=== brik_ is now known as Brik [16:12] mdke: ping me when you get a few minutes tonight [21:13] kirkland: hiya [21:13] mdke: hey there [21:13] hello mdke [21:13] hi jjesse [21:13] mdke: once again, my apologies for the name slip... 50 lashes [21:13] kirkland: no worries! [21:13] kirkland: so I checked out the control panel to the search utility [21:13] there seemed to be a problem with it though [21:14] lemme see now [21:14] mdke: ? [21:15] when I click on the drop down "Included sites from Dustin Kirkland" it tells me "Loading Sites Failed" [21:16] mdke: hmm, okay, this is new territory to me, i've never shared control [21:17] mdke: i can see two sets of the sites indexed [21:17] yeah, I was going to say that there is some repetition [21:17] mdke: and I get the same javascripty error message [21:17] on the homepage it lists each help site twice [21:18] mdke: okay, i deleted the duplicate sites listed [21:19] mdke: shall i throw up a page with the Ubuntu Documentation header/footer? [21:19] mdke: and the custom search? [21:19] mdke: (that part is the easy part) [21:19] mdke: getting the results to look like you want is the hard part [21:20] kirkland: is it possible to get a search bar without the "Create your own Custom Search Engine" bit underneath? [21:20] yeah [21:20] one sec... [21:25] mdke: http://people.ubuntu.com/~kirkland/helpsearch.html [21:26] oh cool [21:26] mdke: you could create a more custom results page [21:26] mdke: i just splat/pasted help.ubuntu.com [21:26] mdke: minus all the links, etc. [21:26] that's cool [21:28] so can I just grab the source of that and play with it? We're rolling out a new theme for help.u.c for intrepid I hope [21:28] sure [21:28] along these lines - http://doc.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/serverguide/C/index.html [21:28] mdke: yeah, you can just look at the source of http://people.ubuntu.com/~kirkland/helpsearch.html [21:29] mdke: everything you need is right in there [21:29] mdke: one more thing... [21:29] mdke: i just added "refinements" [21:29] mdke: so search for something, like "Play a DVD" [21:29] mdke: then you can filter your results [21:30] yeah, that works really well [21:30] mdke: to only "Official", "Community", or "Manuals" [21:30] mdke: we can play with the text of those 3 areas [21:30] mdke: but i think you'll get the idea [21:30] I guess we should weigh per release as well, that search shows 7.04 a lot higher than 8.04 [21:30] mdke: that would be possible [21:30] mdke: however, i'll warn you.... [21:31] mdke: i have had very little success improving Google's default weighting mechanisms [21:31] mdke: i've tried a number of different things [21:31] ah, fair enough [21:31] mdke: and always, I've found their weighting gets closer, more reliably [21:31] in that example, the 9th result should be 1st really. Is there any way to weight the official docs higher? [21:31] mdke: sadly, it does mean that sometimes Dapper docs bubble to the top [21:31] ok [21:32] mdke: because that Dapper doc is the most popular according to Goog [21:32] mdke: yeah, you can assign weights to each [21:32] what have we got at the moment? [21:34] mdke: equal weights, it's up to Google to sort the results [21:35] so you think if we play with the weights, it won't help? [21:36] mdke: let me adjust them [21:36] mdke: but, I don't believe it'll help much ;-) [21:36] one moment [21:43] i suppose ideally, the results would be sequential rather than mixed [21:43] so official first, community, then manpages [21:43] but I guess that isn't possible [21:48] mdke: okay, so weights need to add up to 1.0 [21:48] mdke: i gave Official=0.5, Community=0.3, Manuals=0.2 [21:48] mdke: see if those results are any better for you [21:49] hmm. doesn't seem to be much different. "Play dvd" still gives a manpage as its second result [21:50] an irrelevant one too :( [21:50] mdke: agreed, either i'm doing something wrong, or weighting is almost ineffectual [21:52] mdke: i'm inclined to drop manpages from that list [21:52] shall we try 0.6, 0.3 and 0.1 first? [21:52] mdke: i'm using 0.9, 0.05, 0.05 right now :-) [21:52] heh [21:52] mdke: no effect [21:53] mdke: i must be doing something wrong [21:53] mdke: http://www.google.com/coop/docs/cse/cse_file.html [21:53] same results here too [21:54] mdke: # [21:54] * [21:54] # weight: A number between -1 and 1, that indicates how much results annotated with that label should be demoted or promoted. [21:54] ah, perhaps we should go into the minuses [21:54] mdke: yeah, let me play with that [21:59] mdke: okay, now it's looking better [22:00] mdke: i went with 1, 0, -1 [22:00] looking good [22:00] i wonder how we should deal with the different versions on the official docs [22:00] that's tough... [22:01] we could use the same weighting [22:01] (now that I've figured out what i've been doing wrong) [22:01] hmm [22:01] it has to add up to 0? [22:01] but someone might actually want 7.04 for whatever reason [22:01] mdke: no [22:02] hmm [22:03] not sure how best to deal with those [22:03] mdke: that's a tough one [22:04] mdke: refinements? [22:05] how hard would it be to have different weighting for the search bar on different parts of the site? [22:05] mdke: you'd have to create a a separate CSE (custom search engine) for each distro [22:05] mdke: not terribly hard to do, but your maintenance cost multiplies [22:06] yeah [22:06] mdke: search for "play a dvd 7.10" [22:06] maybe we use refinements then [22:07] and then for "play a dvd 8.04" [22:07] we just need to jam a version into the search terms itself [22:07] yeah, that works nicely [22:08] mdke: let me think on that [22:11] mdke: search again, and you should see the link colours match our theme [22:13] cool [22:13] mdke: basically, on the q=TERM we need to dynamically insert q=TERM+8.04 or whatever [22:13] mdke: based on the place we are on the page [22:13] mdke: on the "site", i mean [22:14] sounds tricky [22:14] and it limits yours results [22:14] mdke: refinements would be the way to go, IMHO [22:14] * mdke nods [22:14] mdke: do you prefer the words, intrepid, hardy, etc. or the versioned numbers? [22:14] versions!!! [22:14] heresy :) [22:15] mdke: i like the words :-) [22:16] me too, but they're not for users [22:19] I'm just playing with the idea of whether it would be desirable to have our own search rather than google. It's those adverts that I think will annoy people [22:19] mdke: yup [22:19] mdke: i don't care either way [22:23] mdke: see the ubuntu version refinements [22:23] mdke: search http://people.ubuntu.com/~kirkland/helpsearch.html?cx=003883529982892832976%3Ae2vwumte3fq&cof=FORID%3A9&ie=UTF-8&q=play+a+dvd&sa=Search [22:27] kirkland: sorry, lost internet [22:27] back now [22:28] mdke: search http://people.ubuntu.com/~kirkland/helpsearch.html?cx=003883529982892832976%3Ae2vwumte3fq&cof=FORID%3A9&ie=UTF-8&q=play+a+dvd&sa=Search [22:29] hmm [22:56] mdke: i can shoot a note to the list, if you'd like to gather feedback there? [22:56] mdke: point to this demo page, etc?