2 ms·

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 muc

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.
  - huahaiy 5y ago
    The "hostility" I referred to was the one towards the users. Basically, he's demanding users to show evidence that whatever they want is better than BM25. That's just wrong. Period. This is the reason I mention his job, because his job requires him to listen to the users, instead of taking something he learned in school and use that to talk condescendingly to his users. That's not gonna fly. Given this context, I think whatever I said it is entirely appropriate.

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.
- huahaiy 5y ago
  The "hostility" I referred to was the one towards the users. Basically, he's demanding users to show evidence that whatever they want is better than BM25. That's just wrong. Period. This is the reason I mention his job, because his job requires him to listen to the users, instead of taking something he learned in school and use that to talk condescendingly to his users. That's not gonna fly. Given this context, I think whatever I said it is entirely appropriate.