jrobbins

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One of the greatest assets of Manhattan Reefs in my opinion is the vast amount of knowledge that the site contains. However, like most knowledge bases that grow to a certain size, its use is limited by the ease of access to this information. Most questions that are asked on this site have often been answered multiple times before, but accessing this information often proves difficult or impossible.

This brings me to my point, which is the importance of spelling the name of the coral, fish, or critter that you are asking about correctly. If you don't spell the name correctly than any information that you may provide will essentially die with the thread that it is on, as the search function will not find it.

So, to help keep the site searchable, and to keep your contributions alive to help future generations of reefers, I would like to suggest the following...USE THE F*&ING SPELLCHECK!!!!!
 

DCG1286

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i agre peple choud lern to spel<dumies

wda0697l.jpg


Great post Jon, but spellcheck is for chumps. :p

Lanacane - sad thing is, people actually do spell like that.
 
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...This brings me to my point, which is the importance of spelling the name of the coral, fish, or critter that you are asking about correctly. If you don't spell the name correctly than any information that you may provide will essentially die with the thread that it is on, as the search function will not find it...

I agree with the sentiments expressed. We should make an effort to spell proper names correctly to make the search function more useful. In addition...
 
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Even though spelling is fundamental in the usefulness of a search engine, I think the search engine should be upgraded first.

Please try these words, "LED", "Led", and "led" in the search function provided in MR
Please try the same with Google.
 
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jrobbins

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Wingo, led is tricky, as it is an acronym and an actual word. rather than worrying about one keyword search (which i admit is quite relevant to you) i am thinking about this on a much broader level.
 

darkdrako

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Did anyone try the keywords test I proposed?

Do you find the "Sorry - no matches" screen or the search engine returns some good threads?

Can anyone tell us what's wrong with the keywords?

Try using the "*" wildcard symbol after the word (led*)

Yes people could use the spell check but there are ways around it. If you use the asterik before or after a portion of the word, you do not need to use the entire word. The search engine should return even partially mispelled versions of the word you were looking for.
 

jrobbins

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as said previously, the spellchecker software doesn't care if english is your first, second, third, or twentyfifth language. there are also a bunch of programs that can translate from your native language into english.

furthermore, most of the names of corals are in latin, which will be the same no matter what language you speak.

i just don't buy this argument at all.
 
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Wingo, led is tricky, as it is an acronym and an actual word. rather than worrying about one keyword search (which i admit is quite relevant to you) i am thinking about this on a much broader level.

That's why I said in the first response that "even though spelling is fundamental in usefulness of search engine" but without a better search engine, many information in this forum can hardly be found.

I would not believe the keywords are being tricky because if they are, neither will Google yield any result. I tried many other searches with other keywords in the past and found nothing here, even though I can clearly remember I read it before. I think to improve the search function of the MR search engine is to admit there is a malfunction or poor design
somewhere in the engine. As another member has just point out that the wild card symbol "*" helps to locate more informations but unfortunately not all users know of this symbol. Therefore, I feel it's the search engine that is tricky not the keywords.

I also feel that misspellings within a post has very little effect in the effectiveness of searching for a topic in forum settings. The majority of the posts will have the correct spelling in the thread even with misspellings here or there in a thread. The topic will still be searchable by using the correctly spelled keywords.

I do agreed misspellings make it harder to understand and not as pleasant to read but it really has very little effect in the function of a search in forum settings.

Note: "*" is not a wild card in English.
 

jrobbins

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guys, lets not turn this into an indictment of education or of society as a whole, or for that matter into a debate as to the merits of various search engines.

the simple fact is that there is a spellchecker on this site that if you click it WILL CORRECT YOUR SPELLING. that is all.
 

Chiefmcfuz

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Again to reiterate the OP's intent of this thread, THE PROPER SPELLING OF REEF AND AQUARIA SENSITIVE WORDS.

If you are posting information about a certain subject or organism within the hobby the item of discussion should be properly spelled so newcomers and experienced aquarists alike can easily search a subject.
 

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