344069 - Match 'synchronise' with 'synchronize' when searching

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(addons.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Public Pages, enhancement)

Description

[Kendall Lister]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060508 Firefox/1.5.0.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060508 Firefox/1.5.0.4

Searching the extensions listing for "synchronise bookmarks" results in no matches, whereas "synchronize bookmarks" produces several results. The difference is UK English spelling versus USA English spelling. Given that many English speakers use the UK spellings, it would be very helpful if the search engine was aware of this.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Search for "synchronise bookmarks"
Actual Results:  
No results are shown.

Expected Results:  
Online Bookmark Manager Synchronizer 1.0.1, Bookmarks on line 0.0.2, Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer 0.72, et cetera, should all be shown.

A solution to this problem should address translating as many USA spellings into UK English spellings as possible.

Comment 1

[timeless]

oh man. i can't imagine this working. but it'll sure be funt to watch someone try

Comment 2

[timeless]

i presume you mean synchronize and not syncrhonize, because google can't find syncrhonize anywhere interesting (around 950 hits total).

but if you mean we should also do general spelling fuzzing...

Comment 3

[Kendall Lister]

Yes, I apologise for the unfortunate typing mistake, and yes I do mean that we should do fuzzy spelling matching, although I wouldn't phrase it in that way, since it suggests that either the UK or the USA English spelling is a mistake. I know it's a tricky business, but it's also a very legitimate improvement, particularly when it comes to attracting and keeping new users for Firefox (although perhaps the majority of new users will never search for an extension?). Does the extensions site use a third-party search engine or was it created specifically for the site?

Comment 4

[Johannes Buchner]

If someone wants his extension named "Bookmark Manager Synchronizer", he might don't want it to be found under synchronise? :D

Anyway, fuzzing the search is too much effort IMO for such little improve. Also adding a rule for each GB-US difference is too much input for so few users effected.

Comment 5

[Kendall Lister]

Fair enough, although perhaps in the future a better search engine could be employed.

Comment 6

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

--> Update :: Public Pages

Comment 7

[Cameron]

Confirming as an enhancement, but don't expect anyone but the very bored to ever look at it. 

Comment 8

[Fred Wenzel [:wenzel]]

Arguably, this is "fixed" as in: Once somebody makes a en-GB version of Remora, it'll be possible to translate titles/descriptions (with fallback), so people who look at the en-GB page would get results for "synchronise" and on the en-US page for "synchronize", provided the author "translated" his fields into both locales.

Thoughts?

Comment 9

[Mike Shaver (:shaver emeritus)]

I think that's close enough, yeah, Frederic.  I'm actually going to close this as WONTFIX, as it would be a maintenance nightmare and likely confusing for users when they hit other cases of collisions that they don't expect ("I searched for truck and got MyLorryPlus?")

People can search for "sync" and get the hits they seek, of course, and likely will.