Your feedback on the Community Search page

[Marjo]

Hi guys, I hope you're having a good day today!

As you may know, we've been doing some work in the background to improve the community forum and continue doing that in 2018. One of the areas we will be looking at is the Search page of the community. 

Since you guys as community members are using the search the most, we'd like to ask what you think of the current forum Search, and if there's anything that you would improve?

We're especially looking for your opinions on how to improve the search results page.

Looking forward to your thoughts.

 

[Marjo]

@Cleoriff thanks for that, we'll have a think about the relevancy of topics in the dropdown too and how they are determined. Having all relevant topics in the dropdown list specifically would be too long I think, so to see all of them listed, the user would need to enter into the actual search results page for more. But yes something to look into!

[Cleoriff]

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@Marjowrote:

@Cleoriff thanks for that, we'll have a think about the relevancy of topics in the dropdown too and how they are determined. Having all relevant topics in the dropdown list specifically would be too long I think, so to see all of them listed, the user would need to enter into the actual search results page for more. But yes something to look into!

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@MarjoI agree that having all relevant topics in the drop down box wouldn't be workable.

However, I was more annoyed that after typing in Samsung s8 (which has been mentioned a lot on the forum) I was taken to one post only. There should be a next step/page  where I am given a number of S8 posts to make my choice

It's if the search engine has made it's decision 'this is the one you want'

No it isnt. I want to choose the S8 post which suits me and contains the info I need

[Marjo]

Ok very useful info, cheers for this @Cleoriff! We will pass this on to the developers.

[Marjo]

Hey guys I saw you had some additional comments related to the forum search in this topic. As it relates specifically to this feedback topic I'm going to reply here.

We discussed this within the team and like the FAQ topic idea you mentioned @Bambino. At the moment we don't have a dedicated space on the home page, however that is something we can add to the list to look at later when we start planning further improvements for the home page. 

The index of community guides was mentioned for the FAQs, however we would prefer to keep that one separate. In the meantime before we can look at the home page, we are actually currently looking into improving the board-specific FAQ sticky topics (e.g. PAYM one) - they contain links to member-created content relevant to the subject of the specific board and could be edited with this idea in mind.

And absolutely, related to the how-to guides section, if any of you feel there is a lack of specific content that might answer any frequently asked questions you've observed please share your thoughts - if you're feeling creative and wish to write something up too, that is always most welcome.

To add to your comments also about members posting personal information when e.g. asking for a PAC: we are looking into the possibility of adding some guidelines to the "make a new post" page regarding sharing of personal information, which we hope would help.

[Anonymous]

I have to laugh at the suggestions.. but bizarrely enough when you click search.. the thread does appear as the top result!

[Marjo]

Interesting, thanks for the screenshot @Anonymous. I looked at those suggested topics and they all contain the word "fight" which might have contributed... Got some information reagarding search results and how they are displayed actually that you guys might find interesting, and I think @Cleoriff you were asking about it too earlier? 

So there are a few different factors with which Lithium displays the results. These include frequency of terms, distance between terms, size of the text the term is contained in, if the term is in the header of the post, if the post is Solved, how many views the result has so if it has more views it should boost the result. Looks like more recent posts don't get additional weight due to the evaluation of "how recent" changing over time.

[Anonymous]

I’m using the search facility more and more now.. still far from perfect & if the suggestions aren’t perfect, the threads that appear are on the requested subject. (most times)

It’s just the dates that vary.. most times I’m getting quite old threads at the top which isn’t a major but some tweaking and it’ll be great!

[Cleoriff]

@MarjoThe problem is, as @Anonymous has indicated, the older threads are more than likely to be out of date with the information provided. "Roaming Abroad" is an example. If you read anything pre 2016 the information will be wrong.

At least when you google a question, the most recent tends to show up first.

[jonsie]

@Anonymous If you click on the drop down options box just to the right of the page, after the search and select by date, the latest threads are there in descending order. 

[pgn]

Ever wondered what search operators were available in the Community search bar here?  Something like the last 4 lines in the screenshot below (that works for Google Search) would be great!

I have a pretty good grasp of how to combine or exclude search terms in Google, and will often defer to Google Search to find a specific item in the Community pages, but the Lithium Search function should provide something similar... surely...? 

Here's a handy short list of search operators you can use in Google Search bar to hunt down that elusive bit of info that's not popping up where it should otherwise, if you're interested.

 Here's the Hints/Tips/Cheat pages for O2 Community Search, if you want to compare results:

https://community.o2.co.uk/t5/Welcome-News/Search-Guide-How-to-search-for-information-on-the-communi...