Survey: What filters would you like for 🔍 search?

[Snowbird]

@Snowbird

Maybe we need a discussion thread for ranking

OK, done:

Discussion: How should search results be ranked ?

In other words, when there is more than one result, what order should they appear? Currently when a keyword is found in a text title, the result is displayed as a suttaplex card and (on mobile) they are all grouped at the top of the list and on desktop they appear in the right hand column separate from results where the word is found in the body of the text.

[Khemarato.bhikkhu]

@Snowbird

Pali root texts

And you have a filter for that already, no?

[Snowbird]

@Khemarato.bhikkhu

And you have a filter for that already, no?

Not yet. But it sounds like it will get approved.

I guess because I have so little understanding how search result ranking would work that filters are my go to solution.

I’m also trying to think about the day when all the texts on SC are eventually translated and there are even more results than ever coming back.

Through more testing I am seeing that there are lots of “collections” that exist but don’t work. For example, Chinese Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma. But even once it is working, its ID is lzh-sarv-ab, which seems like a lot to type. Perhaps the SERP page UI improvement will make it easier to narrow searches without having to type them in every time.

[DonatorProponent]

It would be useful to me to have a shortcut to only search the most recently available translation of each root text. E.g. the Sujato Suttas, Brahmali Vinaya, and either the Sujato or Rhys Davids Abhiddhamma. If that’s not a filterable feature, then just a shortcut for Brahmali or Sujato would be good.

[Snowbird]

@DonatorProponent

the most recently available translation

I actually thought about that. I’m not sure if we have that data. I don’t think publication date is uniformly represented. For example, There have been a bunch of newly added translations by Ven. Nyanamoli That are actually more than 60 years old. So I’m not sure if people would consider them “new”. If we did use that data in some way, perhaps it would be more suitable for the way results are ranked. Perhaps you could add that idea to that thread.

@DonatorProponent

If that’s not a filterable feature, then just a shortcut for Brahmali or Sujato would be good.

That we have!! in:sujato and in:brahmali. It should work for all translators. You have to use their translator ID, which can be found in the url of their translations.

[Khemarato.bhikkhu]

We do have the year for most translations:

[Snowbird]

Yeah, I don’t really trust those numbers, though. (but I had forgotten about their prominence on the site) For example the Nyanamoli translation (assuming that was a screen shot from Kp9) is from Wheel publication #7. I’m sure that was first published long before 1984. Wheel #4 was first published in 1961. And Ven. Nyanamoli died in 1960. So dating it 24 years after the translator could have possibly translated it seems dodgy.

[Khemarato.bhikkhu]

Maybe that should be a GitHub Issue?

[Snowbird]

The date of a translation is kind of a sketchy thing. Should it be the date of publication? First publication? Last? From where it was found to be published here? My thinking is that it’s such a loose concept that it might not be a good way to filter or sort.

BTW, for @Pasanna and others have brought up good ideas on UI, it appears that Bhante S is considering something else to be done in the future as mentioed in this comment.

[Snowbird]

So, reading back through this thread, it doesn’t seem like people have a lot of specific ideas for collection grouping.

Anyone else want to add any ideas before I try to summarize?

[dhammagift]

Hello, everyone.

That’s a great survey. Thank you ven @Snowbird for bringing it up. And thank you @HongDa for improvements.

It might be that my suggestions about filters more on the grouping and sorting side of the already produced search results. But these are also some kind of filters after all.

Here is an example with Kuṭhār search results on Suttacentral.net (partial match)

https://suttacentral.net/search?query=in:ebs%20Kuṭhār

And the same search on find.dhamma.gift

Kuṭhār 13 texts 31 matches in an sn mn dn kn - find.Dhamma.gift

#1 imo this grouping like I did on dhamma.gift looks more user friendly and helping to work with search results. While output on suttacentral is fine for 13 texts. if there will be 50+ texts or more it’ll almost become unmanagable to make any desicions which texts might help more then other.

#2 The other big thing for the user is results aggregated by words. That can be a very important feature for the partial match search.

Kuṭhār 13 texts 6 related words in an sn mn dn kn - find.Dhamma.gift

#3 is really minor but can be crucial for user. Showing variants of the word like
In the part “Variants for Kuṭhār”

Ps i gave test links for fdg. If you’ll see some tech info or errors please don’t mind. I just wanted to show the output that might improve the search result visualization for user on Sc.net.

[Snowbird]

Thanks for the ideas! Maybe you could copy that into the thread dedicated to sorting search results:

Discussion: How should search results be ranked ?

In other words, when there is more than one result, what order should they appear? Currently when a keyword is found in a text title, the result is displayed as a suttaplex card and (on mobile) they are all grouped at the top of the list and on desktop they appear in the right hand column separate from results where the word is found in the body of the text. Here are some ideas gathered so far: If keyword is in title (currently used on site) Length of document Frequency of keyword in docume…

[dhammagift]

You’re Welcome. Done.

[DonatorProponent]

I just wanted to clarify that it might be helpful to have a shortcut for Brahmali or Sujato, similar to your proposed shortcut “in:ffn” something like “in:mrt” (most recent translation) serving as a shortcut for the longer “author:sujato OR author:brahmali”

It’s not a big deal, but it might be nice to have.

[Snowbird]

@DonatorProponent

“in:mrt” (most recent translation)

I also like the idea of being able to strip out all those old translations from searches. I’m not sure, though, how that could be defined technically. As I mentioned above, the publish date on a translation is not reliable. And simply restricting to Bhante Sujato and Bhante Brahmali will exclude other new translations. And of course that wouldn’t help for non-English translations. Limiting to segmented translations (aka Bilara aka Pali-English side by side) would ensure only new translations were searched, but it would exclude some new translations that are added as legacy text.

I do like the idea, though. Thanks!