io/g/HamRadioHelp https://groups.io/g/Baofeng
https://groups.io/g/CHIRP https://rf-amplifiers.groups.io/g/main

The list is indeed too large and it doesn't sort on relevant terms in
the groupname. If I wanted to look through hundreds of groups that
have the words in their description and not the groupname, I would
expect those to show up further down the list. Yahoo Groups seemed to
have a more relevant search results order if I remember correctly.

Donald

On Fri, 20 Nov 2020 19:41:54 -0800, "J_Catlady"
<j.olivia.catlady@gmail.com> wrote:

Is that because the list of groups returned is too large and hard to sort through because it is displayed in a non-helpful way (I would agree there), or because many of the groups returned are irrelevant because of the lack of any sort order other than alphabetical (I would agree there also), or because the list of groups returned simply doesn't contain groups you're looking for (which we've seen can happen by Duane's example)? Or a combination of all three? Would adding the ability to sort by Most Popular, Most Recent, or Most Active help?

----------------------------------------------------
Some ham radio groups you may be interested in:
https://groups.io/g/ICOM https://groups.io/g/Ham-Antennas
https://groups.io/g/HamRadioHelp https://groups.io/g/Baofeng
https://groups.io/g/CHIRP https://rf-amplifiers.groups.io/g/main

On Sat, Nov 21, 2020 at 10:04 AM, Curt Gowan wrote:

from "Group not listed in directory, private messages"

to      "Group listed in directory, private messages"

Of course, because if your group was not listed in the directory, it is not findable and would not display to the public. Now it's subject to whatever search/display criteria are being used, with all the attendant problems being mentioned here.
 
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

Still doesn't solve these issues.
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

On Sat, Nov 21, 2020 at 08:53 AM, Chris Jones wrote:

the search results are based on what a group owner puts in the description,

Thanks, I intentionally inserted "feline lymphoma" into the description somewhere right after seeing Duane's results.
 
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

On Fri, Nov 20, 2020 at 08:59 PM, J_Catlady wrote:

How can I change the name of my group to have it display in a "feline lymphoma" search?

Actually it is quite easy, without changing the group name. Starting with the fact that the search results are based on what a group owner puts in the description, then simply ensure that "feline lymphona" is in the description. I suspect that your immediate response might be that that could leave the description looking messy, but in fact the words don't need to be visible, simply present.

Eh? Sadly I cannot demonstrate this in beta because the tool bar above the composition window does not let me change font colour, but that for a Group Description does. Somewhere at the bottom of the description on your Home Page add a few additional search terms (e.g. "feline lymphoma") and the change the font colour to white. It can also be useful to set the font size to be (very) small so that numerous helpful words can be accommodated without taking up too much space; that space will simply appear as white (empty) space to anyone looking at your description.

Although the words are invisible to the human viewer they are not invisible to the search engine, so anyone using any of your "hidden words" will find your group quite easily, or at least they should do.

If you want a demonstration of this please let me know and I'll post a couple of search terms for the group I co - own so that you can search for it, find it in one go and then "find the search terms" in the description!

Chris

On Sat, Nov 21, 2020 at 07:03 AM, Duane wrote:

FWIW, there has to be some default results order,

Of course! We get that. But this needs a change at some point. At the very minimum, if there is no time to fix the display order, stop calling the search "By Name." That would be a five-second fix. "By Name" leads people to believe they are actually searching on the group name. No one would guess that the name is really treated equally with the description and that the rsults will simply be displayed by name (and in an unintuitive order, at that).
 
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

FWIW, there has to be some default results order, so the existing is as good as any.  If Mark decides to include any of the suggestions in this topic, such as an "advanced" search page/box, there will still need to be some default.  Other than boosting Premium groups to the top of the list, I don't think I'd make any other changes for that.  No default behavior will ever meet everyone's expectations though.

Duane

And from the user's point of view, suppose you are looking for groups about horses. You put in the search term "horses." Your search is specifically SAID by groups.io to be a search "by name." What comes up are, first, a page of groups that mention "horses" in their descriptions (perhaps along with all other sundry animals and subjects). On page 2, which you may not even bother getting to, is a group called "AllAboutHorses." It is displayed last because it's group name is capitalized and all the other group names begin with a later letter in the alphabet.

Does that really make sense to you?
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

On Sat, Nov 21, 2020 at 05:39 AM, Sandi D wrote:

I would not expect my search term to be part of the GIO group name.

That's well and good. However, group owners with the search term in their group's name would expect the reverse: namely, not to be displayed pages below a group that only mentions the term in their description, in some cases only tangentially.
 
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

I had not considered this viewpoint and appreciate your efforts to point it out. I suppose it's because I hark back to the research days when wading through "hits" was expected. Oh the time it took to do catalogue searches, hunt down the journal, find the article and only then realize it wasn't dealing with the particular slant on the topic that I needed for my paper! 

I am not one to pick and choose a group because it's at the top of a hit list. I don't own the type of groups that aim to have large numbers of people join or have a lot of activity for days on end.

In internet searches, I prefer DuckDuckGo but if I do find myself searching in Google, I rarely am content with page one results. I tend to go down to where the results start repeating the same webpage information. 

I tend to search GIO groups and contact the owner to evaluate the fit of the group before I request to join. Unless the description makes it very clear from the get-go. It's partly because GIO is not familiar to the new group owners so they aren't yet aware of all they could have done to bring their group to the forefront. I have quite a few gems- small intimate groups with very knowledgeable group owners and members.

I would not expect my search term to be part of the GIO group name. It makes sense that I would more often find my search term in the description or tags. Multiple groups could be described in the same terms or have similar names even though they are very different. One may have a tone that better agrees with me or might be addressing a particular subset of people instead of the general public. Those aren't things I find to be captured easily in a name. 

Groups displaying the highest message numbers often are ones I tend bypass. At least initially. I prefer not to spend time wading through numerous daily emails. I do like seeing the list of hashtag descriptions on their homepage that are the most active. That offers to me a better indication of what the activity is about. 

I tend not to rely on popular results either. My tastes don't seem to mesh with most of today's online population.

I do think having a way to know if the group requires a membership fee and if it is a Premium tier group would be useful sorting criteria. That would help narrow the results or help me fill them. 

What ever happens in the way of searches criteris changing will be interesting to see. 

--
Sandi Dickenson
ASG Volunteers Group.

Changes to the site the last two weeks:

• DOCS: Updates from Nina.
• NEW: Added a confirmation dialog when saving a photo edit and moved the Notify Members checkbox into it, for hobgoblins.
• NEW: Added a confirmation dialog when saving a wiki edit and moved the Notify Members checkbox into it, for hobgoblins.
• NEW: There wasn't an option to notify members when deleting a wiki page.
• CHANGE: Added a confirmation dialog when changing an email address.
• CHANGE: Added (members with private profiles are not shown) to the member directory display, for when non-mods are viewing the directory.
• INTERNAL: More work on converting templates to quicktemplate.
• CHANGE: Make +owner messages obey DMARC and the other from re-write rules that we typically apply to group messages.
• BUGFIX: For users with military time display preference, time columns in databases were displayed using standard time notation, and editing rows would lead to blank time columns.
• CHANGE: In addition to sending a one word 'unsubscribe' email to start the unsubscribe process, it is now also triggered if just the first line of an email to the group is 'unsubscribe'.
• CHANGE: Updated the plan comparison page with suggestions from Bruce.
• INTERNAL: Updated the Go compiler.

The next #changelog will be on December 4th.

Take care everyone.

Mark

Some groups have already added text to their descriptions along the lines of “Keywords: apples, bananas, grapes.” I think the real problem in that regard, or one of them, is that the order does not prioritize terms in the name vs in the description. Worse is assigning no priorities to more active or popular groups. The alpha sort will put a group with 10 members and no activity for the past 3 years above an active group simply because its name is not capitalized or comes later in the alphabet. The active group might come pages later and many people won’t bother to scroll through.

--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

How about adding an option to “Search key words” somewhere, with such words selected by the group owner and presumably identifying the primary interest or function of said group?

On Fri, Nov 20, 2020 at 06:37 PM, Donald Hellen wrote:

I find it difficult to search for relevant groups and often just give
up.

Is that because the list of groups returned is too large and hard to sort through because it is displayed in a non-helpful way (I would agree there), or because many of the groups returned are irrelevant because of the lack of any sort order other than alphabetical (I would agree there also), or because the list of groups returned simply doesn't contain groups you're looking for (which we've seen can happen by Duane's example)? Or a combination of all three? Would adding the ability to sort by Most Popular, Most Recent, or Most Active help?
 
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

I also find the search groups feature doesn't prioritize groups where
the search words are in the group's name.

I find it difficult to search for relevant groups and often just give
up.

Donald



On Fri, 20 Nov 2020 12:59:05 -0800, "J_Catlady"
<j.olivia.catlady@gmail.com> wrote:

It would be most helpful if the display order

(1) prioritized groups with the search term in the name rather than just the description (whether in quotes or not - I'd now like to change the title of my group based on these extremely misleading results, but too late for that);'

----------------------------------------------------
Some ham radio groups you may be interested in:
https://groups.io/g/ICOM https://groups.io/g/Ham-Antennas
https://groups.io/g/HamRadioHelp https://groups.io/g/Baofeng
https://groups.io/g/CHIRP https://rf-amplifiers.groups.io/g/main