Search Keywords Needed

I've already read many complaints by other members on the Resident Answers board. This is a problem that should be fixed.

In my particular case, the search function for my group, as it stands now, doesn't work. What good is it to search for a group by only the first word or first part of a hyphenated word?

To be specific, I started a group called Non-Fiction Writers of SL. While the keywords that one would likely use to search for a group like mine would be "writers," "non-fiction," or "nonfiction." For any of these logical choices, my group doesn't come up. It DOES however come up when I enter "non." Who searches for "non" as a subject?

My suggestion is two-fold.

1. Until you implement keyword search across ALL of the search function - put a notice in the FAQ & on the group charter page, heck even include the warning in the pop up that says "Are you SURE you want to create this group?" - mentioning that the group search function only goes by the FIRST WORD OR PART OF A WORD, not by a logical keyword system. Residents may choose to title their group differently, if they are INFORMED.

2. And most importantly, include keyword search in the search function. Logical, no? Bring up relevant results, it's as simple as that. (Also see the Resident Answers forum for similar complaints in the places search - fix all of it, please.)

Sincerely,

Balianne Masala

It would be good if the inworld search worked more like what Balianne proposed.

Until then, one should remember that the search box on secondlife.com does search inside group titles and in the group charter.


Using "writer" as a search term produces the following groups:


This includes groups in which the term "writer" appears in the group charter but not in the title.

So we can do a reasonable search for groups, we just have to use the website.

Something like this kind of result is what the SL viewer's group search needs to return.

That's a good tip, Suz, thanks!

The website's search is nice, but I bet you it doesn't provide a complete list of matches for a search term but truncates it at what fits convenienty on one web page.

I met someone inworld the other night, a new user, who said he or she was from France and wanted to meet some other French people.

I asked for some suggestions in the Mental Mentors group, and I got the predictable flippant answer "Put France in the group search," as if the question had been asked by an idiot that was new to SL. Terse dismissive answers such as that are often not worth much. Such was the case in this instance.

The inworld search won't let you put in France and find the group "Second Life France". The website's search will.

There are groups that have a name that you could find except that they started the group name with punctuation - the group "*FRANCE*FRENCH*", for example.

So folks that are making groups that they want to get found should start the group's name with the term most likely to be used as a search term by people looking for such a group.

Folks that are trying to use the inworld search to find a group related to "SomeTopic" should look for SomeTopic first, then try Second Life SomeTopic, SL SomeTopic, SecondLife SomeTopic, etc. This is a pitifully stupid way to have to do a search.

The group seach system can't even give a list of the many many groups that start with "SL ", since the initial term has to have at least three characters.

You can do searches for things like "---" and "((" and even "-=*" and find groups that start with meaningless punctuation like that. I wonder if these group's founder's realized that they were rendering their group essentially unfindable by putting meaningless punctuation marks at the start of the group name.

Hmm, since they have a search system that works on a web page, and there's a web tab in an avatar's profile, the Linden staff could:

1. Create a group search web page formatted to work in an avatar's web tab. Have it return every group that matches a search string, using multiple pages and a next button.

2. Then create a Linden staff avatar named GroupSearch Linden. To search for a group you'd look up GroupSearch Linden and look at his webtab.

It's possible that some user could decipher the source code to the secondlife.com site and figure out how to get the web group search to yield up answers into a web tab formatted page. I took a look at it and since it wasn't readily apparent to me how to do this and I'm not getting paid to do such stuff I stopped looking.