Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
About Searching
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About Searching
The Encyclopedia's search engine is designed around a model that
attempts to synthesize both keyword and topical searching.
The basic idea is to view the Encyclopedia as a large, link-rich
collection of Web pages. Link-rich means that each page is
expected to have several links to other pages with closely
related information.
The distance between two pages can
be measured as the minimum number of links that must
be transversed to connect them. The closer two pages are in distance,
the more closely related the information in those pages.
Each page can be also viewed as the
root node of a tree of pages that ultimately engulfs every page
in the Encyclopedia.
This view is most relevent to searching.
A search form is provided as part of the standard header on
most pages in the Encyclopedia. The search is performed on
the tree constructed with that page at its root.
One of search options that may be
specified is its depth. The depth is the
number of links that are transversed during the search.
A depth 0 search is only a find on the current page.
A depth 1 search searches all pages referenced by the current
page. For example, a depth 1 search on an RFC Table of Contents
(the default), searches the entire RFC, because every
page in the RFC is linked to by the ToC. A depth 2 search
would search the RFC, as well as pages referenced by the
RFC, and so on. Not all search depths are supported by all pages.
The recommended search procedure follows:
- Use the topical core to select your general area of interest
- Narrow your search by finding the topical Web page most
relevent to your search
- Use the search panel on that page to perform a level 1 search
for keywords of interest
- If you do not find what you're looking for, expand to a level 2 search,
and so on.
- If you reach the search depth limit and still haven't found what
you're looking for, select a page that appears to be more relevent
that the current one and continue from there.
This method allows the user to rapidly narrow his search,
while minimizing computational load on the server.
Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
About Searching