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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Negative search

:The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was redirect‎__EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__ to Online search. Liz Read! Talk! 22:49, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

=[[:Negative search]]=

{{AFD help}}

:{{la|1=Negative search}} – (View AfDView log | edits since nomination)

:({{Find sources AFD|title=Negative search}})

Per Chidgk1's declined PROD, this OR mess should be deleted and then redirected to Negative keyword. voorts (talk/contributions) 22:42, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

:Delete -- cannot find sources either Mrfoogles (talk) 22:59, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

::Merge to Online search per the existence of sources to cover it. Does not necessarily need its own article, and online search has plenty of room for being a stub and all. Mrfoogles (talk) 16:07, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

:::It's not a merge since the cites provided here aren't actually in this article and there's no content from the article to merge. Anyone can add the cites from this AfD to the article. I'm against a merge outcome because this version should be completely deleted. voorts (talk/contributions) 17:32, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

::: Redirect to Online search#Binary search per lack of citations & expansion of that article to cover negative searches. Mrfoogles (talk) 18:22, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

:Delete or redirect: Agree with nominator that this page is a mess and we should delete it per WP: TNT, since cleanup would amount to blanking the article. HyperAccelerated (talk) 05:41, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

  • Not sure what to do about this. There’s another kind of negative search used for scholarly research. Bearian (talk) 13:12, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Fix it or Delete per WP:TNT. Oppose redirect/merge to Negative keyword. @{{u|Voorts}}, {{u|Mrfoogles}}, {{u|HyperAccelerated}}, {{u|Bearian}}. There seems to be confusion as to what this article is about because the merge proposal makes no sense. This article seems to be about the use of the "not" Boolean expression  within web navigation which is often colloquially called a negative search or an "exclusion search". It is an informational retrieval strategy. Ideally we would cover this in the pathetically small Online search article. If there is going to be an WP:ATD, i would support a merge/redirect to online search.

:I'm sure all of us have done a "negative search" in google (ie using the negative sign to eliminate certain words in a web browser search). I do it all the time in researching. For example, if I am researching John Adams (composer) and didn't want to get hits about the president, I would search: "John Adams""composer" -president. This gives me positive hits on John Adams and composer but eliminates all articles on the president by using a "negative search" on that term.

:I would imagine there would be sources on this on books on basic web browser skills, such as The Internet for Dummies, etc. There's probably more technical/academic lit on this under web searches or web research using Boolean expression or Boolean operations. I you search "Boolean" "web search" in google book and scholar lots of sources on this concept of using the "not Boolean expression" pop up.

:In contrast Negative keyword is a specific term used in marketing on the google advertising platform. It has to do with the use of Keyword research within google which is not what this article is about. Google collects data on everyone using it browser. Whatever you type in google is remembered and google uses that info to let companies target you with adds based on your search history. A "positive keyword" means a company can target an add at anyone who has searched using a specific word. On the opposite, a company can eliminate people based on a "negative keyword". Lets say a golf club manufacturer wants to sell their product. They'll target people searching for the term "golf clubs"; that's a "positive keyword". However, lets say they don't want to advertise to people searching for "free golf clubs". They could make "free" a "negative keyword" thereby eliminating those people from seeing their adds (which saves them money in advertising costs).4meter4 (talk) 05:33, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

::I agree that Negative keyword is not a great redirect target, but Online search is a pretty poorly sourced stub and isn't really that much better. If there's as much confusion as you say about what this article covers, let's just delete the article and be done with it. HyperAccelerated (talk) 05:57, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

:::@{{U|HyperAccelerated}} I am fine with a WP:TNT delete and said so in my vote. I think it is important though that we (1.) understand what it is we are deleting (2.) Recognize it is a notable topic that could be covered, just not in this way. Ideally we would expand the online search article with a subsection on "Boolean operators in online searching" which would cover the concept of a "negative search" as described in this article but with more technical/academic language. Here are some sources that could be used to cover this concept: [https://www.google.com/books/edition/Web_As_Corpus/vTdiAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%C2%A0%22Boolean+search%22+%22NOT%22&pg=PP98&printsec=frontcover], [https://www.google.com/books/edition/Semantic_Knowledge_Representation_for_In/FaToBQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%C2%A0%22Boolean+search%22+%22NOT%22&pg=PA63&printsec=frontcover], [https://www.google.com/books/edition/Seven_Steps_to_a_Comprehensive_Literatur/G0ZsCgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%C2%A0%22Boolean+search%22+%22NOT%22&pg=PA104&printsec=frontcover], [https://www.google.com/books/edition/Online_Searching/hv2EDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%C2%A0%22Boolean+search%22&pg=PA295&printsec=frontcover], [https://www.google.com/books/edition/Web_Search_Savvy/6-gxEQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%C2%A0%22Boolean+search%22&pg=PT246&printsec=frontcover], [https://www.google.com/books/edition/Encyclopedia_of_Library_and_Information/1U_gOuKGFYYC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%C2%A0%22Boolean+search%22+%22NOT%22&pg=PA243&printsec=frontcover], [https://www.google.com/books/edition/Understanding_Digital_Libraries/gulEYZnjxTYC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%C2%A0%22Boolean+search%22+%22NOT%22&pg=PA201&printsec=frontcover], [https://www.google.com/books/edition/Text_Retrieval_Systems_In_Information_Ma/oeZQVvk24NcC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%C2%A0%22Boolean+search%22+%22NOT%22&pg=PA66&printsec=frontcover]. Best.4meter4 (talk) 06:45, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

{{clear}}

:The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.