Vande's profile

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Wednesday, November 30th, 2022 5:27 PM

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This new name search format is back again

This new name search format is back again today.  How irritating, I thought they'd abandoned the idea!

‎How do I get the old name list? | IMDb Community Forums (sprinklr.com)

This conversation has been merged. Please refer the main conversation:

Can I return to the previous results display?

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2 years ago

@Col_Needham @Jeff_IMDb 

Whatever fixes you made for title searches in the new search format may also need to be made for keyword searches.

As I have reported here, the new keyword search is not nearly as "smart" as the old search in finding the best and most prevalent results.

Using "2000" as an example (as inspired by the 2000 Mules example for title searches), when you do a keyword search for "2000," the keyword "year-2000" does not even appear in the first 25 results, so it literally does not show up in the search at first. 

In the new search, when searching for "2000," the keywords timeframe 2000s and year 2000 are results #27 and #28, respectively, so they don't show up in the initial results (of only 25 keywords). 

The fact that the initial display is limited to a paltry 25 results is a related problem, and a big problem at that.  But an even bigger problem is that the new search is a "dumb" search (as compared to a "smart" search) in that it limits the top results to a very rigid interpretation of the keywords that start with the exact words searched for, exactly how they are spelled and in the exact order they are searched for.

I no longer have access to the old search, but I feel pretty confident in saying that with the old search, searching for "2000" would have presented timeframe 2000s and year 2000 very close to the top, because the old search factored in prevalence of keywords into the search algorithm, and also would not limit the top results to only keywords that begin with the exact term searched for. 

And even if I'm wrong about that, the old keyword search displayed up to 200 results at a single click, so even if timeframe 2000s and year 2000 were ranked #27 and #28 in the old search (which, again, I am confident was not true), those keywords would still show up on the first (and only) screen that popped up with a single click, so they would have been much easier to find.

I wish it were possible to access the old search to compare and contrast search results to further prove what I am talking about here. 

Overall, the new keyword search is a major step backwards, not only in display and formatting but more importantly, in functionality. It feels kind of astonishing that it was just unveiled on everybody without proper vetting.

(edited)

234 Messages

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2 years ago

As a contributor, this is so much more useful than that.  Why would you want to make life harder for your contributors?

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47K Points

@Vande

I agree with you. It's not only the absence of the Roman numerals that makes the new version obviously harder to use, it's a bunch of other stuff too:

  • The new format breaks the info from one line into two, taking up more space and making it hard to compare entries.
  • The new format eliminates the background shading in the rows, making it hard to see the gradations at a glance.
  • The new format uses a hard-to-read gray font for the critical info.
  • With the new version, when you try to copy and paste specific entries and approach the link from the right side of the screen while copying, the link automatically opens, even when you don't want that. That didn't happen with the old version.

And those are just a few examples off the top of my head.

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@keyword_expert​ All very well put and I agree completely.

And now as we speak, the name pages themselves have just changed completely too!

I like a challenge, but this is going to be something else. 

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47K Points

@Vande​ For me, the name pages keep going back and forth between the new design and old design over the past few weeks. I believe eventually we will all be forced into the new design permanently, like happened with the search pages today.