Posted by jane d on June 28, 2002, at 18:03:58
In reply to Re: New Forum Design, posted by James Fellows on June 28, 2002, at 17:12:14
Here are a few ways I think would make the search easier to use. I think about this every time I use the search function and then forget about it entirely until the next time. These have the advantage of not requiring any major change to the existing search - ie minimal work.
The name of the poster displayed with the hits. It would help when I'm looking for posts I've already read. It would also make it faster to go through the results when a large number of posts were found. For example after I've read the first two posts of Jane Doe's experience on XXXX drug I would often know whether her other posts were likely to be helpful.
It would also be nice if there was some way to know what thread the results came from. When I go thru search results I often read the whole thread that the hit came from - and then find the remaining search hits take me back to those same posts. At other times I get something that is clearly irrelevant and then have to waste time reading each post in the thread as it appears in the search results. Just displaying a numerical identifier such as the # of the first post in the thread would let me see if I'd already read or rejected # 5879 and I could move on to the next hit.
Jane
poster:jane d
thread:5879
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20020627/msgs/5884.html