Thursday, 9 August 2007

Give people what they want !!!

New changes to the English to Konkani translate page.

The English to Konkani translation feature on the site, still maintains its pole position as the favourite feature on the page. (Even though the editors and contributors of the project, would rather have the 'Contribute a Konkani word' feature to be the most used one. Without word contributions there would be no data to translate you see)

A new algorithm has been implemented that tracks the actual searches being done on the site by end users. Before today, no tracking of search terms was being done and rather relied on the backend database to find the right terms. If there was no corresponding word in the dictionary, then nothing was returned to the user and no further action was taken to address these searched words.

The new tracker will help track user inputs (in English) and mark search queries that do not show any matches (in Konkani). These search queries can then be tracked and added to the Konkani Dictionary database.

This should enhance the user experience by ensuring that the most searched words are included in the database, on a relatively higher priority basis and hence find matches when searched for. Words that are searched more often, and that dont find any matches, are assigned higher 'Add to Dictionary' ranking.

Moral of the story:

"The more people search for specific English words, the more likely that the corresponding Konkani word would be included in the database"

or to put in a different way

"Give people what they want !!!"