better search engine

[X.]

I will be probably pointed to a thread where this has already been discussed, but that would exactly prove my point, which is that however useful this forum is, there is a lot of wasted energy from many helpful fellows out there and lost bandwith on this forum in asking and answering the same questions over and over again.

Is there any hope that this may improve in the future? If I search for "Discard Value Change" to look up whether one (or more) thread has already examined the virtues/flaws of adding an option to prevent ANY control to be modified by the user until after it has been filtered in an Event Structure, I get (as of today), 9 pages of hits (~90 threads). I could try to read them all, but what I first would love to be able to do is to:

- sort them with more options that just their date (for instance kudos, or whether some highly repsected member has contributed to it)

- be able to select only a few (for instance with a checkbox next to each thread) for later viewing.

The next level would be to have a way to categorize threads by more than just tags (which I am not using myself). Since it is a labview forum (mostly), we could for instance tag each thread with a palette object (FP or Diagram). I mean we would HAVE TO tag our thread with the object or category that most correspond to the discussed topic and moderators should have to power to change that (and be asked to change that by other with a "suggest tag" option).

With this option, I could go straight to the "Event Structure" object and narrow down my search to those threads that involve it and contain "Discard" and "Value Change".

My 2 cts.

[Ben]

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@X-) wrote:

I will be probably pointed to a thread where this has already been discussed, but that would exactly prove my point, which is that however useful this forum is, there is a lot of wasted energy from many helpful fellows out there and lost bandwith on this forum in asking and answering the same questions over and over again.

Is there any hope that this may improve in the future? If I search for "Discard Value Change" to look up whether one (or more) thread has already examined the virtues/flaws of adding an option to prevent ANY control to be modified by the user until after it has been filtered in an Event Structure, I get (as of today), 9 pages of hits (~90 threads). I could try to read them all, but what I first would love to be able to do is to:

- sort them with more options that just their date (for instance kudos, or whether some highly repsected member has contributed to it)

- be able to select only a few (for instance with a checkbox next to each thread) for later viewing.

The next level would be to have a way to categorize threads by more than just tags (which I am not using myself). Since it is a labview forum (mostly), we could for instance tag each thread with a palette object (FP or Diagram). I mean we would HAVE TO tag our thread with the object or category that most correspond to the discussed topic and moderators should have to power to change that (and be asked to change that by other with a "suggest tag" option).

With this option, I could go straight to the "Event Structure" object and narrow down my search to those threads that involve it and contain "Discard" and "Value Change".

My 2 cts.

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I like your "2 cents" so much I started working on that about two years ago.

If you do turn on tagging then from my profile page you should be able to view all of my tags here

If you have the tag preferences set to size the tags by count then LabVIEW should jump out at you so click it taking you here.

Clciking the "View All" under related tags you will get to this page where you will find tags related to LabVIEW. I admit there is a lot on that page but if you look closely you will see they are alphabetical and you can find "LabVIEW_Event" and if you have the option to show counts selected it willl show ther are 14 links for that one.

Clicking on LabVIEW_Event takes you here.

Buty sadly I do not have a tag for Discard in the set yet. But...

If you find a good thread that does discuss Discarding Events then if someone (you are allowed to add tags as well) entered the following tags under a good post

"LabVIEW LabVIEW_Event LabVIEW_Event_Discard" then those three tags would tie into the tree of knowlege I walked you thorough above.

And there is a bonus!

The Search engine conciders tags when you are seraching so once you add those tags there is a good chance the search engine will find it for you.

This site is only as good as we make it.

Tagging makes it better.

Ben

[X.]

Ben, it's too bad I can only give you one kudo for this answer. It's worth its weight in gold. However, I do not see any "tree" here, but rather a vast ocean of information in which to get easily drowned.

I just tagged my first message (the original one of this thread) with that: Search_Engine, NI_Discussion_Forum

None of those are in your list, and I wonder what would be the best choice. The Tag search engine should be case insensitive, should search within tags (and that would make your recommendation of tagging my "future" post with LabVIEW AND LabVIEW_Event AND LabVIEW_Event_Discard unecessary.

In other words, I am kind of overwhelmed and a tutorial would be welcome (I am sure it exists, but I'll kudo a post linking to it)!

For instance, we discussed your tags. But how do I search with or within tags (all of them)?

Ma, I opened a can of worms...

[Ben]

Somewhere (probably tagged with the word tag) this is thread where I discussed tagging and even posted a utility to assist with composing the gas.

Since then I have modified it and if I remeber I'll post the code. It use the tags and a Tree control to display all of my tags in a Tree (amazing idea huh?).

I coded it to understand my syntax (The under score used to link sub-catagories to catagoies).

It is ugle code and requires I cut-n-paste my tag cloud manually but it sure speeds up my tagging both creating and finding.

See post # 70 in this thread.

I think that is the old version. I'll post the new version since a change to the NI forum screwed that one up.

The talk of tagging started earlier in that thread.

Have fun,

Ben

PS: I get around that one Kudos limit by finding other posts by the user and hammering them that way. They all end up in the same pile.

[X.]

It is actually not an ocean but a sky. In the thread you are linking to above, Laura F. refers to the "tag cloud" (which should not be confused with "The Cloud"... We are talking about a 2007 thread here!). It's a long thread, so I am not yet sure what information it contains, but if somebody felt like writing a nugget about tagging on NI's forum, I think that person should be knighted for service rendered to the community...

[X.]

Post 49 (12-19-2007): "I've got to say I see no point to tagging and don't think I'll ever be using it. It just seems to generate extra "noise" on the screen.  I see some logic behind generating more meaningful keywords to help find posts.  But a good search engine should be able to do the job.  (That said, I find that with the forum's search engine, even if I know what I'm looking for and remember a particular message of interest and words that were used in it, the search engine often fails to find those messages.)".

Nihil novi sub sole!

I have read the thread and if I know understand how tags work, I still would prefer a side panel offering all the LV palettes (and then some) so that I could just click on an object to find threads referring to it. Having to rely on users to tag according to a tedious (if logical) rule as  proposed by Ben is very Web 1.0-like, if I may say.

My 2 cts.

[Ben]

I took a look at my code last night and it appears to be hanging trying to parse the tags so not postable at this point.

Re:a side-bar thingy

You are TOO far ahead of the curve*. I suggest you face the fact and get used to it. But don't let hold you back. eventually the world will catch up with you and you will be ready when they do.

I will attempt to fix that code and get it posted up fro your use. When the day comes that the rest of the world is asking for the side-bar, "God willing!" the structure will be in place becasue of the quiet work being done by the taggers.

Ben

* An AE quote that I recall when the world just does not want to listen "Great spirits have always encountered violent oposition from mediocre minds." YES it has an arrogant ring to it and for that I apologize. But if you have a good idea then NEVER let THEM tell you otherwise.

[X.]

Ben, it seems to me that your tool could be implemented with LV's palettes (just translate a click to an icon into the addition of the proper Ben-code in your database and paste the corresponding code in your string).

Also, with the internet tools integrated in LV (never used them), it seems to me that reading the forum within LV should be possible. Hence a clever search engine could be implemented that automatically does this (database building) or allow users who are willing to, to migrate to the new FireLabVIEW browser. Heck, maybe that will even be possible with LabvIEW WebUI builder in the future...

Just throwing some LV Challenge Idea, that's all.

[Ben]

Internet toolkit not required.

A Datasocket read of the URL for a users tag cloud will return the same text we get when we do a "View Source". Warning: reading too often from the Forum will result in a denial of service error (been there done that).

I'll post my buggy code if you are interested in tweaking it. It WAS working at one point.

The tool already uses can transfer your autogenerated tag list in the Clipboard and then I just "ctl-v" into the tag box from there.

Say the word and I'll pst up the non-working version for yo to poke at.

Possible benefit:

If you do bang on that code to make it easier to use, it may be adopted by the Community once they see what can be done with it.

"YOu can lead a horse to water..." but sometimes you have to show them the results.

Ben

[X.]

the word