> The issue is not so much whether *any* search mechanism has undesirable > properties, it's whether this particular search mechanism will work. > It's not clear that a search mechanism with these properties will be > adequate to satisfy the things people want to do with searching.
My point is that the criticisms you are making (regardless of whether I agree with them - which I don't) are applicable to any reasonable search mechanism with the features I think a search mechanism will need. Given that we really need a search mechanism, we may as well try it, if it doesn't work - so-be-it. There are probably hundreds of arguments behind why Freenet won't work, but we tried it anyway on the basis that it was worth the risk. > For one thing, it appears that the more keywords that are used during > insert, the less likely the data is to be found. (You haven't said much > about how inserts would be routed, so I am not 100% certain about this.) I did intend to be clear on the routing. Basically the search is routed to whatever node is referenced by the key which best matches the search criteria, backtracking can also be permitted here, just like in normal searching. There will, of course, be skill involved in constructing a search which can be found by the system, just as there is skill required in constructing a search for any web-based system (eg. altavista). Part of this will be us configuring the fuzzy operators to work in a sensible manner (for example, the and operator probably shouldn't be a simple min() operator since this disregards any variation in the stronger of the anded branches of the search). > The reason is because searches would need to use substantially the same > keywords as the insert in order to route to the same place. If I insert > with 12 keywords and someone only searches for four of them, the search > is unlikely to find the data (the first time) because those other eight > keywords will influence where the insert went, and the search won't > know them. Yes, but you are failing to take into account the fact that the topology of the network is actually determined by the process of searching itself, not so much inserting. Inserting should try to place things where they are likely to be searched for (as this means there will be less of a "settling in" time for information), but I agree that this is more difficult to predict with a more flexible search mechanism such as my proposal - still, we can do our best. In this case, what this means is that the system will probably adapt to route frequently occuring searches (such as "'tori amos' or 'kate bush'") more effectively than infrequently occuring searches (such as "'spice girls' or 'metallica'"). Ian. _______________________________________________ Freenet-dev mailing list Freenet-dev at lists.sourceforge.net http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/freenet-dev
