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Yeah, there's nothing wrong with a query like that, and I think autocomplete is fine once you typed "muslims are vege...". But I don't see why you'd autocomple

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with a query like that, and I think autocomplete is fine once you typed "muslims are vege...". But I don't see why you'd autocomplete a sentence that could go anywhere. Just because many people type that isn't a good reason.

jstanley 8y ago
Why isn't that a good reason? It's not a search engine's job to be the thought police.
- jakobegger 8y ago
  Because it's a stupid thing to do. It makes sense to complete a query once it is obvious what the user wants to write. That's helpful, you saved me from typing a few characters. But if you suggest completions for queries at a point where it isn't yet obvious what the user wants, you are no longer just helpful. You are steering people in a certain direction, whether that's your intent or not. You are effectively telling people, hey, try this query, it's popular, even if the user had no intent of typing that query.
  - anonytrary 8y ago
    Okay, I see your point now. Content discovery can be decomposed into "push" and "pull". In the 90s, searching was typically associated with pull. Over time, engines started providing a push component (e.g. autocomplete). It sounds like you want search engines to be mostly pull with less push. You want the push to be more local to what you specifically choose to pull, which means greatly reducing the current scope of the push component. I guess that's fine, but a lot of people really like the push component, especially if they don't quite know what they're looking for. I think the whole of the two methods is more valuable than the sum of the parts.
- stouset 8y ago
  Can we please stop wildly exaggerating every attempt to remove graffiti and trolling from the Internet as equivalent to invoking the “thought police”? Nobody is sending the authorities after you for entering overtly-racist searches into Google. Keep in mind that you are currently enjoying the benefits of discussing this topic on a highly-moderated discussion forum. How relevant do you think Hacker News would be if such moderation was ended entirely? Have you learned literally nothing from the utter disaster that was Tay[1]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(bot) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(bot)

jstanley 8y ago

Why isn't that a good reason? It's not a search engine's job to be the thought police.

jakobegger 8y ago
Because it's a stupid thing to do. It makes sense to complete a query once it is obvious what the user wants to write. That's helpful, you saved me from typing a few characters. But if you suggest completions for queries at a point where it isn't yet obvious what the user wants, you are no longer just helpful. You are steering people in a certain direction, whether that's your intent or not. You are effectively telling people, hey, try this query, it's popular, even if the user had no intent of typing that query.
- anonytrary 8y ago
  Okay, I see your point now. Content discovery can be decomposed into "push" and "pull". In the 90s, searching was typically associated with pull. Over time, engines started providing a push component (e.g. autocomplete). It sounds like you want search engines to be mostly pull with less push. You want the push to be more local to what you specifically choose to pull, which means greatly reducing the current scope of the push component. I guess that's fine, but a lot of people really like the push component, especially if they don't quite know what they're looking for. I think the whole of the two methods is more valuable than the sum of the parts.
stouset 8y ago
Can we please stop wildly exaggerating every attempt to remove graffiti and trolling from the Internet as equivalent to invoking the “thought police”? Nobody is sending the authorities after you for entering overtly-racist searches into Google. Keep in mind that you are currently enjoying the benefits of discussing this topic on a highly-moderated discussion forum. How relevant do you think Hacker News would be if such moderation was ended entirely? Have you learned literally nothing from the utter disaster that was Tay[1]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(bot) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(bot)