Re: Crispy around the edges

Subject: Re: Crispy around the edges
From: dmbrown -at- brown-inc -dot- com
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 16:51:03 -0700


jposada -at- comcast -dot- net wrote:


I think it is safe to state that the term "admin" is not a real word...

You miss the point of the other respondent's question, which was that even the most rudimentary search engine should return "administrator" and "administration" and "administer" and maybe others, too, when you search for "admin".

If it doesn't, you need a different search engine.

> Index had nothing to do with this. It was a pure Search.

I understand, John. That's precisely my point: that a well crafted index consistently beats a search engine in terms of successful information retrieval.

In an index, "administrator" (and any other words starting with "admin") would've been right there for the reader to see. With an index, there's the opportunity for serendipitous discovery; with a search engine, what you look for is what you get (quite literally so, in the case of the search engine you were using, which seems unusually restrictive).

It's like the difference between looking something up on dictionary.com and looking it up in a printed dictionary. I use dictionary.com occasionally, but I've never stumbled across an interesting or useful word that just happened to be adjacent to the word I was looking for, as I often do when looking in a printed dictionary.

--David

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Re: Crispy around the edges: From: jposada

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