Site search refinement: not your own journal?

[azurelunatic]

Title:
Site search refinement: not your own journal?

Area:
site search

Summary:
When using site search, is there any benefit to seeing results from your own journal along with the sitewide results, provided you can search your own journal?

Description:
If you can't search your own journal individually, site search may be the only way you have to search your own journal, and I wouldn't want to mess that up for anyone.

If you can search your own journal, is there any benefit to having results from there displayed along with everybody else? I ask because I was running a search where I was 90% or more of the entries sitewide, and I was looking for stuff I didn't already know about.

Assuming it's feature-wise desirable to exclude the journal of the logged-in user from sitewide search results (if and only if that user can also search their own journal), would it be technically feasible? (This is probably a Mark question.)

If it's desirable and technically feasible, how best to implement it? Some thoughts:

* a separate radio button besides user-search and site search
* a checkbox on site search
* just exclude them and leave a note at the top of the search results
* other people may have way better ideas

Poll #13973 Site search refinement: not your own journal?

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 39

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
9 (23.1%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
15 (38.5%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
0 (0.0%)

(I have no opinion)
15 (38.5%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[ninetydegrees]

My with changes:
Keep existing behavior but provide a checkbox to exclude your own journal from results.

[metawidget]

+1!

[susanreads]

+1

[arethinn]

+1

[swaldman]

With changes:
Combine with http://dw-suggestions.dreamwidth.org/1437704.html, and think through in a general way how to specify the scope of search - from "everywhere" to "my journal only" and with a few stops inbetween.

(EDIT: which could be as simple as a dropdown with "everywhere", "everywhere except my journal", "journals I subscribe to", and "my journal only" or some such. I'm in favour of keeping this to just one control rather than sprouting a profusion of check boxes ;-))

[montuos]

+1

[axiom_of_stripe]

+1

[ninetydegrees]

Or this! ^_^ Although if we could avoid a drop-down that would be nice...

[swaldman]

*nod* I think somebody who is good at UI needs to have a think about this from scratch. my point was that it should be thought about as "how should we do search scope" rather than "how can we add this suggestion to the existing UI. (I think you realised this ;-))

[kerravonsen]

+1

[aedifica]

Ooh! I like the original suggestion, but I like this modification of it even better.

[azurelunatic]

Ding ding ding! Way better idea!

[kyrielle]

+1

Also, something about the phrase "profusion of check boxes" has made my brain very happy. I have no idea why. It is not because I actually love a profusion of check boxes, just ... a great word sound? The use of the word profusion? I have no idea, but thank you!

[swaldman]

Profusion is a good word. I should use it more often. Profusely, even :-)

[marahmarie]

Nice.

[arethinn]

ha, or +1 this, too. Both are good suggestions.

[juniperphoenix]

+1

[runpunkrun]

+1

[lovingboth]

Am I missing something - if I do a 'site and account' search, for [word], the only result that comes up is someone whose account is name is [word].

It goes straight to their profile, and does not in any way seem to look at my journal where I know I have used [word] but can't remember where.

[azurelunatic]

There are, unfortunately, two things named similarly that do two different things, and thank you for bringing it to official attention.

https://www.dreamwidth.org/search is found under the Explore heading as Site and Journal Search, and is presumably the search you want, as it searches entries sitewide, and can be narrowed down to one's own journal.

https://www.dreamwidth.org/multisearch is found from the navigation bar as Site and Account search. It does not search entries; rather, it searches the text of static site pages like settings, as well as for usernames. I suspect it hasn't been changed much since LiveJournal.

[azurelunatic]

#3292

[lovingboth]

Thanks - I did find / finally remember the correct way to do this after posting. It could be easier to find given that the 'wrong way but named as though it was the right way' is, at least for the theme I use, on the top of every page.