IQSS / IQSS/dataverse

Feature Request/Idea: Investigate, document types of boolean searching and search settings in Dataverse repositories

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Feature: Search/Browse Help Wanted: Documentation
Dominant language
Java
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Description

Overview of the Feature Request
Information about the possible kinds of boolean searching and other search settings should be accessible to users. Examples of search settings include how relevance sorting works (for example, I've read that by design Dataverse Collections and certain metadata fields can be promoted or weighted more heavily), details about boolean searching (and that when no boolean operator is present, the default is OR), literal phrase searching (i.e. with quotation marks), truncation, proximity searching (it seems to be implicit/automatic and affects relevance), stemming, and the lack of wildcards/truncation (unless it does exist?) and spelling correction when searching.

Perhaps these things can be documented in the User Guides and in or accessible from the UI.

What kind of user is the feature intended for?
(Example users roles: API User, Curator, Depositor, Guest, Superuser, Sysadmin)
API User, Curator, Depositor, Guest

What inspired the request?
I spoke with a user recently who asked what types of searching were and weren't possible and how search settings might be affecting their searches. The page in the User Guides about searching didn't go into this kind of detail.

What existing behavior do you want changed?
None that I can think of. I think it's important to make what's possible clear and available first. That helps with evaluation and improvements.

Any brand new behavior you want to add to Dataverse?
When users want to learn what types of searching are and aren't possible and how search settings might affect search results, the information is documented and easy for users to find.

Any related open or closed issues to this feature request?
None that I can think of.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the User Guides searching page linked in the issue, especially the finding-data section, and review how search behavior is currently explained. Verify the listed topics—Boolean operators, phrase searching, truncation, proximity, stemming, relevance, and spelling correction—against the documented or observable behavior, then document the confirmed settings and make them easy for users to find in the guides or UI.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
documentation, search
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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