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You are making up straw man again. Did I make that claim? I was simply motivate my work, pointing out it's a problem that the current generation of search engi

You are making up straw man again. Did I make that claim? I was simply motivate my work, pointing out it's a problem that the current generation of search engine does not address. What is "relevance", it is of course a context sensitive question. You talk as if BM25 is the gold standard when it is not. The research on this is all over the place. I just read an article that says that BM25 is way worse than alternative language models. You don't have to look far, for example this one that talks about Wand: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2537734.2537744 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2537734.2537744 You know why I quit academia? It is useless arguments and virtual signalings like these. I'd rather go out and build a damn thing that people like to use. I merely pointed out that there's a problem, and I have a solution. I did not claim that my problem and my solution solve all problems. Isn't this obvious? In my problem, my solution beats Lucene. It's as simple as that. So if Lucene wants to be this infinitely configurable search library, it would be advisable to offer my solution as an option, or offer an better one that does something similar. So far I have not seen any takers, only excuses.

softwaredoug 5y ago
The title of the section quoted is "Better Relevance" and I am simply saying, arguably, you can't make that claim without evidence. (That said, I do find much to like about the article and the WAND / T-WAND explanation. I'm only pointing out you can't claim 'better relevance' without a benchmark to go with it.)
- huahaiy 5y ago
  You are mincing words again. It's a blog post we are talking about here. In order to motive the work, I have to say what benefits it will bring. Agree? It's my problem, and I get to define what is better relevance for me. In addition, this is also a well known problem acknowledge by Lucene documentation. So it is not an isolated problem. Some of the users voiced their agreement right here in comments. That's enough evidence for a blog post? If you were writing this, how would you write it? You probably do worse. I see that you work in Shopify Search, I hope that your attitude towards your users are not as hostile as this. It's the users who decide what are relevant to them, not you. I hope you remember that. Your manager will also probably agree.
  - aleben 5y ago
    Pardon my intrusion, but I think there's the necessity of toning down the discussion a bit. To be fair it is irrelevant where user A or user B works and I don't see any hostility in this discussion except the one from the blog's author. If the aim is doing Science, let's do this peacefully! I think the main problem that generated this discussion is the form of some sentences of the blog "As someone who has a Ph.D. in Human-computer Interaction ;-), I feel like I am entitled to define a condition of "good" in relevance here. I hereby declare that: A good top-K algorithm should rank a document containing more user query terms higher than a document containing less number of user query terms. This makes perfect sense. Right?" This should have been changed in: "For the sake of this blog post I am interested in a simplified relevance concept: more query terms matched -> more relevance" In this way the blog would have not caused the outburst of (correct) indignation of the Information Retrieval community, that has been working for years on the topic, and knows very well how much complex is relevance.
    - softwaredoug 5y ago
      Yes for sure! I agree. I mean no disrespect myself, the algorithm seems useful and I wish the author all the best. I know, from personal experience, having your work commented on can be stressful. I'm just trying to understand what the author meant and their intention for anyone that might revisit this thread later. I think what you're saying sounds plausible as an interpretation.
    - huahaiy 5y ago
      That's the problem right there. The so called "Information Retrieval Community" does not seem to care about what users want, and they treat their users in a condescending way, ignoring an obvious problem for years, as clearly demonstrated here and elsewhere. Why should I care about what they think? In the end of the day, they are serving the users. They are either going to be left behind, or they have to change. For example, the newer search engines, such us, https://github.com/meilisearch/MeiliSearch https://github.com/meilisearch/MeiliSearch, also do what T-Wand does. Users are going to vote by their feet. The "information retrieval community" be damned. It's as simple as that. Got it? And change they will. What "information retrieval community" are you talking about? Just a bunch of fresh graduates who just got their PH.D, and some college students. That's about it. I don't see any IR professors coming out defending them.

softwaredoug 5y ago

The title of the section quoted is "Better Relevance" and I am simply saying, arguably, you can't make that claim without evidence. (That said, I do find much to like about the article and the WAND / T-WAND explanation. I'm only pointing out you can't claim 'better relevance' without a benchmark to go with it.)

huahaiy 5y ago
You are mincing words again. It's a blog post we are talking about here. In order to motive the work, I have to say what benefits it will bring. Agree? It's my problem, and I get to define what is better relevance for me. In addition, this is also a well known problem acknowledge by Lucene documentation. So it is not an isolated problem. Some of the users voiced their agreement right here in comments. That's enough evidence for a blog post? If you were writing this, how would you write it? You probably do worse. I see that you work in Shopify Search, I hope that your attitude towards your users are not as hostile as this. It's the users who decide what are relevant to them, not you. I hope you remember that. Your manager will also probably agree.
- aleben 5y ago
  Pardon my intrusion, but I think there's the necessity of toning down the discussion a bit. To be fair it is irrelevant where user A or user B works and I don't see any hostility in this discussion except the one from the blog's author. If the aim is doing Science, let's do this peacefully! I think the main problem that generated this discussion is the form of some sentences of the blog "As someone who has a Ph.D. in Human-computer Interaction ;-), I feel like I am entitled to define a condition of "good" in relevance here. I hereby declare that: A good top-K algorithm should rank a document containing more user query terms higher than a document containing less number of user query terms. This makes perfect sense. Right?" This should have been changed in: "For the sake of this blog post I am interested in a simplified relevance concept: more query terms matched -> more relevance" In this way the blog would have not caused the outburst of (correct) indignation of the Information Retrieval community, that has been working for years on the topic, and knows very well how much complex is relevance.
  - softwaredoug 5y ago
    Yes for sure! I agree. I mean no disrespect myself, the algorithm seems useful and I wish the author all the best. I know, from personal experience, having your work commented on can be stressful. I'm just trying to understand what the author meant and their intention for anyone that might revisit this thread later. I think what you're saying sounds plausible as an interpretation.
  - huahaiy 5y ago
    That's the problem right there. The so called "Information Retrieval Community" does not seem to care about what users want, and they treat their users in a condescending way, ignoring an obvious problem for years, as clearly demonstrated here and elsewhere. Why should I care about what they think? In the end of the day, they are serving the users. They are either going to be left behind, or they have to change. For example, the newer search engines, such us, https://github.com/meilisearch/MeiliSearch https://github.com/meilisearch/MeiliSearch, also do what T-Wand does. Users are going to vote by their feet. The "information retrieval community" be damned. It's as simple as that. Got it? And change they will. What "information retrieval community" are you talking about? Just a bunch of fresh graduates who just got their PH.D, and some college students. That's about it. I don't see any IR professors coming out defending them.