52 replies to this topic

[JMichael]

@jefito: It is amazing how you always tend to "put words in my mouth". Or maybe you just want to twist things so you can make an argument where there is none.

I think it is well understood by all (except perhaps by you) that everything each poster posts is "just the poster's opinion".

I have no objection to you, or anyone, making an argument for your case.
There is no need to make things personal, and twist someone's statement.
To do so, simply weakens your argument.

jefito, on 14 February 2012 - 10:28 PM, said:

You may very well attempt to judge what is "worth the effort", but then again you are not the arbiter, and neither am I.

Didn't state nor imply that I was either a "judge" or an "arbiter". Most people would clearly understand that I was stating my opinion, from my point of view.

jefito, on 14 February 2012 - 10:28 PM, said:

As far as Google goes -- are you saying that Evernote isn't bright enough to figure out a feasible algorithm as a starting point? Ridiculous. Or tinker with it to make it better over time? Google's algorithm wasn't handed down to them on stone tablets, you know. Oh, and "dangerous"? A danger to what? Someone might sort their notes incorrectly? Oooooh, but it's "very, very top secret" (think Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy -- "ultra, ultra hush-hush"). Well, I'm sure somehow that's relevant to something; I just can't figure out to what. As if Google doesn't produce imperfect results for some users every single second of every single day. More to the point, you don't need to match Google's accuracy to have a search be useful.

What a stretch!!! Again you twist and overstate what I said.

My only point is that the Google Search algorithm is confidential and very difficult to reproduce.
I made no comment about Evernote's ability or desire to do so.

If you haven't learned by now that it is dangerous to make assumptions, I don't think I can help your understand that.

[jefito]

Let's take it slowly, since it appears I must:

JMichael, on 14 February 2012 - 09:29 PM, said:

dlu, on 14 February 2012 - 08:50 PM, said:

Note views aren't that interesting, I think it skews things just as much as it helps.

Agreed. I don't think adding this is worth the effort.

How would you know how much effort is involved? And worth it to whom? If by that you mean "worth it for you", then say that, rather than making it a solemn boldfaced pronouncement that implies it is settled and set in stone? As I said, it might be worth it to others here.

Quote

I would want the number of views to be applied to Search relevance ONLY after a number of other criteria.
I could have a very important legal document that after I put into EN I only viewed once.
I would want my Search for that Note/document to be driven more by tags, created date, title, and Note content before applying View count.

Somehow missing he point that sort by relevance would be just another option for sorting. And that the topic at hand is really sorting rather than searching: Remember that one of the problems mentioned here was that the poster matched fully 1/5 of his notes with a search. The question is then: how do the most relevant ones bubble up into view?

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I think it is dangerous to assume the weight Google applies to view count.

Dangerous for what reason? Nobody's assuming that Evernote would use Google's algorithm, except maybe you.

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As GM noted, their search algorithm is very, very top secret, and works incredibly well.

This doesn't support the proir assertion, and isn't particularly relevant anyways. What does its supposed very, very top-secrecy have to do with anything being discussed? BTW, of course Evernote wouldn't have the same sort of inputs that Google does, as it would be based on an user base of one, not billions. Doesn't mean that some useful information can't be derived.

Quote

Many other search engines used view count prior to Google, without much success.

Are you saying that view count is a useless statistic? Does Google use it still?

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So far, no one has been able to match Google's search accuracy.

Not in all areas: counterexample previously provided. Relevance to the topic is uncertain, however, also as previously discussed.

Your words, all of them. Happier?

[JMichael]

jefito, on 15 February 2012 - 12:19 AM, said:

Let's take it slowly,

Take it however you like. You are still twisting and grossly misinterpreting my statements.
Again, this just weakens your argument, but you don't seem to get that.

Your arguments have no relevance.

I'm done with this nonsense debate. It is not adding any value to this thread.

See if you can make any technical arguments for your case without referring to me.

[polocanada]

I enjoyed reading all post. I am glad we got a great conversation going ;-)

AutoHotKey - thanks for suggestion. Will try.. I am currently using BREEVY on PC which synchronizes with TextExpander on Mac and TextExpander on iPhone.

Wildcard character in tag name - great suggestion. Thank you. Didn't know.

Set tag "favorites" for frequently used notes - makes sense. Thanks.

Due dates - the whole discussion could be expanded to add ability to set "optional fields" for title in notes. An optional field could be a date format, number format, priority, keyword etc..

Columns - ability to add additional column to sort by selected "optional field", not just the limited number of fields available for sort-by/column name.

Star a note - on iPhone I have ability to star a note as favorite. I can't see "star it" feature on Evernote. A simple thing like this from iPhone would be easy to add to EN. If I tag something as favorite it should be favorite whether I am using Web, iPhone or Mac or PC. Or maybe it's just me and I can't see it and I need prescription glasses.

[jefito]

polocanada, on 15 February 2012 - 12:42 AM, said:

Star a note - on iPhone I have ability to star a note as favorite. I can't see "star it" feature on Evernote. A simple thing like this from iPhone would be easy to add to EN. If I tag something as favorite it should be favorite whether I am using Web, iPhone or Mac or PC. Or maybe it's just me and I can't see it and I need prescription glasses.

Star is a bit of an oddity in the Evernote world -- it only exists on the iPhone. As best I know, it was an early attempt to deliver what is now available on their mobile clients as offline notebooks, i.e., the ability to have notes stay available on a device even when it's offline. I don't believe that you'll see it on other clients.

[GrumpyMonkey]

jefito, on 15 February 2012 - 12:29 PM, said:

polocanada, on 15 February 2012 - 12:42 AM, said:

Star a note - on iPhone I have ability to star a note as favorite. I can't see "star it" feature on Evernote. A simple thing like this from iPhone would be easy to add to EN. If I tag something as favorite it should be favorite whether I am using Web, iPhone or Mac or PC. Or maybe it's just me and I can't see it and I need prescription glasses.

Star is a bit of an oddity in the Evernote world -- it only exists on the iPhone. As best I know, it was an early attempt to deliver what is now available on their mobile clients as offline notebooks, i.e., the ability to have notes stay available on a device even when it's offline. I don't believe that you'll see it on other clients.

i believe the star, or favorites, is being phased out according to messages by evernote staff on this forum.

[BurgersNFries]

jefito, on 15 February 2012 - 12:29 PM, said:

Star is a bit of an oddity in the Evernote world -- it only exists on the iPhone. As best I know, it was an early attempt to deliver what is now available on their mobile clients as offline notebooks, i.e., the ability to have notes stay available on a device even when it's offline. I don't believe that you'll see it on other clients.

True.

GrumpyMonkey, on 15 February 2012 - 12:42 PM, said:

i believe the star, or favorites, is being phased out according to messages by evernote staff on this forum.

And true.

[jbenson2]

polocanada, on 15 February 2012 - 12:42 AM, said:

Due dates - the whole discussion could be expanded to add ability to set "optional fields" for title in notes. An optional field could be a date format, number format, priority, keyword etc..

I believe that Evernote plans some flexibility with the Due Date column.

[jefito]

[still in brainstorm mode]

The curious/ironic thing about the question of note relevance is that I used to pooh-pooh the notion; it's come up before, but I just didn't get it. But I started thinking about it in context of the problem where a poster has many matches for a particular search, and the light came on. Remember, the idea is to come up with a metric that can be used to sort results of a search such that the most important results for the user tend to float to the top. The normal fields that we can sort on don't really help in this case, so can we get Evernote to track actions that might determine relevancy for that user.

So, on the notion of relevancy of a note, I can think of four criteria that might apply, off the top of my head:
* number of note views
* how recently it was created
* how recently it was updated
* the user marks it as important

I'm sure there are others that might come into play, but I'm no search expert.

How those would be weighed together is anyone's guess. Also, how this should play out with respect to shared notes isn't clear either. Could the user be allowed to tweak the relative weights of the criteria? Or would having the ability to mark a note important enough?

[JMichael]

jefito, on 15 February 2012 - 08:50 PM, said:

. . in context of the problem where a poster has many matches for a particular search,

So, on the notion of relevancy of a note, I can think of four criteria that might apply, off the top of my head:
* number of note views
* how recently it was created
* how recently it was updated
* the user marks it as important

Given that the user supplied search terms are met first, and then the results list is a number of notes that ALL match ALL the search terms, then I would agree that the last three (in particular) above would be helpful in sorting the results list.

I have a tag named "Master_Note", which I apply to the primary, or master Note out of a number of Notes that are closely related, The other notes are what I would call "supporting" notes.

So, if my "Master_Note" tag was somehow always associated with "the user marks it as important", then that would be very helpful.
I often forget to include the "Master_Note" tag in my search expression.

EDIT:

• I think I was partially confusing filter with sort.
  
• The Relevance ranking is a SORT feature, not a FILTER feature
  
• So, adding a Sort option of "By Relevance" to a Notes List would be good option
  
• Of course, the user can always choose to sort by the other fields if desired.

Edited by JMichael, 15 February 2012 - 09:38 PM.

[polocanada]

GrumpyMonkey, on 15 February 2012 - 12:42 PM, said:

jefito, on 15 February 2012 - 12:29 PM, said:

polocanada, on 15 February 2012 - 12:42 AM, said:

Star a note - on iPhone I have ability to star a note as favorite. I can't see "star it" feature on Evernote. A simple thing like this from iPhone would be easy to add to EN. If I tag something as favorite it should be favorite whether I am using Web, iPhone or Mac or PC. Or maybe it's just me and I can't see it and I need prescription glasses.

Star is a bit of an oddity in the Evernote world -- it only exists on the iPhone. As best I know, it was an early attempt to deliver what is now available on their mobile clients as offline notebooks, i.e., the ability to have notes stay available on a device even when it's offline. I don't believe that you'll see it on other clients.

i believe the star, or favorites, is being phased out according to messages by evernote staff on this forum.

WHAT?! The day the "Favorites" or Star is removed from EN Mobile client I am going to stop updating it. How will I access my Favs if I got 10K of notes - shall I create just another Tag and another step and another click?
This is a bad idea really.
If there are people who don't use Favs then there should be an option to turn it off.

[dlu]

polocanada, on 21 February 2012 - 12:28 PM, said:

GrumpyMonkey, on 15 February 2012 - 12:42 PM, said:

jefito, on 15 February 2012 - 12:29 PM, said:

polocanada, on 15 February 2012 - 12:42 AM, said:

Star a note - on iPhone I have ability to star a note as favorite. I can't see "star it" feature on Evernote. A simple thing like this from iPhone would be easy to add to EN. If I tag something as favorite it should be favorite whether I am using Web, iPhone or Mac or PC. Or maybe it's just me and I can't see it and I need prescription glasses.

Star is a bit of an oddity in the Evernote world -- it only exists on the iPhone. As best I know, it was an early attempt to deliver what is now available on their mobile clients as offline notebooks, i.e., the ability to have notes stay available on a device even when it's offline. I don't believe that you'll see it on other clients.

i believe the star, or favorites, is being phased out according to messages by evernote staff on this forum.

WHAT?! The day the "Favorites" or Star is removed from EN Mobile client I am going to stop updating it. How will I access my Favs if I got 10K of notes - shall I create just another Tag and another step and another click?
This is a bad idea really.
If there are people who don't use Favs then there should be an option to turn it off.

Just FYI, you'll get more tracking on the iOS forum. I, sadly, have limited influence in that domain.

[jefito]

dlu, on 21 February 2012 - 05:23 PM, said:

Just FYI, you'll get more tracking on the iOS forum. I, sadly, have limited influence in that domain.

Hmmm, do I divinet the presence of a secret plot to expand your influence there, too?

Oops, guess it *used to be* a secret...