RE: Language -- am I being too vigillant?

One technique I've heard about, to allow users to enter "poitically 
incorrect" terms in a search, and find the resources which are about 
what they have asked for,  involves somehow associating a list of the 
common terms people might try to use, with the target resource 
records, in the database behind a search engine. - where a website 
has a search engine running off its own database.  I'm sure that many 
of you will be familiar with this.

Another technique might be to add all common terms used in the 
metadata, fo search engines which use it.

Both of these would keep the "unwanted" terms out of the actual 
content, but still allow users to use them.

Reb


At 12:15 PM -0800 11/8/01, Terry Brainerd Chadwick wrote:
>RE using term handicapped:
>
>An "older" gentlemen complained to me recently that he and his 
>friends couldn't find the information they were looking for about 
>assistive devices -- he didn't use that term -- because they all 
>search for the term "handicapped" and couldn't find any information 
>under that term.  I talked about being politically correct, etc.  He 
>said, that's fine, but we -- writers, indexers, developers -- need 
>to understand that many of the people who need that information are 
>older, and either don't know or don't care about the newer terms 
>that are used.
>
>Just something to keep in mind.
>
>Terry
>Terry Brainerd Chadwick, InfoQuest! Information Services
>mailto:tbchad@tbchad.com  1-503-228-4023  http://www.tbchad.com
>Providing Internet Audits and Optimization to Improve Performance
>Accessibility, Analytics, Content, Promotion, Search, Usability

Received on Thursday, 8 November 2001 23:06:30 UTC