Posted by Kim on July 27, 2014, 6:50pm
Remember that time that you decided to join a RP group, and spent an hour sifting through a giant, unorganized list of groups, only to give up in frustration?Yeah. That was really ridiculous. I was embarrassed for me, too.
But today it is a thing of the past! Now when you want to find a group to join, you can do a keyword search for exactly what you're interested in. Head over to the Groups main page and give it a try!
If you are the owner of a group and you want to attract more members, make sure that you have set up some keywords in your group's Privacy and Publicity settings (Under "Settings > Privacy & Publicity" from the group edit sidebar.)
Comments
@Kim: Figured it was something along those lines (especially after looking at the "code" for the Google CSE 
)
And wow, that... actually makes sense as a system X__x For once, the points actually do matter!
)And wow, that... actually makes sense as a system X__x For once, the points actually do matter!
This is a very cool feature, Kim. I also didn't even know how many members NV had, so it's kind of neat to see it laid out like that. 
This is pretty nice. 
@Caustic - Because we already have much finer control over this first version of the group search system than Google Searches would provide us, and will only get more control in future.
@Group owners - If you're trying to figure out why your group appears in the search results in the way that it does, here's a hint! The search results are point based. At the time of this writing, these are the weights:
+10 for an exact title match to any keyword
+5 for a partial title match to any keyword
+5 for a partial tagline match to any keyword
+2 for every tag that matches one of the entered keyword
-10 for having no widgets in the group
-5 for having only one widget in the group
-2 for having only two widgets in the group
-1 for every week the group has gone without activity
If your group has an age restriction on it, members who are too young to participate will not see your group in search results at all.
For those group owners curious about how groups wind up "featured", a group must have been created a week or more ago to qualify. After that, it's filtered by comfort/age restrictions based on who is looking (defaulting to 13 year olds who are comfortable with nothing for logged out users), and then the top 10 from that pool is determined by the 10 that were most recently active. I chose this on the theory that actually bustling groups will spend more time being featured, and one off "I made an update and never came back" groups will either never show up (because of the 1 week requirement) or only be there shortly. But it also allows for everyone, even smaller groups to have a chance to be featured, and get featured more often if they acquire members and start getting busy.
@Group owners - If you're trying to figure out why your group appears in the search results in the way that it does, here's a hint! The search results are point based. At the time of this writing, these are the weights:
+10 for an exact title match to any keyword
+5 for a partial title match to any keyword
+5 for a partial tagline match to any keyword
+2 for every tag that matches one of the entered keyword
-10 for having no widgets in the group
-5 for having only one widget in the group
-2 for having only two widgets in the group
-1 for every week the group has gone without activity
If your group has an age restriction on it, members who are too young to participate will not see your group in search results at all.
For those group owners curious about how groups wind up "featured", a group must have been created a week or more ago to qualify. After that, it's filtered by comfort/age restrictions based on who is looking (defaulting to 13 year olds who are comfortable with nothing for logged out users), and then the top 10 from that pool is determined by the 10 that were most recently active. I chose this on the theory that actually bustling groups will spend more time being featured, and one off "I made an update and never came back" groups will either never show up (because of the 1 week requirement) or only be there shortly. But it also allows for everyone, even smaller groups to have a chance to be featured, and get featured more often if they acquire members and start getting busy.
Nifty~
Though I have to play the devil's advocate and ask: why not use a Google custom search engine instead?
Mostly just curious, though I do see the additional options there
Though I have to play the devil's advocate and ask: why not use a Google custom search engine instead?
Mostly just curious, though I do see the additional options there
\o/
SO EPIC
Yay! This will be awesome to take advantage of. Thank you so much, Kim!
Libertine
July 28, 2014
9:05pm