Someone on the chat of generators page at 1:14am today asked: “How do I find roleplays here? I find the generator overwhelming but if I go to search it just takes me to google. I assumed creations would show me like a.i people have already made”

I remember a while ago Perchance saying Findability could be improved. I agree and had been thinking maybe have a community event of everyone suggest stuff for ‘generator finding’ and for a while dabbled in recording which generators passed thru the Generators page that I thought people really cared about and were following up on and making a personally curated list, which I know many others have occasionally thought similarly and tried.

But none of that is really a concrete followable step by step improvement. Tonight tho, with that comment, here is one: Make the Search feature a real feature.

Right now it DOES feel ‘underwhelming’ in that someone clicks Search at the top of the Generator’s page, and then it is ‘surprisingly disappointing’ when it does not really search through generators, but opens up a google with a specific search term. So here is a concrete suggestion as to improving findability while also pulling up something that has fallen behind in quality compared to everything around it: Upgrade Search Function on Generators Page. Make the search a real thing :)

  • VioneT@lemmy.worldMEnglish
    3·
    6 months ago

    My remix of the /generators page, generators-with-blocklist can search recently updated generators (matches search to the generator description/title/url) up to 7 days directly on the search bar without needing to go to Google.

    • allo@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      6 months ago

      That is really really really really really nice. Can 7 days be multiple options instead? Could it be set to 7days, or 1month, or 3months? Just for the generators that are big yet get updates less than once per week? I also was able to type RP and search and find 2 pages of generators with the words RP in them, so definitely meets criteria of the person asking in chat tonight.

      @perchance@lemmy.world I believe VioneT’s generators-with-blocklist should be phased in somehow and is the findability upgrade you mentioned long ago.

      future ideas: a new meta tag of ‘type’ and allow people to say: ‘roleplay,chat,image,MyLittlePony,etc’ on their generator and have a dropdown on the generator page of search terms with amount of generators in each. Tho that seems a bit ahead of us

      very nice creation, @VioneT@lemmy.world

      edit: with that, i’d be able to just tag all my plugins ‘plugin’ in their description and someone could search ‘plugin’ and find all plugins easy :) editedit: same with templates. Same with RP. Same with Warrior Cats. Same with Fusion. Same with Magpie. Oh the possibilities.

      • VioneT@lemmy.worldMEnglish
        2·
        6 months ago

        The max that the generator list request gives are up to 7 days only unfortunately.

        You can just add keywords to your $meta description and the search should match it.

        • allo@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          1·
          6 months ago

          thus @perchance@lemmy.world :)

          Dear Perchance, may we please have VioneT’s generator list phased in and can the list request please go back something like 3 months instead of 7 days?

          That is my suggestion/asky-thing thank you!

  • BluePower@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2·
    6 months ago

    Worth to note that if the search feature would’ve searched the entire generators page, it’d only search through the generators that were last edited at most approximately 1 day ago (as per the set limit of generators that the generators page can show). The Google search pretty much searches through all indexed generators throughout the entire platform that aren’t even listed on the generators page.

    But @perchance@lemmy.world I think you should change the search bar’s search button to look like this:

    And then the search box could be used for searching across the generators page directly (kind of the same functionality as my generator hub collection page).

    • allo@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      6 months ago

      I think it should be able to search through ALL the generators, not just those currently visible on the generators page; ordered by a mix of recentness, searchtermcloseness, and popularity

      • BluePower@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        6 months ago

        I think so. Though it might need some mass-fetching of generator databases in the searching process (or we could use a search API built into the page so it could search all generators).