General DiscussionDotabuff's "player search" coding sucks

they should do just more search option such as binary searches etc

TRY _B O G I_

K

you're prob just 19 and feel like you know it all because you took a basic programming course

^ I know it all and I know the system on Dotabuff looks like it has been made by someone who only took a basic programming course.

It strongly looks like a "LIKE %name%" query.

yeah I posted this like a month ago too but nobody replied

when I type Arin, I see everyone whose nick contains "arin" but not myself or any people with the same nick

Player search optimizes for the case of finding players who have played Dota 2 recently.

Believe it or not there are many millions of players. A lot of them have the same name, or a similar name. Additionally, the names that players choose aren't particularly easy to index: they aren't dictionary words, they don't stem well, normalize well, or often even match the intuitive query that a user wants to enter to find them.

Additionally, search tries to entertain a number of use cases: people want to find themselves (who may or may not have played recently), their friends (who may or may not have played recently), the person they just played against, someone they *think* they remember playing against, someone who has recently changed their name, etc.

There's a lot of room for improvement here, but I'd ask that you don't under-appreciate the problem. We're not searching a full body of english text here. We use some fairly detailed optimizations under the hood to try and deliver reasonable results given a horrible pile of garbage data. Our search system prefers harvest over accuracy to at least give a reasonable chance that you'll find what you're looking for.

Given enough feedback we can always change what we optimize for. So tell me, what has searched help you properly find, and what has it failed to help you find?

@Jason
That still doesn't explain why I can't find exactly the nick I'm looking for. Try to type anyone's exact nick to search box. You probably won't find it.

e: alright I found the people I was looking for in some cases
but it doesn't work always, try to find Oni or Arin for example

sorry for being rude, i actually didn't expect jason or any admin/moderator to read threads here (that's understandable, most threads are of trivial/no value, and i would do the same thing if i were in your position)

basically my problems are

1) the filtering of players with a low # of games vs players with high # of total games.

currently, the search function does not discriminate in favor of players with higher # of games.

2) typing in short but commonly used phrases/words/combination of letters generates a list of names that include the phrase, but are not exclusive to the phrase itself

sorry if that was too obscure, let me give an example

if i type in "Turtle," I get results that are either "Turtle" exclusively, or names that include "Turtle" + more letters/words

http://www.dotabuff.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=Turtle

Here's the thing: when people search for a name and type in something, MOST of the time they will type in the accurate name. If, for instance, I have someone on my friend's list who says "go check my dotabuff," I will simply copy and paste his current steam name, and then it will show up. In a properly functioning search system that should be how it works (with the exception of duplicate dotabuffs with the EXACT SAME name), but that's not how it works right now.

In fact, there is no logical argument in favor of generating broadly inclusive results. Do you reasonably suspect people type in random letters/phrases just to examine random players' dotabuffs?

3) Most recently played is a poor criterion. There are literally hundreds of thousands of players playing at each minute of the day, and all the search results that aren't limited to obscure/vague/rare user names all have 1 thing in common: they're all players who have played in the past 20 or so minutes . I suggest getting rid of this entirely or incorporating other criteria in an advanced search function like "most common region(s) played" to narrow search results.

solutions/suggestions:

1) Search algorithm should favor players with higher # of games over lower # of games (not to an extreme extent, of course, but make game count a higher priority than "recently played")
2) Give only dotabuff profiles that EXACTLY match what the user typed in.
3) Get rid of this criterion, OR allow users to filter. Possible examples of filters: region(s), played within the past [x] weeks, new accounts (dotabuffs with less than 2 weeks worth of gaming history), etc.

Miscellaneous:

4) A long time ago, dotabuff search function would include recent names a player has used in the past, and if you searched THAT name, your dotabuff would pop up as well. For instance, if I used the name "Vortex1234" 2 weeks ago and then changed my name to "WindpipeXT," I could search EITHER name and still arrive at the proper dotabuff. This is no longer the case - I HAVE to search the name "WindpipeXT."

my friend for instance uses the name "GoDs" and here is his dotabuff

http://www.dotabuff.com/players/84534206

however if u search "GoDs" it doesn't show up. "GoDs" is too common of a name

http://www.dotabuff.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=GoDs

Notice that, in addition to the problems I've already described, many results do not even include "GoDs," they include phrases like "GoD_" or "God's," etc.

tl;dr your search function is too inclusive and needs to discriminate more

I agree, you can't find Bogi. I must go to forums and find his post in order to access profile.

^its actually easier to search people via google than dotabuff for their dotabuff
try bogi dotabuff in google and u will find him immediately

and while we're at it can we allow people to search for threads/thread titles on dotabuff? you can already do it on google but i'm pretty sure some people haven't figured that out...lol

bumping for jason

So the solution would be to add a checkbox next to search button, to show only the players with the exact same name as the one typed in the search box?

sure

just add an option "search exact username only"

I believe it takes capitals into account so "sam" and "Sam" won't give the same results.