Excerpts from Marvin Humphrey's message of Fri Jan 19 23:48:36 -0800 2007: > The search-time benefit from using a stoplist can be substantial. > Search-time costs are dominated by time spent pawing through postings > for common terms. Eliminating the most common terms can make a big > difference.
I agree that common terms can really affect search time cost. I just don't think it's a problem. At least, I don't think it's a problem in a world where the query creaters are motivated, sophisticated users who have developed an understanding of how search engines work (i.e. glorified word matching). You don't have to use a search engine more than a few times before you understand that putting stopwords in your query is basically wasting your time. One can certainly argue about just how much we are in that world. Perhaps the AARP website search folks are in a different one. In my case, a text-only email client backed by an IR engine and with a user interface that smacks of Emacs is a pretty selective filter. :) -- William <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> _______________________________________________ Ferret-talk mailing list [email protected] http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ferret-talk
