My Class Creator site is "Saint Louis University High School", and it's not found when searching Class Connection.

It's listed under St Louis University (type all of that in) and did not show up entering only St Louis: BUG #1.

Then there are TWO listed: BUG #2.

The first one almost looks your site has FBCC enabled (you are a member) but the second one says you are "private" outside of FBCC and it actually goes to your site.

Moreover, something is wrong with the first one. None of your information is showing up on FBCC: BUG #3

St Louis as a search should have showed your school too.

I'd give you a link, but FBCC links don't work like regular links. (For sure it's your school since you are the only one listed.)

Yes, the search mechanism has a big problem with finding the right school. For your existing classmates they are best served by clicking the FBCC link/tab on your site.

Actually a search for "Saint Louis University High School" brings you up second on the list. Now that I take a good look at this, there appears to be both a "St. Louis University High School" as well as a separate "St. Louis University". Both listings appear to be correct.

You joined the wrong one. Not any fault of your own -- you had to pick one of the two and there was no way to know which one was correct and which one wasn't. I added "High School" to the end of your listing to make it abundantly clear to future searchers which one is correct. Moved you into the correct class as well.

#3 Jack is citing is not a bug. Although you joined the wrong class, Class Connection correctly did not show your Profile information to a visitor from another class (as your profile settings do not permit it). Class Connection takes into account the page permissions set on your Classmate Profiles page itself, and the Profile permissions set by each and every classmate.

Note I added "St" to the "keywords" field for your class. This will help ensure your class is found when people type in St. instead of Saint. Also we now pull whatever you named your school on the Change Design page into the keywords field to better match school names (as defined by the admin) with our database.

Jack makes a very good point: Despite any improvements we might ever make to the search algorithm, the very best thing you can do is ask classmates to join the app using the Class Connection link under your Member Links. Once they've done that it no longer matters how they get to Class Connection again in the future -- they're already in the correct school and class.

Should be all set here. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Dave Lossos wrote:

Please note that if you were emailed my first response, you need to read the above again. My first response assumed both database listings referred to the same entity but they did not -- they were unique things in the system and must remain unique. Again I updated your listing with "High School" to ensure people looking for the high school choose this instead of the university.

You are not reading my #3 correctly Brad. I wasn't talking about profile information. Just read it again without assuming anything.

He was listed as a member, therefore I knew that somehow he joined it. "Your information" means "His Class Information", not profile. So the BUG is that he joined the wrong school. No way for me to know that since they both looked IDENTICAL and no way for him to know either.

When I searched Saint Louis it also didn't show his class. Didn't mention it because he already sort of mentioned that. St ALREADY showed his class, so not sure what you mean here by adding St. The only way I found his class is the way I described - using St (not Saint).

More importantly, why didn't St Louis (without University) pick up the school? There's something wrong in the code here (or the way it's indexed).

Really needs an alternate index by year added to the DB. If only classmates that have joined the class already use the link, that's one thing. But getting outsiders to find the class, that's something quite different.

St. vs. Saint is one of the main issues on this one. St. is how the school was listed in the database. By tying in what the admin called the school as search keywords, as well as adding a manual keywords field to make any adjusts for issues like this, we should be good here.

"Saint Louis" will now show Saint Louis University High School second on the list, just under Saint Louis University (which is a separate entity with 2 existing classes).

We'll continue to tweak this over time but these changes alone just vastly improved this.

Sure, but the other issue was that the search didn't show his class with just St Louis or Saint Louis. It now does.

Since the year first appears to be a stumbling block, the second method is to put an indicator next to the year in the dropdown that indicates class is either on CC or FBCC. That's will also cut down on picking a school after the horse is out of the barn. (That's how it's sort of done for your regular CC class search).

Many times now people who are way more familiar with CC that a classmate or potential classmate picked the wrong class. It won't get better

Search has quirky behavior though. It's using the CITY as part of the index, which is sort of odd. It adds names that have nothing to do with the SCHOOL name.

I sort of see the thinking here, but it doesn't logically follow what one expects. If a City is desired, make that an option so the very finite list presented is more relevant.

And last, if a person types in High School (I expect that to be very common) it also acts quirky.

Type in Bothell Senior High. Nothing shows up. Now type in Bothell Senior High School. A school shows up but it's not ours. Now type in Bothell and our school is the second one. Logical?

Also shows Inglemoor Senior which is NOT in Bothell. Highlights the problem with including the city as a keyword search. (Inglemoor also is a part of a school district, but not in Bothell at all.)

And last but not least, it's picking up partials that are buried INSIDE of a word. For example Issa correctly starts with Issaquah Senior but also Florissant Upholstery (among others). Again not related to the school name. AND it doesn't list Issaquah High - which is the actual name of that school - and it's on CC.

Searching for Bothell Senior High or Bothell Senior High School should both bring up your class now.

Take a look at this please: http://screencast.com/t/BtxYY7cB

I'm assuming these are unique schools? If same we could merge.

Not my class. Mentioned that before and just again " A school shows up but it's not ours. "

Yes they could be merged but instead let's look at the "why" there is search confusion. I'm trying to explain the issues and not looking for patchwork fixes. Code is just not done right. Period. (look at all the other issues I described)

Some things are superfluous in a search. For example a period (.) and a dash (-). Similarly the word High, School and Senior should not be considered prime search keys.

The simplest solution that is just being tossed aside is to SHOW which ones are on FBCC just like the CC search does. That actually solves it for our class too since they are different years. (The year first in the query also narrows down schools way better than what is being done - I am surmising that this is problem ATM because there is no alternate index with year as a primary key.)

This won't be the first nor the last class that may have slightly different names for exactly the same school.

Sometimes as I said before, I scratch my head ...

It's not yours in terms of you're not under that school. I understand. I just wanted to make sure they're not actually separate schools.

I've read your other points above -- thank you.

They are the same school - yet they are not. Meaning they belong to the same school district. But physically, over time, they are not the same school since the start till now.

The term "Senior" does and does not belong to some and does to others. Indeed, over time, the location of the school in Bothell changed and that's actually the reason for the arrival of "Senior" and then the removal. That's the point here.

Here's the "official" website for Bothell High School That's the actual school district, not a private web site. They call it Bothell High School now. (Totally off-topic: the color they have is the wrong color - that's not really "blue".)

So after that short history of "Senior" you can see that some will use Senior and as time goes on, many will have no idea where the Senior came from. I suspect this is repeated across the U.S. in various forms.

So you can't really merge and get rid of one name as such. That's why listing just one won't work and listing both won't work without adding some more information right up front.

The YEAR is the only way for a classmate to pick the right school.

Think about it, the whole concept of CC (except for the Alumni sites) is really about a person from a specific Year joining THEIR class. Not some other year. Therefore, the year is actually the most important search criteria.

Thanks. In terms of the school names themselves, do you have any suggestions on how to alter either or both names to make it clearer to people what these two school entries are?

You need both names OR if you merge them, then ignore the term "Senior". Plus start with Year, Plus only show those on FBCC (which is what CC does). Somebody at CC thought that made sense way back.

IOW, it's more a question of coding vs the name someone enters. I look at it as a coder and having done exactly that sort of coding am just relating what it takes to make it both easier and more foolproof. The freeform function now used that grabs ANY match anywhere just has to go.

If it's done by a member for an existing site, no problem. That is perfect. It's just that if we are looking to get additional new members, then it can't be frustrating.

Ok. If we keep both names, do you desire we change either of the two names to make them more clear? Or shall we leave them as is? Thanks.

The "more clear" really depends on how the search is modified. If you do it exactly like CC, there's less of a problem, because there it shows the year beside the class. And as I mentioned, a person is looking for a specific year, so the name becomes secondary.

For example:

Bothell High School 1961 and
Bothell Senior High School 1961

mean exactly the same thing to a person from our class. That's because they are looking for 1961. The slight variation in names will be familiar to them.

And if you substitute 1959 for 1961, the same thing for those in that class. They will pick the one with 1959.

Without the year it's a guessing game. That's what I think we want to avoid - guessing. I bet you've seen enough "guesses" that went bad now to realize that some more information - which I'm suggesting should be the Year - will reduce this enormously.

The current system picks the school and up pops a list of schools (that's a bit odd as noted). If there are duplicates one has no idea which one is the right one. But if one first limits it by year, the name is not nearly as critical. In our case, one is guaranteed to get the right one on the FIRST try.

All this is on the assumption that one is trying to find an EXISTING school on FBCC or CC. IMO that should be the primary focus here.

For the cases where you want to have people create a new class, there has to be a another question or something to let them do that. Haven't given that much thought. One thing at a time.

I have sent this entire thread to Programming for consideration, but FYI all schools that have classes and members are already given considerably more weight and come up first or very high in the results vs. schools with no classes. Again I do see your other suggestions and have passed this along.