4 ms·

Wow, I go to some trouble to research your question for you, but you reply in complaint without trying it out. e.g. try it with more than one language selected

by 6ren 15y ago

Wow, I go to some trouble to research your question for you, but you reply in complaint without trying it out. e.g. try it with more than one language selected for search. You can also test your questions with specific queries (e.g. using terms that seem unlikely to be translated). Also, consider that you didn't know what results Google wasn't returning in the first place, years ago (e.g. by not having indexed them). Google aims at working without thought. But it can only do so for one target audience, and unfortunately for technically minded folk, that target has to be mainstream users. Fortunately, technical folk are usually curious to explore and customize technology. EDIT just confirmed that it does use added search languages, as expected. e.g. if I add german and french, it provides: "Search English and French and German pages" Note: I'm not doing this for you; but because I'm curious.

dkarl 15y ago
To be absolutely clear, I'm complaining about Google, not you, and I already said Google's behavior is better for most users. I'm not really sure what more I can say to be "nice" and still be honest, because I am angry that I was missing search results because of a behind-the-scenes change that I would only have discovered if I was regularly checking my preferences to see if the choices I made have been superseded and contradicted. And that's what I found: when they created this settings page they erased whatever language settings I had (which I think was just "yes, I would like to see languages other than English") and left only English selected. Honestly, you shouldn't be so sensitive that you perceive criticism of a web app as criticism of your advice, or assume that I didn't check up on it. I just wasn't happy about what I found. Per my first post, all I want is to be able to use Google and understand roughly what it's doing, and it failed very badly in this case, since the one thing I was counting on it to do -- include foreign language pages, because I asked it to -- was actually the thing it wasn't doing.
- 6ren 15y ago
  > Not to mention that German is just one language You can add more than one language. If you'd checked up on it, you would have seen that. I perceive this as complaining about advice without following it, and I find it annoying. If you're still angry (and it sounds legitimate, especially if there was a subtle hint of a problem, but not enough to register fully), that explains where you're coming from, which puzzled me. Aside: Unfortunately with webpages/webapps, they can and do get updated continuously, without explicit version changes or any notification at all. Ideally, all changes would be back-compatible, but then you end up with a mess (both in user interface and implementation). Continuous notifications amounts to spam, and is usually ignored (I do). Change is a problem. I'm not sure there's a solution. I think back-compatibility is a deep, abiding, practical problem, in general. EDIT "if the choices I made have been superseded and contradicted": just realized this is more than merely "backcompatibility of UI". In effect, they have destroyed your data. Although that sounds overdramatic, since the data itself is very minor (perhaps one bit, a binary checkbox), it's a clear trigger for notification. There might be some grey area for when your configuration is still there, but has a different meaning - but I think you're saying that your config is no longer there, and/or no longer has an effect. I used to use Yahoo finance, and they had a nice display of 9 user-configured stocks at the top. In their latest redesign, this disappeared, and I couldn't find an option to bring it back. This was enough to make me spurn their product, and switch to google finance. It makes me think they have no idea what they are doing. I guess in this case, I had notification (as I could see it was gone). But if they had an explicit reference to it going away, even if it said "sorry, this is going away", I would feel better about it. And I have a sneaking suspicion that maybe it is still available somewhere, and I just couldn't find it. So, changing the meaning of a user-specified configuration should probably trigger an explicit notification (and force the implementer to consider it); and deleting user-specified configuration should never happen, even if it has no effect. I think it should be treated as sacrosanct as other data stored (e.g. gmail emails, dropbox files etc). If changes render it ineffective, it should still be there, but with a notice: "this no longer works, use this instead". Again, this forces the implementer to thin about what they are doing.
  - dkarl 15y ago
    Not sure why I thought I couldn't respond to you directly, but I deleted the other comment and moved it here where it belongs: Re the "just one language" thing, I can imagine I'm not making sense, because I'm not really communicating the context of how irrationally enraged I am over this. The truth is that I only enabled a couple of languages because I was just too angry and frustrated to enable the rest. I know it doesn't make any rational sense, but my reptile brain is telling me that goddammit, Google is not going to make me click on fifty little boxes just to fix them erasing my preferences. Not today. Not this user. There is a part of the brain that is trained to recognize when someone is jerking you around or abusing you, and when it gets triggered inappropriately, it is impossible to turn off. (I'm sure anyone who has worked in customer service will recognize what I'm talking about. Right now I am the bug-eyed paranoid who is convinced they are intentionally screwing with me for their own amusement.) So long story short, yes, it seems immensely important to me that I have to check fifty boxes instead of one, and I still don't have my unfiltered search results, not until I calm down enough to go click on all those boxes. As for the problem of change, I can sympathize with the problem they face. I'm sure that globally minimizing user confusion and frustration is one of their goals. As for me personally, they'll have to count me in the "used the product incorrectly for years without realizing it and is now very angry about it" category. UPDATE: EVEN ANGRIER: So I swallowed my pride and went to work clicking. "The page at https://www.google.com https://www.google.com says: The number of language restrictions is limited to 8, so only 8 of the languages selected will be saved." That doesn't bode well. But then: "The page at https://www.google.com https://www.google.com says: Your preferences have been saved" Ah, but guess which time it was lying :-/ So unless there's another way to turn off language filtering, Google will filter out every language besides your primary language and seven others. (Yeah, your interface language counts as one of the eight.) That's terrible. Even without Google Translate, I swear I got useful information from a page in Polish once. Plus there are pictures, video, miscategorized pages, mixed-language pages (what happens with those?) and the simple coolness of finding out that someone in Vietnam is using an open-source library you committed a patch to. And of course, Google freakin' Translate! Unless Google is translating every single page it crawls. Which it might be -- that's something to think about. But it does very poorly with some pairs of languages, and if it filters out every term it can't translate, then it will tend to filter out commands and symbols. And here I am speculating about how it works again, which goes back to my original point. With my track record today, I'm sure I'll find out I'm misinterpreting this somehow, but I'm starting to feel a little bit justified in my anger. Ah, I can't lie. I feel much less angry now that I feel like less of a fool :-)
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

by 6ren 15y ago

dkarl 15y ago

To be absolutely clear, I'm complaining about Google, not you, and I already said Google's behavior is better for most users. I'm not really sure what more I can say to be "nice" and still be honest, because I am angry that I was missing search results because of a behind-the-scenes change that I would only have discovered if I was regularly checking my preferences to see if the choices I made have been superseded and contradicted. And that's what I found: when they created this settings page they erased whatever language settings I had (which I think was just "yes, I would like to see languages other than English") and left only English selected. Honestly, you shouldn't be so sensitive that you perceive criticism of a web app as criticism of your advice, or assume that I didn't check up on it. I just wasn't happy about what I found. Per my first post, all I want is to be able to use Google and understand roughly what it's doing, and it failed very badly in this case, since the one thing I was counting on it to do -- include foreign language pages, because I asked it to -- was actually the thing it wasn't doing.

6ren 15y ago
> Not to mention that German is just one language You can add more than one language. If you'd checked up on it, you would have seen that. I perceive this as complaining about advice without following it, and I find it annoying. If you're still angry (and it sounds legitimate, especially if there was a subtle hint of a problem, but not enough to register fully), that explains where you're coming from, which puzzled me. Aside: Unfortunately with webpages/webapps, they can and do get updated continuously, without explicit version changes or any notification at all. Ideally, all changes would be back-compatible, but then you end up with a mess (both in user interface and implementation). Continuous notifications amounts to spam, and is usually ignored (I do). Change is a problem. I'm not sure there's a solution. I think back-compatibility is a deep, abiding, practical problem, in general. EDIT "if the choices I made have been superseded and contradicted": just realized this is more than merely "backcompatibility of UI". In effect, they have destroyed your data. Although that sounds overdramatic, since the data itself is very minor (perhaps one bit, a binary checkbox), it's a clear trigger for notification. There might be some grey area for when your configuration is still there, but has a different meaning - but I think you're saying that your config is no longer there, and/or no longer has an effect. I used to use Yahoo finance, and they had a nice display of 9 user-configured stocks at the top. In their latest redesign, this disappeared, and I couldn't find an option to bring it back. This was enough to make me spurn their product, and switch to google finance. It makes me think they have no idea what they are doing. I guess in this case, I had notification (as I could see it was gone). But if they had an explicit reference to it going away, even if it said "sorry, this is going away", I would feel better about it. And I have a sneaking suspicion that maybe it is still available somewhere, and I just couldn't find it. So, changing the meaning of a user-specified configuration should probably trigger an explicit notification (and force the implementer to consider it); and deleting user-specified configuration should never happen, even if it has no effect. I think it should be treated as sacrosanct as other data stored (e.g. gmail emails, dropbox files etc). If changes render it ineffective, it should still be there, but with a notice: "this no longer works, use this instead". Again, this forces the implementer to thin about what they are doing.
- dkarl 15y ago
  Not sure why I thought I couldn't respond to you directly, but I deleted the other comment and moved it here where it belongs: Re the "just one language" thing, I can imagine I'm not making sense, because I'm not really communicating the context of how irrationally enraged I am over this. The truth is that I only enabled a couple of languages because I was just too angry and frustrated to enable the rest. I know it doesn't make any rational sense, but my reptile brain is telling me that goddammit, Google is not going to make me click on fifty little boxes just to fix them erasing my preferences. Not today. Not this user. There is a part of the brain that is trained to recognize when someone is jerking you around or abusing you, and when it gets triggered inappropriately, it is impossible to turn off. (I'm sure anyone who has worked in customer service will recognize what I'm talking about. Right now I am the bug-eyed paranoid who is convinced they are intentionally screwing with me for their own amusement.) So long story short, yes, it seems immensely important to me that I have to check fifty boxes instead of one, and I still don't have my unfiltered search results, not until I calm down enough to go click on all those boxes. As for the problem of change, I can sympathize with the problem they face. I'm sure that globally minimizing user confusion and frustration is one of their goals. As for me personally, they'll have to count me in the "used the product incorrectly for years without realizing it and is now very angry about it" category. UPDATE: EVEN ANGRIER: So I swallowed my pride and went to work clicking. "The page at https://www.google.com https://www.google.com says: The number of language restrictions is limited to 8, so only 8 of the languages selected will be saved." That doesn't bode well. But then: "The page at https://www.google.com https://www.google.com says: Your preferences have been saved" Ah, but guess which time it was lying :-/ So unless there's another way to turn off language filtering, Google will filter out every language besides your primary language and seven others. (Yeah, your interface language counts as one of the eight.) That's terrible. Even without Google Translate, I swear I got useful information from a page in Polish once. Plus there are pictures, video, miscategorized pages, mixed-language pages (what happens with those?) and the simple coolness of finding out that someone in Vietnam is using an open-source library you committed a patch to. And of course, Google freakin' Translate! Unless Google is translating every single page it crawls. Which it might be -- that's something to think about. But it does very poorly with some pairs of languages, and if it filters out every term it can't translate, then it will tend to filter out commands and symbols. And here I am speculating about how it works again, which goes back to my original point. With my track record today, I'm sure I'll find out I'm misinterpreting this somehow, but I'm starting to feel a little bit justified in my anger. Ah, I can't lie. I feel much less angry now that I feel like less of a fool :-)
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]