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Subject: 
Re: Web interface search results
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.admin.general
Date: 
Tue, 24 Aug 1999 16:31:26 GMT
Reply-To: 
jsproat@!StopSpam!io.com
Viewed: 
869 times
  
Todd Lehman wrote:
This is an append to a thread started about 8 months ago...
In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
Jeremy Sproat <jsproat@geocities.com> writes:
Would it be feasable to institute some kind of search language, to
search for articles within a date range, within a certain newsgroup, or
from a certain poster?
I'll need to make something that indexes all the articles by date/time
stamp and by poster, but it can be done.
What I did recently as a background task was rebuilt the news search
database from scracth, this time including article timestamps and increased
emphasis on the poster's name.
[...]
The indexer now
uses a clever and efficient encoding (space, time, and code!) mechanism to
include crossposting information.  :-)

Todd, you are a lean, mean, re-coding machine!  :-,  I like the date
indexing, but I haven't been able to figure out how to use it; e.g., what is
the syntax to, say, modify the query to prefer articles from about four
months ago?

The /news/search/ page went away with the new website reorg last month, but
it might be useful again if it came back as an advanced search page.

That'd be really cool, but take a break first.  :-,

To achieve a smooth match maching function, the fuzzy timestamp ranking
function uses a bell-shaped curve
   y = exp(-.5 * ((delta / sigma) ^ 2)
where 'delta' is the difference between the "target" time and a given
article's timestamp and 'sigma' is the "time uncertainty factor."  So a
relatively large sigma produces wide time spreads around the target, and
a small sigma produces fine time spreads.  Both infinitely large and
infinitely small sigma cause the timestamps to be a non-factor.

Whoa.  All that went way over my head.  It's intriguing though -- do you
have any recommendations for off-line reading on this subject?  It appears
that a rudimentary understanding of statistics may also be useful...

Welp, there you have it.  Lemme know if it rocks or if it sucks.

It rocks, man.  Thanks bunches!  (FYI, I haven't been a welp since grade
nine...  :-)

Cheers,
- jsproat

--
Jeremy H. Sproat <jsproat@io.com>
http://www.io.com/~jsproat
Darth Maul Lives



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Web interface search results
 
(...) It appears that for now we just have the recent (default) target time and 1-week sigma values. If there is a syntax for overriding these, Todd hasn't chosen to tell us about it. I would guess that it isn't yet ready for general use. - Robert (...) (25 years ago, 24-Aug-99, to lugnet.admin.general)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Web interface search results
 
This is an append to a thread started about 8 months ago... (...) OK, Jeremy! What I did recently as a background task was rebuilt the news search database from scracth, this time including article timestamps and increased emphasis on the poster's (...) (25 years ago, 24-Aug-99, to lugnet.admin.general)

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