searching docs

[Neal McBurnett]

On Tue, May 06, 2008 at 08:25:22PM +0100, Matthew East wrote:
> On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 6:55 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
> 
> For me this is absolutely essential.
> 
> If we are seeking to provide a useful search for users looking for
> help, then a number of websites should not be included in the search
> results: the development wiki, the brainstorm website, the main
> website and bugs.

Why not search bugs?  They usually include the most authoritative
advice from developers on problems, including workarounds.  Developers
are focussed there rather than on the forums and answers sites because
the bugs page has to be updated anyway.  And if people update the
description of the bug, as they should when good clarifications,
resolutions and workarounds are found, they are generally more concise
for help than the forums and mailing lists which can go on for pages
and pages and be confusing for users.

So I would rank bugs.launchpad higher than the forums and answers for
help requests.  Perhaps 0.7 for bugs, and 0.6 for forums, answers and
mailing lists.

Neal McBurnett                 http://mcburnett.org/neal/

> If we are going to provide a useful search for those interested in
> Ubuntu as users or potential contributors, then the main website and
> development wiki are the key resources to index, and I think that at
> least some (if not all) of the help websites should be excluded.
> 
> The two search features could then be plugged in to appropriate
> places, depending on which type of results is required. I can't think
> of any reason to have a single search.
> 
> >  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
> 
> A distinction should be made here between "official" documentation and
> community documentation (help.ubuntu.com/community) - the latter
> should be weighted slightly lower.
> 
> >  forums.ubuntu.com 0.8
> >  lists.ubuntu.com   0.8
> 
> That works, although I would weight the forum slightly higher, because
> its threads will be simpler for the average user to understand via a
> web interface.
> 
> >  wiki.ubuntu.com   0.6
> >  www.ubuntu.com   0.6
> 
> Not to be indexed for help - see above.
> 
> >  answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/   0.4
> 
> Can be indexed with the same weight as mailing lists, I would have thought.
> 
> >  packages.ubuntu.com    0.3
> >  bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/   0.2
> >
> >  Site's that aren't listed will be excluded from the search results,
> >  can you think of any I've missed?
> 
> Upstream help websites such as library.gnome.org should be included here.