438282 - Possible bug in ranking of url bar results

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Description

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

See http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=577139&threshold=1&commentsort=3&mode=thread&pid=23701343#23704335

The relevant part is:

  Uh, no it doesn't. How long do I have to wait for this to magically happen?
  Because it's been several weeks now, visiting that particular site several
  times a day (& /. only every few days), and it steadfastly refuses to move
  from the 3rd position on the list.

  Note that, as I mentioned in another reply, this isn't the only case where
  this happens. Currently, typing "sl" for me brings up "qut.edu.au" first,
  "www.visibledust.com" second, then "slashdot.org". At worst, that's WTF
  terrirory - at best, it's like FF3 has decided "OK, I know enough, I'm not
  going to learn and adapt anymore", and just sticks with its chosen ordering
  whether the user wants that or not.

The original post in question here was <http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=577139&threshold=1&commentsort=3&mode=thread&cid=23699609>:

  Sorry to the lovers of it, but when typing 'as' consistently brings up
  slashdot.org and youtube.com as the first 2 choices before a URL actually
  starting with those 2 letters (like ask.metafilter.com - and yes, before you
  ask, all 3 are in my history and bookmarks)

Further info from <http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=577139&threshold=1&commentsort=3&mode=thread&pid=23704753#23707061>:

  Type "as", get:

   1. slashdot.org - bookmarked
   2. youtube.com (page title "YouTube - Broadcast Yourself") - not bookmarked
   3. ask.metafilter.com - bookmarked


  Another example - type "sl", get:

   1. qut.edu.au (page title "QUT | Queensland University of Technology,
      Brisbane Australia") - not bookmarked
   2. www.visibledust.com (page title "VisibleDust - DSLR Camera Sensor
      Cleaning") - not bookmarked
   3. slashdot.org - bookmarked

  Note that this has occurred, with variations, for me on 4 different machines
  (2 x OS X, 1 x WinXP, 1 x Vista), in all FF3 versions since b2, and across
  multiple new profiles.

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

edilee thinks this might be related to bug 406422.

He's also interested in the output created with the following steps:

1)  Open the error console
2)  Paste the following string into the "Code:" textfield (all one line; might
    need to remove some linebreaks here):

C=Components;c=C.classes,i=C.interfaces;m="@mozilla.org/";f=c[m+"file/directory_service;1"].getService(i.nsIProperties).get("ProfD",i.nsIFile);f.append("places.sqlite");q=[];s=c[m+"storage/service;1"].getService(i.mozIStorageService).openDatabase(f).createStatement("SELECT input,use_count,url FROM moz_inputhistory JOIN moz_places ON id=place_id WHERE input LIKE 'sl%'");d=[];a="%0a";g=s.getString;while(s.executeStep())d.push([g(0),g(1),g(2)].join(a));open('data:text/plain,'+d.join(a+a))

3)  Click "Evaluate"

Comment 2

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Bug 451915 - move Firefox/Places bugs to Firefox/Bookmarks and History. Remove all bugspam from this move by filtering for the string "places-to-b-and-h".

In Thunderbird 3.0b, you do that as follows:
Tools | Message Filters
Make sure the correct account is selected. Click "New"
Conditions: Body   contains   places-to-b-and-h
Change the action to "Delete Message".
Select "Manually Run" from the dropdown at the top.
Click OK.

Select the filter in the list, make sure "Inbox" is selected at the bottom, and click "Run Now". This should delete all the bugspam. You can then delete the filter.

Gerv

Comment 3

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

This is definitely due to adaptive behavior. Adaptive results always come before frecency results, thus if one often types "sl" and select a youtube video from the dropdown, that result will be higher in the list than a url starting by "sl"
The adaptive decay bug 406422 should have helped here, and I'm not sure we want to touch the algo without a really good plan, since most users seem happy with the current behavior and we don't have any better proposal as of now. I'd gladly take a bug filed with proposals :)