1292358 - Mozillian Profile Skills: Auto-suggestions prefixed with ".css3 html5"

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Participation Infrastructure :: Phonebook, defect)

Description

[Claas Augner [:claas]]

Attachment: MozilliansProfileSkillsAutosuggest.png

Context: I'm editing my profile in the Settings area of Mozillians.org.

Action: I'm typing "java" into the Skills section.

Expected: The following skills should appear (among others):
- java
- javascript

Actual: The following skills appear (among others):
- .css3 html javascript
- .css3 html5 java
- .css3 html5 java javascript
- .css3 html5 java javascript php
- .css3 html5 java php
- .css3 html5 javascript
- (...)

Consequence: I can't select "java" and "javascript" as skills.

Solutions:
1. Fix skill database.
2. Hide skills from auto-suggestions that are prefixed with a ".".
3. Reorder auto-suggested skills so that exact and head matches appear first.

Comment 1

[Tasos Katsoulas [:tasos]]

Hi :claas

Thanks for submitting this bug.
If you scroll down to the suggested fields, the list is expanded with more results. Following your example, I could easily select both "java" and "javascript" by scrolling down. 

Regarding the skill selection in the database, it's not a curated list but rather a free form field where users can add anything. This is intentional because it's almost impossible to add and maintain a curated list with all the available skills (a skill can be anything, not necessarily technical).

Finally, regarding you last suggestion, I think it totally makes sense to match the beginning of the string and not have a "fuzzy" match.

Comment 2

[Claas Augner [:claas]]

Hi :tasos

> If you scroll down to the suggested fields, the list is expanded with more results.
> Following your example, I could easily select both "java" and "javascript" by scrolling down.

I just verified this and it's true that "java" and "javascript" appear eventually. In my case the scrolling took 19s though (after typing the word "java" and continuously scrolling; despite fast internet), as they only appear on page 12 [0]. I tend to disagree that this qualifies as "easy".

[0] https://mozillians.org/en-US/skills/autocomplete/?q=java&page=12&create=true

> Regarding the skill selection in the database, it's not a curated list 
> but rather a free form field where users can add anything.

I understand this, but I would contest that ".css3 html javascript" is the result of valid user input and/or makes any sense. This said, I doubt that the Mozillians listed at [1] deliberately chose the skill ".css3 html5 javascript jax java python apache", because it does not allow to find other Mozillians with overlapping skills "css3", "html5" and "javascript", for instance. Therefore I would suggest replacing these erroneous skills (that start with a "." and contain two or more space separated skills that exist on their own) by the individual skills.

[1] https://mozillians.org/en-US/skill/css3-html5-javascript-jax-java-python-apache/

> Finally, regarding you last suggestion, I think it totally makes sense 
> to match the beginning of the string and not have a "fuzzy" match.

As far as I can see, it should suffice to replace |name__icontains| with |name__istartswith| at [2]. Another solution would be to order the skills autocomplete results by popularity, assuming that the user is more likely to look for a popular skill than a skill that only few Mozillians indicated.

[2] https://github.com/mozilla/mozillians/blob/259fea1c3cf9c643fe06ecfa43c35d014afb3166/mozillians/groups/views.py#L493

Comment 3

[Tasos Katsoulas [:tasos]]

I completely agree that we need to find a solution to maintain as much as possible a curated list of skills. I just opened bug 1295549 to track this effort. Regarding this bug, we can just replace the icontains with istartswith as a first step to provide a better experience when a user searches/submits skills.

Comment 4

[[github robot]]

Commits pushed to master at https://github.com/mozilla/mozillians

https://github.com/mozilla/mozillians/commit/db9fb755aadbe1dfc1b34e5c3d1c96eea3ca1444
[fix bug 1292358] Replace 'icontains' with 'startswith' in skills queries.

https://github.com/mozilla/mozillians/commit/0d654a9f6b6306a1f97f460d42f610791a3ef964
Merge pull request #1500 from akatsoulas/1292358-skill-search

[fix bug 1292358] Replace 'icontains' with 'startswith' in skills que…

Comment 5

[John Giannelos [:nemo-yiannis]]

Verified on stage:

* Go to skills section
* Start typing "java"
* Only string starting with java are returned (no ".css3 html5 java")