Comments | suggestions: narrowing down interests

amante_donne in suggestions

narrowing down interests

Mar 25, 2009 13:04

Title
narrowing down interests

Short, concise description of the idea
Interest names are combined to reduce interest names with similar names

Full description of the ideaI think that finding people with particular interests is not made easier by the fact that the spelling of an interest will be different from person to person. Also with a limit of ( Read more... )

interests, searches, § no status

Comments 36

azurelunatic March 30 2009, 05:39:03 UTC

Similar historical suggestion, without too much in the way of problems: http://community.livejournal.com/suggestions/146705.html

worldserpent March 30 2009, 05:54:29 UTC

So essentially you could only choose things that LJ has approved as interests? But this would be work for LJ, and there has already been controversy about interests. Also, who would choose which one is the most valid interest?

azurelunatic March 30 2009, 06:28:04 UTC

I think this is not intended to suggest that you wouldn't be able to use other interests, just that there be a way for users to standardize the use of a most-popular related interest.

I do have some issues with the proposed implementation, though.

amante_donne March 30 2009, 08:04:36 UTC

indeed, you could still use your other interests, but LJ would essentially offer a single option for interests that mean the same but are spelt in a number of ways as per the example.

azurelunatic March 30 2009, 08:06:04 UTC

Supposing someone wanted to spell theirs an unpopular way on purpose?

Thread 5

foxfirefey March 30 2009, 05:56:01 UTC

Problem: what about words that have more than one meaning? Who gets to decide which meaning gets attached?

amante_donne March 30 2009, 08:06:12 UTC

well something like thunder storms and thunderstorms mean the same thing, if i had "thunder storms" as an interest and you had "thunderstorms" you would not show up on any search i made using the methos i use. and there are obviously others like this.

foxfirefey March 30 2009, 08:09:14 UTC

What if there was a band named "Thunder Storms"? Then "thunder storms" and "thunderstorms" don't mean the same thing. It's not true in this instance, but it could be true in a lot of instances, enough to make things very problematic.

amante_donne March 30 2009, 08:13:14 UTC

ok, that is a valid point, but if such an example did exist with this word then even now that would currently be an issue, as some people would use thunder storms for the band and others would use thunder storms for a storm. how would you differentiate that now?

Thread 6

azurelunatic March 30 2009, 06:14:11 UTC

I like this general idea, to automatically suggest interests based on alternate/similar spellings, to aid people in a) spelling their interests correctly, and b) not need to enter every possible variation of something to ensure that they get found ( ... )

amante_donne March 30 2009, 08:08:17 UTC

in hindsight i agree, but it would be nice if we could bunch up all those interests that mean the same thing but are spelt in different ways.

The only alternative is to have unlimited interests, that way we could use all options without it eating into a 150 option limit.

charliemc March 30 2009, 06:21:08 UTC

No, thanks.

Many of my personal interests may not be the same as more than a handful of other people, but I want to still be able to use them...

I get WHY this makes sense, certainly. But I like it fine the way it is.

turlough March 30 2009, 15:04:27 UTC

Many of my personal interests may not be the same as more than a handful of other people, but I want to still be able to use them...

Yeah, exactly.