Re: How can we decrease the cognitive overhead for contributors?

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Csepp <raingloom@riseup.net> writes:

> Mumi currently fails at its main function of being a search engine for
> issues.  I can't even find my own messages with keyword searches,
> because for some reason Mumi connects each words with a logical or and
> doesn't rank search results based on how many hits there are, not to
> mention handling fuzzy hits, or synonyms, etc.

Mumi commit bda10fa1b37fed8ea313ea8ad49fa6146e65b4c0 changed the AND to
the Xapian default of OR.  Here’s the rationale from the commit message:

    xapian: Do not override the default OR implicit query operator.

    An implicit AND operator is overly restrictive. It was only necessary
    because prefixes that should have been indexed as boolean prefixes
    were not.

Xapian *does* rank search results by score.  It also supports fuzzy
search.  But let me move a little so I won’t stand in the way of a good
rant.

> As I see it, this is an issue of developer resources.  Mumi and Debbugs
> have no chance of catching up to any alterntive that already has a
> sustainable financial model and professional developers working on it.
>
> Why are we trying to compete with Sourcehut?  What's the end goal?

I can’t make myself even clearer about this, but I’ll repeat myself
again: we are not.

“Competition” is a foreign concept to me.  Mumi exists only because I
found the Debbugs web interface kinda ugly and alienating.  It’s a hack
that obviously outlived its welcome.  I have to admit that messages like
this make me regret scratching this itch that gave rise to Mumi in 2016.
(Sourcehut started in 2018.)

Please go ahead and package the rest of Sourcehut, so we can host it and
finally forget about Mumi and Debbugs.

-- 
Ricardo