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A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design

search.marginalia.nu

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Re: A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design

#401

Post by b-x »

fghfghfghfghfgh wrote: post #382
b-x wrote: post #371

Too bad it rejects non-Latin words, as if the definition of "text" is a sequence of alphabetical letters originated from Latin. I thought that we've reached the time to embrace all cultures in the world, but this retrogressive engine proves that most modern tech designers are myopic about other civilizations in the globe.

It’s one guy. Making a useful tool. It even has an altruistic purpose. Shame on you for twisting a well intended effort into a negative statement that suits your narrow identity political world view.

Less insulting error messages would be more welcome than casting out others without any consideration.

You may distribute "shame" however you want, but this only helps enforcing the damaging insults and amplifying them.

Re: A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design

#402

Post by exporectomy »

ephbit wrote: post #396

Quoted from the linked site: > Convenience functions have been added, and the search engine can now perform simple calculations and unit conversions. Try 1 pint in cubic centimeters, or 50+sqrt(pi). This functionality is still under development, be patient if it doesn't work. Why would you make any ever so small effort to implement calculations? I don't get it. If your search engine enabled me to find more useful sea…

How else do you do unit conversions? I use Google because it's far easier than any other software I've tried. Mainly because it's more forgiving of errors. It knows that "34 fset in msters" is 10.3632 meter. This search engine isn't, though, so I wouldn't waste time trying to discover its unit conversion syntax rules.

Re: A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design

#403

Post by marginalia_nu »

b-x wrote: post #398
marginalia_nu wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Understand that this is something I built for myself, by myself, so it focuses on languages I understand. It hosted on a single consumer grade computer in my living room. I built it out of pocket and anyone is free to use it. Does this make me a villain? If I can do this, what's preventing some guy in Japan or India or Peru from doing the same, of course focusing on their languages?

Maybe a better suited choice for errors than an insulting message: when I provided a query in my native language it regurgitated the error "needs to be a word" instead of more acceptable "not a supported language". When you claim that a word in some other culture is not "a word", just because it's not recognized by your machine, that's demeaning to say the least.

Again it's a one man hobby project, I don't have a team of people to go through every formulation and every error message to ensure nobody can read them in a way that offends them. It's just me, writing code on an unfinished project that HN discovered.

In this case, the code doesn't match the word regexp, like it may be a @TwitterHandle or a "comp.lang.c" with periods in it, or an unsupported Unicode range. It doesn't know why it is not matching, just that it doesn't.

Re: A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design

#404

Post by samhh »

exporectomy wrote: post #402
ephbit wrote: post #396

Quoted from the linked site: > Convenience functions have been added, and the search engine can now perform simple calculations and unit conversions. Try 1 pint in cubic centimeters, or 50+sqrt(pi). This functionality is still under development, be patient if it doesn't work. Why would you make any ever so small effort to implement calculations? I don't get it. If your search engine enabled me to find more useful sea…

How else do you do unit conversions? I use Google because it's far easier than any other software I've tried. Mainly because it's more forgiving of errors. It knows that "34 fset in msters" is 10.3632 meter. This search engine isn't, though, so I wouldn't waste time trying to discover its unit conversion syntax rules.

On macOS for example I'd use Spotlight.

Re: A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design

#406

Post by srcreigh »

exporectomy wrote: post #400

Wow. I tested it on recipes which Google has destroyed and this was the first result, a simple clear recipe: http://demont.myds.me/leerecipes/mainmeals/mainmeals1/chicke... compared to Google's endless drivel of "This chicken stir fry recipe will become a staple in your home. It’s so quick to make and you can use whatever vegetables you have on hand. It tastes wonderful regardless of how you alter the ingredients. ..…

Fwiw this website, Natasha's kitchen, seems to be one of the more performant ad filled recipe websites.

Make use of the "Jump to recipe" button to get to the recipe faster.

Re: A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design

#407

Post by marginalia_nu »

thrtythreeforty wrote: post #130

> New: You can now look up dictionary definitions for words. If you for example don't know what the definition of is is, you can inquire thus: define:is. Oh man, I love subtle jabs and tongue in cheek writing like this. Very Robin Williams-esque.

I am the first to admit it's a pretty dated reference.

Re: A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design

#408

Post by drusepth »

Interesting approach.

I always search myself on new search engines to compare the results. Most engines return my personal blog/website, books/stories I've written, news stories, my github projects/contributions, social links, etc.

This search engine surfaces just three obscure IRC logs that contain my nick in join/part messages (nothing said from me!) from 2009. And nothing else.

There's probably some things this approach is really good at but I'm not sure what they'd be for me off hand. Always cool to see new approaches to search, though.

Re: A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design

#409

Post by b-x »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #403
b-x wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe a better suited choice for errors than an insulting message: when I provided a query in my native language it regurgitated the error "needs to be a word" instead of more acceptable "not a supported language". When you claim that a word in some other culture is not "a word", just because it's not recognized by your machine, that's demeaning to say the least.

Again it's a one man hobby project, I don't have a team of people to go through every formulation and every error message to ensure nobody can read them in a way that offends them. It's just me, writing code on an unfinished project that HN discovered. In this case, the code doesn't match the word regexp, like it may be a @TwitterHandle or a "comp.lang.c" with periods in it, or an unsupported Unicode range. It doesn'…

I must congratulate you on this achievement. That's certainly a useful take on search.

Nonetheless, even when coding, one should also consider thoroughly the UX and how it would be addressing the others.

Saying "unsupported word" is much more sympathetic than "needs to be a word" (where you define what a "word" is, and the general user is unaware of such definition).

Re: A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design

#410

Post by 1f60c »

exporectomy wrote: post #400

Wow. I tested it on recipes which Google has destroyed and this was the first result, a simple clear recipe: http://demont.myds.me/leerecipes/mainmeals/mainmeals1/chicke... compared to Google's endless drivel of "This chicken stir fry recipe will become a staple in your home. It’s so quick to make and you can use whatever vegetables you have on hand. It tastes wonderful regardless of how you alter the ingredients. ..…

This isn’t entirely Google’s fault. Recipes on their own aren’t copyrighted in the US, and adding this fluff text is a way around that.
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