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Scryer - DLP's FF Search Engine

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Lord Ravenclaw, Mar 31, 2016.

  1. Alpaca Queen

    Alpaca Queen Fourth Year

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    From personal experimentation with Scryer for the same purpose, I believe you can't. The best I can think of is that you can set the 25,000 words minimum and >=2 chapters minimum (assuming you don't want a one-shot) then order your results by increasing number of chapters.

    Upside: Lots of fics with a good word:chapter ratio.
    Downside: You can't order results by anything else, obviously. Additionally, the bad results still exist, they just won't be visible until many pages in. Also, you'll miss out on fics with lots of words and lots of chapters.

    Alternately, you can do sequential searches like so:
    S1: 1-5 chapters, 25000 min words (5000 minimum wpc)
    S2: 6-10 chapters, 30000 min words (3000 minimum wpc)
    S3: 11-15 chapters, 55000 min words (~3700 minimum wpc)
    S4: 16-20 chapters, 80000 min words (4000 minimum wpc)

    Or something similar. Essentially, by searching in chunks, you can ensure that none of the fics go too far below your desired word count per chapter, while still not excluding anything you want.

    Upside: Generally solid word:chapter ratios, most fics you dislike excluded and all fics you like included.
    Downside: Time-intensive, requires multiple searches to get lots of results, minimum wpc starts out lower than desired after the initial search and increases asymptotically to the desired amount from there.


    There are lots of flaws with both of these methods, but they're probably the best you can do unless you want to write a program to sort through Scryer results for you.
     
    Last edited: Apr 24, 2016
  2. Nuit

    Nuit Dark Lord

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    To my knowledge, Wordcount pertains to total words in the story and Chapters is the number of chapters in the story; not the amount of words in each chapter.
     
  3. Peter North

    Peter North Dark Lord

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    Oh well I tried. I would think however that if you divide the number of chapters by how many words you can usually get a pretty good idea in my experience.
     
  4. Lord Ravenclaw

    Lord Ravenclaw DLP Overlord Admin DLP Supporter

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    Scryer doesn't currently store the individual chapter information, which makes a query like that impossible to execute at this time.

    I could be convinced to add a time range filter, it's not difficult.
     
  5. Alpaca Queen

    Alpaca Queen Fourth Year

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    Why not an average wpc minimum? Like, the number of words divided by the number of chapters is the average words per chapter, and the algorithm excludes all fics with average wpcs outside the ranges entered by the user? I believe this was the point of the request, and I've certainly wanted to search with this before, because I generally don't read fics with fewer than 3000 words to an average chapter.
     
  6. Lord Ravenclaw

    Lord Ravenclaw DLP Overlord Admin DLP Supporter

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    It wouldn't be difficult to do. I'll add it to my list.
     
  7. Lord Ravenclaw

    Lord Ravenclaw DLP Overlord Admin DLP Supporter

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    Saved Searches released into alpha. Saved Searches lack a lot of polish and desired features, but I wanted to get them out there sooner rather than later.

    You can now save a search using the handy "Save Search" button while browsing results of a query. This will show up in your Searches view as well as on the homepage. There's currently no way to edit a search, but you can select your own search on the homepage and it'll form fill the page with your saved search.

    Note: you need to be logged in to save searches, but anyone can view public searches. By default, all searches are public if you give out the URL. A toggle will be added to explicitly make a search private.

    [​IMG]

    From the Searches view, you can get a public link to your search that you can hand out to others. Once searches are editable, this will become much more useful.

    [​IMG]

    As an example, you can view my hastily-created "Daphne, popular" search or a HP/SciFi medium-length mix.


    Future Work
    • Make searches editable
    • Copy a public search / edit it in query builder
    • Polish UX
    • Toggle to make a search private.
     
  8. SilverOtter

    SilverOtter Seventh Year

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    Using the handy quick-saved search drop down menu doesn't work for me.

    Neither does deleting a saved search.
     
  9. Lord Ravenclaw

    Lord Ravenclaw DLP Overlord Admin DLP Supporter

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    I've pushed a change that I believe should make it work for you. Let me know.
     
  10. SilverOtter

    SilverOtter Seventh Year

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    That seems to have fixed it! Thanks a bunch for the quick fix.
     
  11. Lord Ravenclaw

    Lord Ravenclaw DLP Overlord Admin DLP Supporter

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    More updates. Lots of bug fixes, better search input validation.

    - Fixed a particularly nasty bug around searches with K+ ratings -- if you changed from the default K,K+,T,M filter, K+ stories would be dropped.

    - Saved Searches are a little better integrated with some minor bugfixes. Using the "Search" link at the top maintains which search you used to seed it.

    - Saved Searches can be copied now. Given a public saved search link, clicking Save Search allows you to save that search as your own.

    - Saved Searches can be updated. Using the selector box in the saved search modal will replace a search with your new search terms.

    There's still some UX improvement to be done, but copy/update at least fixes some of my peeves. As usual, keep an eye out for strange behavior.
     
  12. moonpotato

    moonpotato First Year

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  13. BigLeg

    BigLeg Muggle

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    It does get highlighted when you move your cursor over the options though, so I wouldn't say it's a huge problem.
     
  14. theminikiller

    theminikiller Third Year

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    I really like scryer, I have been using it for probably a year now, and especially like that you can sort by dlp review score.
    I however just read worm, and wondered if it would be possible to add worm to the fandom list?
     
  15. theminikiller

    theminikiller Third Year

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    I have a feature request for scryer. Would it be possible to have an option to deselect all the fandoms we have chosen in both the fandom and crossover box? It can sometimes be a little annoying having to scroll through the list to find all the ones that are selected.
     
  16. Lord Ravenclaw

    Lord Ravenclaw DLP Overlord Admin DLP Supporter

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    Sure, it's indexing now.

    Is this primary on a mobile device? I'll see what I can do.
     
  17. theminikiller

    theminikiller Third Year

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    Thank you. Yes, that's primarily on mobile devices where you have to scroll through the whole list to find the marked ones, which can get a llittle annoying.
     
  18. Lord Ravenclaw

    Lord Ravenclaw DLP Overlord Admin DLP Supporter

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    I added a clear button for fandoms, crossovers, and characters for now. I'll add them for others if necessary, but there's considerably less scrolling required for categories.
     
  19. BTT

    BTT Viol̀e͜n̛t͝ D̶e͡li͡g҉h̛t҉s̀ ~ Prestige ~

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    In the searches menu you spelled categories as categorys.

    I also noticed some stories have tags already, by which I mean things like "gender-bender" or "slash". Far as I can tell, these are based around the text in the summary. I couldn't figure out a way to interact with them, though.

    About those, I was thinking: it might be better to separate the "slash" and "femslash" tags. IIRC the surveys Taure's done show that DLP mostly doesn't read slash yet minds femslash a lot less.

    While I'm making suggestions, I'd also appreciate a feature that shows if a fic is in the WbA, maybe including a link.
     
  20. Lord Ravenclaw

    Lord Ravenclaw DLP Overlord Admin DLP Supporter

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    The tags are currently experimental and generated on demand primarily from the summary and relationships block. I'm still working on getting in additional metadata on characters to attach genders reliably to them as to not need to try on the summary. I use Scryer a lot, so I'm dialing them in to meet my expectations before I make them searchable (tag generation happens when you view results currently vs implemented in the search engine). Thanks for the feedback though, it did cross my mind to break out femslash but I was on the fence.

    Scryer will show if the fic is in the library, I'm not sure linking to the WBA story is kosher with me given that I don't want WBA to be a place the public goes to read stories. FFN is fine for that. I'll think on it though.
     
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