MySQL Bugs: #50127: documentation search for "variable" missing the "User-Defined Variables" page

Bug #50127	documentation search for "variable" missing the "User-Defined Variables" page
Submitted:	7 Jan 2010 6:29	Modified:	14 Jan 2010 15:24
Reporter:	Daniel Convissor	Email Updates:
Status:	Won't fix	Impact on me:	None
Category:	MySQL Server: Documentation	Severity:	S3 (Non-critical)
Version:		OS:	Any
Assigned to:	Stefan Hinz	CPU Architecture:	Any

Description:
The documentation search engine is flawed.  See the how to repeat section for details.

How to repeat:
* Go to http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/ .
* Enter "variable" in the "Search manual" box.
* Lament that the "User-Defined Variables" page is not in the results.

Thank you for the problem report.

If you look at the top of the page it says "Results 1-6 of about 577 for variable".  Down the bottom of the page is a link to "repeat the search with the omitted results included", which allows you to see all 577 results, and there is the "Narrow your search" options to the right of the page, one of which is "user variable".  The required page is there, and a more stringent search would find it.

According to the Web team's comment, the page in question can be found by a more stringent search, thus closing this bug.

While the results are ultimately reachable, making users jump through hoops to get there is poor practice.

1) What if someone (like, uh, me) doesn't notice the "omitted results" link?

2) Even if one does see it, the text/link isn't encouraging:
"In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 6 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included."

That's very similar to the text that shows up on Google, where clicking that link generally shows duplicate/irrelevant results, so isn't worth clicking.  So one could imagine the same would happen here.

3) Clicking that link here showed several really relevant results.  So the logic used for omitting the results is seriously flawed.

We don't seem to be able to agree here. I can't see why it's a bug when search results are similar to Google search results (which isn't surprising because the Docs search is done by a Google appliance). I don't think it can be reasonably expected that searching for a single word will turn up exactly the page(s) I'm looking for. I tried a search for "user variables" (which I would input when I'd look for user variables), and it gives a useful hint for narrowing the search in the "narrow your search" sidebar. Clicking this hint makes the page in question show up on first position: http://search.mysql.com/search?site=refman-50&sort=date%3AD%3AL%3Ad1&entsp=0&client=defaul...

But since we can't seem to reach agreement here, I'm setting this bug to "won't fix", rather than "closed".