Agree, I'll help. I think one decent solution is a Google Custom
Search. There was a previous effort underway, but I don't know what
happened to it. If we could just properly search our own
documentation, that would already be a huge improvement.

Kalle


On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 6:52 PM, Bob Harner <[email protected]> wrote:
> Most of the time when I use Google to search for Tapestry topics, the
> results are truly bad, because they are obscured by outdated
> documentation for Tapestry 4 and older versions of Tapestry 5. This
> makes Tapestry documentation seem much worse than it really is. (I
> happen to think the newer stuff is pretty good.)
>
> The root problem is that Tapestry's long history of documentation
> versions makes it hard for Google to tell which version is the best.
> For example, searching for "tapestry component parameters" (without
> quotes) results in:
>
> 1) http://tapestry.apache.org/tapestry5/guide/parameters.html
> 2) http://tapestry.apache.org/tapestry4/UsersGuide/components.html
> 3) http://tapestry.apache.org/tapestry5.1/guide/coercion.html
> 4) http://tapestry.formos.com/nightly/tapestry5/tapestry-component-report/
>
> ...and hundreds of other links that are relevant but sub-optimal.
>
> The true best page  is really
> http://tapestry.apache.org/component-parameters.html -- but I couldn't
> find that page in any of the top 200 results.  And other search terms
> are similarly disappointing.
>
> What's the solution? I propose doing the following:
>
> 1) Bulk edit or republish old 3.x and 4.x documentation pages to add a
> prominent banner added at the top pointing to the corresponding page
> in the newest documentation. The old content would remain in the
> pages.
>
> 2) Bulk edit or republish old 5.x documentation with all text REMOVED
> and a prominent banner added at the top pointing to the corresponding
> page in the newest documentation.
>
> 3) Finding a way to tell Google what older pages are "archived" and
> "low priority" and what new ones are "high priority". I guess a
> Sitemap (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=183668)
> can do that.
>
> I'm willing to work on these, though ultimately I'll need a
> committer's assistance for #1 and #2.
>
> What do you all think? Any other ideas?
>
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