# Similar threads - not



## sdgraham

I find the new "similar threads" "feature" about as useful as teats on a boar hog.


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## velisarius

Yes, the ones I've looked at inEO proved to be annoying distractions more than anything. I think it's an old feature that's been reactivated.

(Mind you, the ones below this thread do happen to be useful.)


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## cherine

I think the feature works best when the titles are accurate and meaningful. I see many meaningful suggestions, and also some that are not so helpful. So maybe this feature is a also good to flag badly titled threads.


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## mkellogg

SD, let's see how it goes and see if it gives us relevant threads from time to time. 

A few notes:
 - It bases its matches on the first three words in the title.  If the title is not good or the first three words are not the most important, it won't do a good job.
 - Don't expect Google quality. I don't have a billion dollars per year to invest in it!
 - It also appears when creating a title for a new thread. The idea is to avoid duplicate threads by showing people that their question has already been asked and answered.


velisarius said:


> I think it's an old feature that's been reactivated.


Hmm. How did you figure that out? Maybe you looked at the bottom of this thread and saw some very old threads that discuss a previous version of this feature.   This is actually pretty funny, in a thread complaining about the feature being useless, it shows useful threads at the bottom.


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## velisarius

mkellogg said:


> .[...]
> 
> Maybe you looked at the bottom of this thread and saw some very old threads that discuss a previous version of this feature.   This is actually pretty funny, in a thread complaining about the feature being useless, it shows useful threads at the bottom.



_Harrumph..._ I saw a lot of these irrelevant threads being flagged before I went ahead and commented. Any threads I recommend in a post are carefully sorted and picked by hand; these are thrown up more or less at random. 

The threads below have relevance, but "Even a stopped clock..."


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## mkellogg

velisarius said:


> Any threads I recommend in a post are carefully sorted and picked by hand


Again, getting back to my lack of a billion dollar budget, it would be nice to hire you or somebody to find relevant discussions, but that isn't an option.  I also hope that people would follow your recommendations much more often than these automated links!

Feel free to give me examples of threads where the matching was rather bad and you know of a better thread that it should have shown. I will then see what I can do to tweak the matching algorithm.  Again, understand that it only matches based on the first three words in the title and nothing else.


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## Kelly B

Count me as a supporter. I suspect it won't help much in Fr-En Grammar for the reasons mentioned above, but the Fr-En Vocab titles tend to be more succinct, and I think it has a lot of potential there. I don't find it distracting, so I see it as positive overall.


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## Myridon

mkellogg said:


> Feel free to give me examples of threads where the matching was rather bad and you know of a better thread that it should have shown. I will then see what I can do to tweak the matching algorithm.  Again, understand that it only matches based on the first three words in the title and nothing else.


In this thread
<Yonder> come day, day is <a breakin’>
the primary question is about 'a-breakin' but, of course, all the related threads are about "yonder".

For this feature to be useful:
A) You need to advertise the "rules" for forming titles.  I was surprised that there was no announcement in this forum when this feature appeared.
B) Moderators need to take on the responsibility for correcting ALL titles.  (Speaking of million dollar budgets...  )


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## cherine

I did edit the title of several threads based on the suggestions. Those suggestions show whether the threads are related or not, when they're not, I change the title. When they are, I sometimes merge similar threads.
It is a time consuming job, so don't expect everything will be perfect in no time. But it is at least a start, for everyone, to notice things that we didn't notice before.


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## Kelly B

Myridon said:


> B) Moderators need to take on the responsibility for correcting ALL titles. (Speaking of million dollar budgets... )


Members, meanwhile, can take on the responsibility of facilitating that job. 
I routinely report threads with bad titles, and I suggest the title I would find the most useful. I do a LOT of forum searches, so there's a great deal of self-interest involved, but I do hope it makes life easier for other members, too.

I say routinely, but I don't think it's so often that I'm making a pest of myself, and I haven't been asked to desist yet....


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## wildan1

cherine said:


> I did edit the title of several threads based on the suggestions. Those suggestions show whether the threads are related or not, when they're not, I change the title. When they are, I sometimes merge similar threads.
> It is a time consuming job, so don't expect everything will be perfect in no time. But it is at least a start, for everyone, to notice things that we didn't notice before.


I agree with Chérine on this point, and as a moderator looking at duplicate or poorly worded titles, I now make changes through this option every day. Our Forums are mostly mature enough at this point that in our roles as moderators, we regularly need to do this kind of clean-up and consolidation so that future users have an easier time of searching for an answer that is already there.

For those who don't find this feature useful, Mike has conveniently placed it at the bottom of the page. If you don't look down there, it will never be in your way.


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## Gemmenita

That's a very good feature, and very useful indeed. Full of advantages (even if we see irrevelant threads due to the first three words which are not the most important.) I fully support it. Thank you very much, @mkellogg.



mkellogg said:


> - It bases its matches on the first three words in the title. If the title is not good or the first three words are not the most important, it won't do a good job.


(Just a probable solution -since I don't know what is going on in the program of this feature - for those who like relevant threads:
Maybe, by changing the conditions of match, it would be possible to base matches on other factors,  for example _on the first three words which have more than 2 letters _(or some other factors like that). Because the words which have 1, 2 (or even 3) letters at the beginning of titles are usually or sometimes prepositions, articles, subjects or words which _are_ _not_ the 'key word' of the title so are not the most important. I think this_ limit of number of letters, _if doable, would increase the number of relevant similar threads. I thought of this after this thread: (à l')avenir / (dans le) futur, where the similar threads were based rather on *à l' *of the title which are 'a preposition' and 'an article'.)

However still that's not a problem if the threads _are not exactly_ relevant since this is the nature of '*similar* threads' = similar in appearance not in the meaning.
Sometimes in those similar appearances, we can find many other and useful new threads related to the 'key word' of our subject.
*'Similar threads' system is not a Google search...*


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## Cagey

Kelly B said:


> I suspect it won't help much in Fr-En Grammar for the reasons mentioned above, but the Fr-En Vocab titles tend to be more succinct, and I think it has a lot of potential there.


I think the automated search is likely to be more helpful for translation questions than for questions on grammar and usage, like those we answer in English Only. For grammar questions, we need a couple of words for context to indicate the focus of the discussion of a given word or grammatical structure to know whether the thread will be useful. 

Now that we know the search formula, we can try to work out a pattern that will produce good results and see how that works. 

Once we have a formula, we could add a note to the title field they fill out when they start a thread.  Teaching members how to give useful titles is an on-going project now, and it always will be.  Many threads are posted by new members, and it takes them a while to learn forum rules.  In addition, learners may not know which words go together or make up the structure they are interested in. 

It seems to me that the list of previous threads is most useful at the point at which the OP creates the thread.  If people would check those threads before they post their new thread, we might avoid a lot of duplication.  (Of course, they are already supposed to search for previous threads before they start a new thread.)


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## Myridon

A thread title on the first page:
The coach - The question is about articles, but the links will be about coaches.  This suggests that many thread titles will need to be "coded." so the first three words need to be: "Definite article <third word which won't create any suggested links>"  or perhaps "The vs a."  Regardless, there are so many threads on definite articles, it will be very lucky if a random sample is useful.  
Perhaps a thread can be titled "{Don't even try} the coach" so the system doesn't try to link it.


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## velisarius

I'm wondering how this title She was eighty if she was a day. in any way resembles She was gone: She was pregnant, she was dead.


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## sdgraham

Thread in English Only:
*Is it right to use "every few teacher" as subject?*
"Similar" threads*:*
it is ok /it is all right English Only Jan 2, 2013
Is it a right expression? English Only Apr 17, 2016
it is right to say... English Only Nov 30, 2010
Is it/this/that right? English Only Dec 3, 2015
is it the right time English Only Jan 16, 2016

Perhaps "English-Only" suffers more than other forums from those who don't read instructions.


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## siares

Poor Mike! All these moanings, including the mine.
He and helpers, however gets back at us:
S: Can we have feature X?
Mike/helpers: Why do you need it? 
S: 17 excellent arguments for X
Mike/helpers: Can't you just do Y?


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## Paulfromitaly

Kelly B said:


> but the Fr-En Vocab titles tend to be more succinct, and I think it has a lot of potential there


Precisely.
The En-It mods have been editing poorly worded titles and asking people to choose meaningful titles for years (we have a specific tutorial to help users choose relevant titles) so the good news is that in the En-It forum this new feature works pretty well.


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## sdgraham

"similar" threads for "a hangfire" (English Only) 

a A or A English Only Mar 1, 2010
half a/a half/a half a English Only Apr 21, 2016
"a" English Only Dec 16, 2006
-a- English Only Oct 21, 2007
A English Only Jan 20, 2008


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## Gemmenita

sdgraham said:
			
		

> similar" threads for "a hangfire" (English Only)


Hi sdgraham, 

I tnink that's because there are times that there is no _similar_ _thread_ _at_ _all_  for a thread.
The thread 'A hangfire' is unique in all the Forum. So the only word which remains is 'a' and 'ha'
>>>This means that our 'similar threads' system is very intelligent too and functions very well.


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## Myridon

sdgraham said:


> "similar" threads for "a hangfire" (English Only)


Similarly, there was a thread yesterday "light carter" and, of course, the mystery word is "carter." Since no one has ever asked about "carter,"  useless threads on "light" are returned.


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## bearded

Sometimes a paradox may arise from the method adopted in this ''similar-threads'' feature, for example here:
Crossword troubles... (closed for moderation)
The thread title now reads  _Crossword troubles (closed for moderation)_
The ''similar threads'' read (first tip) _Keep the door closed.
_


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## cherine

It's just a temporary thing, Bearded. 
On the other hand, and from personal experience, just the past few days I got to discover many threads based on those suggestions, and I edit and merge a good number of them to make them more meaningful and accessible. As a forum user, I benefited from the suggestions, and as a moderator I found a number of bad titles that had slipped my attention at the time.


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## bearded

Thank you, Cherine.


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## Sowka

Hello 



cherine said:


> It's just a temporary thing, Bearded.



It was indeed a temporary thing. 


> On the other hand, and from personal experience, just the past few days I got to discover many threads based on those suggestions, and I edit and merge a good number of them to make them more meaningful and accessible. As a forum user, I benefited from the suggestions, and as a moderator I found a number of bad titles that had slipped my attention at the time.


I agree. I often use the "similar threads" feature to find and improve thread titles that escaped my attention when they were new. And I hope that starters of new threads will look at them before posting their new question, to see whether a very similar topic has been covered before. This will help us keep our forums well-structured.


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## elroy

wildan1 said:


> For those who don't find this feature useful, Mike has conveniently placed it at the bottom of the page. If you don't look down there, it will never be in your way.


 My thoughts exactly.  If you don't like it, just ignore it. 


velisarius said:


> I'm wondering how this title She was eighty if she was a day. in any way resembles She was gone: She was pregnant, she was dead.


 Did you not read Mike's explanation?  It's based on the first three words.  The first two words of both of those threads are "She was."


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## Paulfromitaly

cherine said:


> On the other hand, and from personal experience, just the past few days I got to discover many threads based on those suggestions, and I edit and merge a good number of them to make them more meaningful and accessible. As a forum user, I benefited from the suggestions, and as a moderator I found a number of bad titles that had slipped my attention at the time.


Exactly.
I really can't see any reason why this feature shouldn't be implemented - even when, now and then, it returns irrelevant hits it doesn't do any harm.


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## velisarius

Paulfromitaly said:


> Exactly.
> I really can't see any reason why this feature shouldn't be implemented - even when, now and then, it returns irrelevant hits it doesn't do any harm.



To save fruitless clicking on titles that may prove to have no relevance, it would be nice if we could see what the thread's about simply by hovering the cursor over it. At the moment, that information is tantalisingly only half-visible (the right hand side). I wonder whether it would be possible to show it normally, (as when we hover over the thread titles on a forum home page).


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## Cagey

velisarius said:


> At the moment, that information is tantalisingly only half-visible (the right hand side).


That is weird.  I hadn't even noticed that it was there.

The useful information is already there, I hope it's possible to make the pop-up bubble go to the right of the cursor rather than to the left.
That would really improve the usefulness of this feature.

*Added*: I just checked.  On the forum pages, the contents of the first post appear directly above the title, which is  perfect.


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## Gemmenita

cherine said:


> (...) I edit and merge a good number of them to make them more meaningful and accessible. (...) and as a moderator I found a number of bad titles that had slipped my attention at the time.


More power to your hands, cherine.  As a member, I appreciate and thank you.

***

I think, now that we have the opportunity of access to _Similar Threads_ based on the _first words _of the title, if a Moderator who wants to edit the title of a _new_ thread, chooses a suitable title not as before but this time regarding the importance of _those_ _first words,_ it would help to have a well organised and more relevant list of Similar Threads.
An example : today I created a thread about the translation of a special verb in a particular domain.
As a relevant title, I chose that verb with its special usage in the parenthesis.
But right after, I saw that a Moderator chose only the part of the sentence where my verb was inside (maybe as an ancient habit in the forum for questions about translations) and this part started with : 'each time it + my verb'.

The result was that a list of similar threads starting with 'each time' appeared under the page (as if the main question was 'each time') and then when I checked the dictionary, I saw that my thread was below the word 'each'.

So, a thread about that particular verb which would be helpful for those who might have the same question as me, lost totally its track in the whole Forum!
I know that Moderators are sometime overworked and it is natural that they miss sometimes such small things, so I would like very much to re-edit that title but I did not do it: first as a respect to the Moderation of that dear Moderator and then because I was not sure that members are allowed to re-edit a title edited by a Moderator, therefore I think that if the members have the permission to re-edit the title created by a Moderator within the Title editing deadline or to report it to the Moderators, would be a great help to Moderators as well as in increasing the number of relevant threads.
Thanks!


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## Paulfromitaly

Gemmenita said:


> I think that if the members have the permission to re-edit the title created by a Moderator within the Title editing deadline or to report it to the Moderators, would be a great help to Moderators


No, it's not a good idea, so please do not re-edit threads titles that have been previously edited by a moderator.
Users are allowed to edit their threads title only to fix spelling mistakes or make the original title more relevant.
If you can't figure out why the title was changed, get in touch with a mod and ask for clarification or report the thread, but don't roll the changes back.
Thanks


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## Gemmenita

Paulfromitaly said:


> ...so please do not re-edit threads titles that have been previously edited by a moderator.


Oh, of course, of course that we shouldn't do as I never do it. It was just an idea with the good intention of helping in creating relevant titles _if allowed_.
Thanks for reassuring me, Paul.



Paulfromitaly said:


> If you can't figure out why the title was changed,...


No, I don't want (and have never wanted) to figure out _why_ a title is changed because I am sure that the title chosen by a Moderator is always the best.
(furthermre my titles are seldom or rather _never_ changed _completely_ or replaced by a new one by Mods. This was the first time.)

My question or rather my doubt is this:

If a member realizes that the title chosen by a _Moderator_ has misled a Thread - without _his_ knowing it (= à l'insu de ce Moderateur)- as  my thread yesterday and therefore could increase the number of irrelevant Similar Threads, can this member _report_ it or this would displease to Mods?

Since 'Similar Threads' is new feature and there is no rule yet about _reporting messages concerning them._


Thanks!


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## mkellogg

Hi everybody,  I saw that the Similar Threads feature was causing server problems and removed it from existing threads. You will still see it suggesting other threads when you create a new thread.  I might be able to bring it back at some point, but it would require a lot of work to fix the issues.


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