Steve Bennett wrote:
On 10/26/07, Rolf Lampa rolf.lampa@rilnet.com wrote:
<snip>
Then our problem basically boils down to: how do we implement the best search ever, by using human-edited hints?
You actually hint at the solution (or at least at the problem domain) when saying "using human-edited links". Humans is the problem, or the potential. Good results can only be achieved if motivating people to do a good job, and the task must be understood.
This is also the actual reason for why I'm a bit hesitant about the term "Alias" (since that abstract word doesn't mean much to most people, it doesn't give them a "guide line" so to speak). We can mean the same thing with a word, but now I'm talking about the pedagogical aspect, motivating and explaining the (untended) concept to editors. In that context Synonyms means something, it means more, it kind of intuitively gives most people at least some ideas about what kind of /relevant/ keywords to add to a Synonym list.
And there you go, best possible human edited links requires that people understand the basic idea, and when it seems meaningful to them they
# do it # eagerly # & properly
:)
Yes. Redirects are painful partially because they're external. Centralised management is good.
Perhaps both the traditional Redirects and the "Inline Aliases/Synonyms" are useful.
<snip>
Therefore, in summary, I suggest Soundex (or modern derivations thereof, perhaps as part of the search mechanism - entirely automated though), and the concept of Synonyms to support a wider range of application than Aliases implies (the term "alias" is rather abstract and not very meaningful to most people). With an appropriate
You keep bringing up Soundex. I'm not sure how it's useful, other than as a last ditch resort.
Well, yes, let's drop Soundex for now. Alias/Synonyms is more interesting and relevant to your original post (except for hinting about how/why the existing Redirect concept is "saturated" with phonetic problems, which could have been/can be, solved with less human effort).
But now for the Alias/Synonyms idea. =)
Regards,
// Rolf Lampa