searching docs

[Dougie Richardson]

Hi Matthew,

On Tue, 2008-05-06 at 12:55 -0500, Matthew Nuzum wrote:

[snip]

> Second, tell me what you think about the weighting:
> 
> Think of the weights as a percentage. 1 is the highest, 0 is the lowest.
> 
> help.ubuntu.com     1
> forums.ubuntu.com 0.8
> lists.ubuntu.com   0.8
> wiki.ubuntu.com   0.6
> www.ubuntu.com   0.6
> answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/   0.4
> packages.ubuntu.com    0.3
> bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/   0.2

I think it's a bad idea to weight the forum over the Wiki, the forum
already hits higher in Google for example than most of the
documentation.

I suspect this is because if someone searches for, say "broadcom
wireless" then they will get all the posts where people didn't bother to
search and got referred to the thread where it was addressed - i.e.
there are a lot of negative result posts.

There is some good information in the forums which we need to encourage
people to contribute to the Wiki. There is also a lot of "prescribed
wisdom" that is, questionable at best and a lot of posts which should
simply be bug reports.

Which leads me to the last weighting - bugs.launchpad needs to be
weighted nearer the forum or all those postings that should be bug
reports are going to be missed.

This sounds very negative - it isn't intended to be ;-)

Cheers,

-- 
Dougie Richardson (http://lynxworks.eu)

"Well, then, " the Cat went on, "you see a dog growls when it's angry,
and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and
wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad."