Note: This forum is not affiliated with World Sailing and comments on this forum do not represent an official interpretation of the rules, definitions, cases or regulations. The only official interpretations are those of World Sailing.
Paul worked on making improvements to the site's search tool. It's a straight forward "simple search" (so if you enter more than 1 word, every word you enter must be present to get a "hit" returned to you).
Added is the ability to limit the search to the Rules, Cases, Posts or Judges Manual.
I know this improvement will really come in handy.
Thanks Ang, Thanks Paul. I was just about to ask if it could be upgraded.
Couple of possible further 'improvements'.
I note that in Rules and Cases, if you input a bare Rule or Case number (like '43' or '101'), Search will not find the rule,
Would it be possible to recognise say Google search syntax words AND, OR, '-',? Isn't something like this built into the underlying search engine?
Would it be possible, rather than selecting the search domain with the radio buttons, for the domain to be the focus domain from which the Search is invoked, so that, If I'm looking at Rules, then if I click Search, Search will search Rules, if I'm in Cases when I click, then it will search Cases, and importantly to me, If I'm in My Posts and Click Search, then I can search my past posts for a keyword.
We changed the underlying indexing for the search with this recent release. For those interested, it's tsquery. It provides for pretty complex search syntax. The problem is that it is too complex and brittle. If you don't structure it right, it panics. And I think it's too much for what we're trying to do. So the search was made more friendly with a simple interface that allows for multiple words and assumes an AND between each word. Otherwise I think we're spending to much energy on features pretty well overshadowed by AI.
The indexing does not include the rule or case number. Honestly, if you know the case number, why search? Additionally, it is not insignificant to add to the index. I know it doesn't seem to make much sense, but the content of the posts are stored separately from the meta and requires some database gymnastics to get and include in the index. It arguably could be faster to get to a case or rule that way, but was left off intentionally...
And the idea of associating the search with the domain is something I considered. But I think it limits the search functionality unnecessarily. It would mean you would have to switch from rules to cases to search cases, which is how I tend to use search most of the time. I'm not sure it really gains that much in convenience not to have to select a radio button.
But I do like your idea of being able to search your own posts and comments. That seems really useful. I'll see if I can make that happen in the next couple days.
It is possible. I suppose it could be trained on the Forums. But otherwise it seems that any generic AI client is going to do a pretty good job of using information from across the internet to have a more thorough understanding. And I also don't want to suggest that the Forums are the official source for defining the rules. That is best left to World Sailing. What functionality would you think useful?
Couple of possible further 'improvements'.
I note that in Rules and Cases, if you input a bare Rule or Case number (like '43' or '101'), Search will not find the rule,
Would it be possible to recognise say Google search syntax words AND, OR, '-',? Isn't something like this built into the underlying search engine?
Would it be possible, rather than selecting the search domain with the radio buttons, for the domain to be the focus domain from which the Search is invoked, so that, If I'm looking at Rules, then if I click Search, Search will search Rules, if I'm in Cases when I click, then it will search Cases, and importantly to me, If I'm in My Posts and Click Search, then I can search my past posts for a keyword.
The indexing does not include the rule or case number. Honestly, if you know the case number, why search? Additionally, it is not insignificant to add to the index. I know it doesn't seem to make much sense, but the content of the posts are stored separately from the meta and requires some database gymnastics to get and include in the index. It arguably could be faster to get to a case or rule that way, but was left off intentionally...
And the idea of associating the search with the domain is something I considered. But I think it limits the search functionality unnecessarily. It would mean you would have to switch from rules to cases to search cases, which is how I tend to use search most of the time. I'm not sure it really gains that much in convenience not to have to select a radio button.
But I do like your idea of being able to search your own posts and comments. That seems really useful. I'll see if I can make that happen in the next couple days.
You mentioned AI.
Any chance of doing a post about using AI with rrs.org?