I am Robert Munafo.
Areas of expertise: Mandelbrot set
Other areas I can contribute to: large numbers,
robotics, analysis of complex problems,
anthropology, theology, distinctions of
transcendental self-help movements, computer
programming particularly under Linux, supercomputers
Hobbies and affiliations: extropian, Libertarian,
inventing, etymology, open source, freedom of information,
The Google search "mrob mu-ency mira ries sdram"
will uniquely find my home page.
Material temporarily quarantined because of the
ban on noding about noding:
If you wanted to find this node, what would you
search for?
The E2 policy on titles seems
to indicate that it is unacceptable to name a node
by a description of what is discussed there. But
sometimes that prevents users from finding the information.
For example, if you want to find out about sentences
in foreign languages that use at least one of each letter
in their alphabet, but don't know that such a thing
is called a pangram, then you won't be able to
find it unless there is also a node called
sentence with all the letters.
The brief non-content titles policy seems to prevent
a solution to this issue. And the
ban on discussing noding techniques
prevents the policy from being changed, because no-one
is allowed to speak out about it.
Some ASCII formatting tests
h6 code
h6 code
h6 code
h6 code
h6 pre
h6 pre
h6 pre
h6 pre
sm pre
sm pre
sm pre
sm pre
URLs die, but keywords live forever
optimally focused keywords
In web pages, as in all writing, it is important to acknowledge
sources and provide references to material that is supplemental
to your own work. On the internet it is natural to
use URLs in your references (in addition to the standard
author, title, date, and so on) so that your reader can
immediately read your source.
However, URLs had a very poor reliability record during
their first 10 years and the situation is unlikely to
improve. Many of your readers will find that the URL
does not work.
When the URL fails, the reader can go to a search engine.
However, they will probably have little to search
on aside from the author, title, date, and perhaps one or
two direct quotes you used in your writing.
Unfortunately, they will usually find that this is not
enough to find the source online. It usually finds many other
references by other writers who have quoted the same
source, perhaps even using the same direct quotes you did.
There ought to be a way to tell the search engine "I only
want the original source material, not quotes and references".
And there is.
optimally focused keywords are keywords that,
when used in a search, will only find copies of
a desired text and nothing else. While this is
not possible for all texts, it is possible
for almost all texts.
How to find optimally focused keywords
Find the desired text online.
You want your keywords to find something -- so,
Look for the rarest words in the text.
Use at least one proper noun.
There are many huge web pages that contain lists
of all the words in the English language. If your
keywords are all in the list, the list will show up as
a match for a search with your keywords.
However, those word lists are typically "dictionary
files" (such as the UNIX file /usr/dict/words)
Keep adding rare words until your searches only find
the one thing you want them to find
Remove words that don't need to be there
This might seem surprising, but after adding
words until your search is unambiguous, you usually
end up with one or more keywords that can be deleted.
Why? Consider this: Your keywords weren't unambiguous
until you added the last one. Therefore, you
know that last one was important. But maybe some of the earlier
ones weren't. Test each one by trying to remove it and
checking the result. You will usually find one or two that
can be removed without making the search ambiguous.
Test with multiple search engines.
By using more search engines, you cover a greater part of
the internet. You will have a harder time finding a set
of keywords that works, but once you do find it, the
result will have a better quality ratio over the long term.
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