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Ask PG: What's the deal with search on HN?

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Re: Ask PG: What's the deal with search on HN?

#81

Post by trop »

Aegean wrote: post #53
pg wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I'll try it for a while. It really doesn't seem like it's worth adding a link for something so trivial though.

Any time I see something valuable on HN I quickly bookmark it so that I can read it later on without the hassle to search it. Search is a hassle on YC. I think we need a solution especially having been used to quick and effective google search for almost anything.

In a sense, HN is itself a bookmark site once logged in. That is, by looking at the "saved stories" link from my profile, I see what I've upvoted. Hence an incentive to upvote not just good items, but items I want to look at multiple times. (No such "saved comments" index exists, though?)

Re: Ask PG: What's the deal with search on HN?

#83

Post by jacquesm »

plinkplonk wrote: post #71
jacquesm wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument PG brought was that it would take time away from the other work. But as it is it incrementally takes time away from all of us, and all the time. The spending of that one or two minutes at integrating searchyc.com or google.com would come back 1000 fold over the life time of the site, and probably much more than 1000 fold, and if he's that busy he maybe should pass the torch to people that can fully conce…

"Paul has kept the door solidly locked to others contributing to HN" Does he? If you send a bug fix or feature patch to the HN arc codebase, he tosses it without looking at it? Or does he look at it and then take a decision whether to include it or not? I would imagine the latter (please correct me if I am wrong). That he refuses to consider some suggestions, no matter how much sense it may make to the person making…

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=830736

'nough said. I've been asked 'from on high' to stop this thread and others like it so I will.

Re: Ask PG: What's the deal with search on HN?

#84

Post by jacquesm »

chengmi wrote: post #78
jacquesm wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you got a lot more traffic because YC would anoint you the 'official' YC search engine would you be able to handle it? Would you commit to beefing up the system to whatever it took?

Well, no. SearchYC has no revenue. I maintain SearchYC and host it out of a box in my closet as a service to the community. It doesn't make any sense for me to commit to do "whatever it takes". That being said, with a few hundred dollars worth of hardware and some software changes, SearchYC should be able to gracefully handle a couple orders of magnitude more traffic.

Consider yourself funded if it should come to that.

Re: Ask PG: What's the deal with search on HN?

#85

Post by [deleted] »

pg wrote: post #25
jacquesm wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it hard to believe that a programmer of your caliber would make it seem as though an off-site submission is such a big deal that it would take away significant time from working on the quality of the submissions and comments. I'm not 1% the programmer that you are and it wouldn't take me more than 15 minutes to put a search box (after all, it's just a piece of static text) in the HN footer. See, all those 'qua…

What you don't get is that attention is a zero sum game. There are an infinite number of minor things that would be pretty good to do that would "just take a minute." The only way to do good work is to ruthlessly blow them off and to focus only on the few things that matter most. Ironically, this thread, though a complete bike-shed waste of time in itself, is not entirely bad, because it's also causing me to spend ti…

[deleted]

Re: Ask PG: What's the deal with search on HN?

#86

Post by rmundo »

Aegean wrote: post #53
pg wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I'll try it for a while. It really doesn't seem like it's worth adding a link for something so trivial though.

Any time I see something valuable on HN I quickly bookmark it so that I can read it later on without the hassle to search it. Search is a hassle on YC. I think we need a solution especially having been used to quick and effective google search for almost anything.

I compulsively bookmark anything interesting I read on the net these days. Nothing is as annoying as wanting to refer to something I've read before and only able to find it again after a huge googling effort.

Re: Ask PG: What's the deal with search on HN?

#87

Post by lotharbot »

underover wrote: post #77
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apologies for the frankness. I keep trying diplomacy but I suck at it. A less informed person might think that since you got your clock cleaned by popular vote, you seem much more inclined to discount popular vote than you did a month ago. I have lost much of my admiration for HN. But I have an awesome appreciation of what you think is important to spend your time on. I have to admit I am mostly wrong and I am still…

"And am I to understand you monitor the voting records on HN? " As revealed here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1278680

From that post, you can't conclude that pg "monitors the voting records" as a general practice, only that he's willing to look at them when someone specifically complains about the ranking algorithm. Read the parent comment to that one -- the guy complained about what type of stories were on the front page; pg made the point that the complainer wasn't doing his part to get other stories up there.

Re: Ask PG: What's the deal with search on HN?

#88

Post by tzury »

pg wrote: post #15
johnrob wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about adding this to the header or footer? http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aycombinator.com&#62 ; Search

Ok, I'll try it for a while. It really doesn't seem like it's worth adding a link for something so trivial though.

this might be better http://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=014927534610857777870:r3kw...

Re: Ask PG: What's the deal with search on HN?

#89

Post by lotharbot »

pg wrote: post #58
brlewis wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the points helped you gain a more accurate idea of whether responding was worthwhile. The more people support an idea, the more response it calls for. Furthermore, an upvote or downvote is equivalent to a very concise comment.

The base case of concise and inarticulate are identical. The second most concise form of comment would be to say simply "yes" or "no." Do you feel such comments add to a discussion on account of their conciseness?

Comments like yes, no, agree, disagree, good post, and lame are concise, but also boring wastes of time which add little to a discussion. The aggregate measure of those sentiments (as expressed in a point total) is both more concise and of some value, as it serves to encourage and highlight good posts and discourage thoughtless or pointless comments. It also provides a relatively unobtrusive outlet for those who wish to voice appreciation of thoughtfulness; this is preferable to the sea of "agree"s and "disagree"s that might spring up in the absence of a point system.

Re: Ask PG: What's the deal with search on HN?

#90

Post by ivenkys »

jacquesm wrote: post #40
apgwoz wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you submit a duplicate link, it counts as an upvote. That is assuming the url is exactly the same.

Plenty of times though, the same subject will pop out in a number of different locations, searching before posting helps a lot in avoiding getting the same content on the homepage twice.

This is exactly the reason why we need search on YC.

Having a search button would simply "officialise" the default mode of searching on searchyc and then coming back here to submit the story.

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