Question: Help us refine the search interface at PublicLab.org/search

Here's another! I think once you enter a search term and search, I expect to be able to further refine the search by adding or removing words, especially in Boolean mode. But the search term no longer appears in the search box:

I think we could ensure the box remains filled, but also be sure it doesn't show the autocompletion, as that'd be redundant.

This could be a good reason to have the in-page search (not the navbar) retain its own search input -- which doesn't have autocompletion, i guess? Or should it?

@milaaraujo @stefannibrasil i'm kicking this off to collect input on the search system, as there are likely many many small tweaks and adjustments we could make. As people chime in here, we can copy them over into a planning issue or generally into issues on the plots2 repository!

I was recently looking for a specific research note and knew the exact title: Water Quality Testing At Turkey Creek. I was unable to reach the page by using the page's search function.

Issues I've identified

• As I started typing in the title, nothing happened. Eventually a list of users were auto-suggested, though that list had nothing to do with the article I was looking for.

• When I clicked on the magnifying glass to initiate the search, I received 71 pages of search results. Nothing on the first page was the note I needed. I selected Boolean search, which narrowed to four results, none of which were the one I needed. I switched to Natural search and the results matched the Boolean search.

• Seeing a related research note in the search results, I clicked that link, hoping I would be able to find my research note by seeing what tags they would share. I clicked on the "turkey-creek" tag and expected to be shown a search of notes with that tag. Instead, I had to click again on "notes" to initiate the search.

Goals I'd like us to address

I'd like to figure out how to make sure that the matching research note comes up as an autocomplete suggestion, or at least in the first page of search results.

Ideas I've had

It seems intuitive that pressing return after typing in the Search bar would initiate the search (not having to manually click the magnifying glass), and that clicking on Tags would automatically initiate a search that could later be refined (instead of having to choose your refinements before starting the search)

And just to break out Joe's observation that: I clicked on the "turkey-creek" tag and expected to be shown a search of notes with that tag. Instead, I had to click again on "notes" to initiate the search.

This isn't strictly search, but it's worth noting -- @joyofsoy what should we display in this space? What if we showed the # of contributors like :