RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Top-of-the-hill on Tuesday 18 November 25 21:05 GMT (UK)
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Have they done something with this bit of the website, or has something gone wrong with my system? I have always had the Kent newspapers as a bookmark, but what I find now looks very different.
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Logged in this morning and the layout had changed/ Getting some strange results when using filters :-\
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I think the layout is clearer, and sets out the possibilities. It allows you to enter dates without interfering and trying to tell you what you want! I have always thought it was a better searching tool than the BNA anyway so this puts it further ahead.
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Just when everyone gets used to how it works, some spotty “youf” decides they know better and changes it to suit what they think people want!
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That is how I felt. I believe Molly is a more advanced and professional researcher than I am, but I knew exactly what I was doing for what I needed.
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Just when everyone gets used to how it works, some spotty “youf” decides they know better and changes it to suit what they think people want!
You may be making an unjustified assumption here ... :D
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We started from the printed index to The Times which I think was issued quarterly, and card indexes in local libraries. In recent decades we have moved from conventional indexes which are constructed using a controlled list of index terms, to free-text searching where almost any word will serve as a search term but may give results you were not expecting e.g. synonyms. When computers were first applied to the problem their capacity was not sufficient to support this kind of searching so terminology was still controlled. The earliest on-line databases were largely in the field of science which lends itself to that. Free searching of such a huge newspaper database has its pitfalls.
This change may actually be the result of some analysis about how people have used the index, and how long it has taken each search to find a satisfactory result. What the new style is trying to do is guide your choice of search terms within some broad categories, and organise your thoughts, so slightly more structured than a free-for-all, to give better results overall.
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I may be getting on in years but I am tech savy. The old system worked fine so why change it, the new system does not gain anything. As the saying goes 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'
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Just when everyone gets used to how it works, some spotty “youf” decides they know better and changes it to suit what they think people want!
You may be making an unjustified assumption here ... :D
They may not be spotty? :P
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I think the layout is clearer, and sets out the possibilities. It allows you to enter dates without interfering and trying to tell you what you want! I have always thought it was a better searching tool than the BNA anyway so this puts it further ahead.
I am with Molly