searching docs

[Dustin Kirkland]

On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 12:55 PM, Matthew Nuzum
<matthew.nuzum at canonical.com> wrote:
> First, do we need more than one search results page:
>  1. A help results page that weights results as listed below - people
> use this when search for help
>  2. A general results page people use this when searching the other
> areas of the website

I think that depends...  What areas of the website are not covered by
the included sites below?

> My brain has grown fuzzy on this topic and having two search engine
> results sometimes seems to make perfect sense and at other times
> sounds like the dumbest hair brained idea I've ever conceived. What
> are your thoughts, can you think come up with a use case where the
> help results would be less than ideal for someone searching on one of
> the ubuntu sites (not the forums).

Personally, I think this custom search engine should focus on helping
Ubuntu users find help and documentation.  If they want other generic
information about Ubuntu, I think they'll be happy heading back over
to Google/Yahoo anyway.

> Second, tell me what you think about the weighting:
>
> Think of the weights as a percentage. 1 is the highest, 0 is the lowest.

I suggest:

Official documentation, heavily reviewed.  Once we get the Ubuntu
manpages up at help.ubuntu.com/manpages, I think that'll add to the
thoroughly reviewed documentation available on help.ubuntu.com.
   help.ubuntu.com     1

Unofficial, community documentation.  Changes more frequently than
official docs, but also heavily reviewed.  Some real gems in here.
The volume is far lower, and more particularly targeted than the rest
of the sections below.
   wiki.ubuntu.com   0.9

What else lives here?  I'm not clear on this one.  But I'd consider
almost anything I found on a www.ubuntu.com page more authoritative
than the rest of the world-contributed sources below...
www.ubuntu.com   0.6

The following three are mostly un-vetted.  Almost anybody can post
anything.  I have run across some good advice, but there's plenty of
bad and out-dated advice here.  The good advice should be actively
promoted to Wiki pages, official docs, and manpages, and thereby show
up in the above sources over time.
   answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/   0.53
   forums.ubuntu.com 0.52
   ubuntuforums.org 0.52
   lists.ubuntu.com   0.51

I actually find searching bugs to be quite useful (but hey, I'm a developer).
   bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/   0.3

In my experience, the packages site is only interesting if its a
package you're looking for.  I haven't found much useful
help/documentation there.
   packages.ubuntu.com    0.1

Also, at the 0.1 level, you might consider some other Launchpad
resources, such as:
   launchpadlibrarian.net
   code.launchpad.net

Thanks for working on this, Matthew.

:-Dustin