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New TSR Search - what do you think?

Hi everyone,

We've been working on the new TSR Search and you can find the latest Beta version here: http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/search-beta/?q=PRSOM

As we're so close to launching it, we would love your feedback. Once you've given it a good try, please can you...

Fill in our Search Beta feedback survey

It will only take a minute and will help us improve the search for you before it is launched.

Feel free to discuss it further below, but please first complete the survey.

Thank you

:pirate3:
(edited 8 years ago)

Scroll to see replies

Revived! I posted this prematurely, the search is now live an ready for you all to trial. Please have a play around with it and then fill in the survey once you've used it a few times :smile: Feel free to say here what you think too. Your feedback is all most welcome!
Original post by Captain Jack
Revived! I posted this prematurely, the search is now live an ready for you all to trial. Please have a play around with it and then fill in the survey once you've used it a few times :smile: Feel free to say here what you think too. Your feedback is all most welcome!


Tut tut tut... looking for a new community manager? :tongue: :tongue: :tongue: will have ufn playing :biggrin:

EDIT: Wow... already much better than old search by ****ing miles... even after a second or two searching... nice one :yy:
Much better:yep:
Original post by cranbrook_aspie
Much better:yep:


Are you stalking me :ninja:
Original post by mobbsy91
Are you stalking me :ninja:

Yes:mwuaha:

Spoiler

Original post by cranbrook_aspie
Yes:mwuaha:

Spoiler



Mmmmm, if ya say so
@Captain Jack I just filled out the survey. I have to be honest, I think it has a lot of issues.
I love it! Much better! :biggrin:
Original post by e aí rapaz
@Captain Jack I just filled out the survey. I have to be honest, I think it has a lot of issues.


No problem, that's why it's Beta still :smile: Hope you shared them in the survey so we can address them?
Original post by Captain Jack
x


Sorry for raining on your parade in the thread before, Jack :tongue: -- with the date and all I couldn't resist. This search is much, much better and I have filled out the survey! :yep:
Original post by Captain Jack
No problem, that's why it's Beta still :smile: Hope you shared them in the survey so we can address them?


Yep, you should recognise it as the one complaining about not being able to sort by date, and about usernames being included in the search instead of just post content. :yy:
Much better!

Though still waiting on a better feature to search members. :K:
Original post by e aí rapaz
Yep, you should recognise it as the one complaining about not being able to sort by date, and about usernames being included in the search instead of just post content. :yy:


It's a tricky balance because a lot of users want to search for usernames, though. "Arsey" is our most popular search term at exam time :smile:
Original post by jenhasdreams
It's a tricky balance because a lot of users want to search for usernames, though. "Arsey" is our most popular search term at exam time :smile:


Is it a tricky balance though? The current search manages it.

Let me give you an example.

1. Let's say I want to search for posts about bears, so I search "bears". Unfortunately there's a user called "the bear" so most of my search results are just random posts by him. Now, how many users are there registered with usernames that contain words people might search for? I'm guessing a lot. So searching for specific content doesn't work very well.

2. But maybe I want to search for all posts by the bear, like you said, this is common. Well, the results give me some of them (not in any useful order), but alongside a bunch of posts about bears by random people. So searching for specific users doesn't work either.

Not very helpful.

Why not have a couple of boxes beneath the search that are ticked as default, such as:

[tickbox] Search usernames
[tickbox] Search post titles/content

Then the user can untick one of them if they wish to search ONLY for usernames or ONLY for post content.


The point about sorting is super annoying too. Let's say I search for a topic I'm interested in every few days so I can reply to posts about it. "Bowls", for example. If I search for bowls, I can filter it down to the last week, but what if I search every 3-4 days? I have to manually filter out the results from 5-7 days ago by eye in order to find the posts that have been made since my last search? I can't really figure why it isn't sorted from most recent to least anyway, but if you really don't want to do that, at least give me the option to sort the results myself.
Original post by e aí rapaz

Why not have a couple of boxes beneath the search that are ticked as default, such as:

[tickbox] Search usernames
[tickbox] Search post titles/content

Then the user can untick one of them if they wish to search ONLY for usernames or ONLY for post content.


This is what I want.

TSR, make it happen!
Much better now !
Original post by DibbyDabby
Much better now !


Cutest picture ever.
Original post by e aí rapaz
Is it a tricky balance though? The current search manages it.

Let me give you an example.

1. Let's say I want to search for posts about bears, so I search "bears". Unfortunately there's a user called "the bear" so most of my search results are just random posts by him. Now, how many users are there registered with usernames that contain words people might search for? I'm guessing a lot. So searching for specific content doesn't work very well.

2. But maybe I want to search for all posts by the bear, like you said, this is common. Well, the results give me some of them (not in any useful order), but alongside a bunch of posts about bears by random people. So searching for specific users doesn't work either.

Not very helpful.

Why not have a couple of boxes beneath the search that are ticked as default, such as:

[tickbox] Search usernames
[tickbox] Search post titles/content

Then the user can untick one of them if they wish to search ONLY for usernames or ONLY for post content.


The point about sorting is super annoying too. Let's say I search for a topic I'm interested in every few days so I can reply to posts about it. "Bowls", for example. If I search for bowls, I can filter it down to the last week, but what if I search every 3-4 days? I have to manually filter out the results from 5-7 days ago by eye in order to find the posts that have been made since my last search? I can't really figure why it isn't sorted from most recent to least anyway, but if you really don't want to do that, at least give me the option to sort the results myself.


The point about sorting is an interesting one - it's not there because it's not actually useful. The new search takes likely search relevance into account much more than the old one does, so it looks at how many search terms match, how old a thread is, how many posts it has, etc etc, and what we found conclusively when we were building it is that with all that in mind, actually sorting by date afterwards resulted in near useless results in every case. Most of the time, you just got spam threads, 0-post questions, rarely anything with more than one reply, and never anything you were looking for.

Sorting AND filtering together is a current technical limitation, and not one that's likely to change anytime soon, much as we might want it to. That's why the date filtering options were added, and those could well change, depending on your feedback!
I like the way you made it beta to appeal to the audience here.

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