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