Search and Filter, feature proposition and discussion

willowisp

I've discussed search issues on SLR a bit with doublevr elsewhere. It was suggested I post here with some more details, but then I forgot for a while. 🙂

Problem: I find the current search and quick-links via categories or studios to be frustratingly limited. After selecting a category/studio, you're left browsing manually. Meanwhile, search doesn't handle multiple names/tags well, and overall returns a list of page-matches on the site, rather than an array of matching videos. At best I get a link to a page amounting to the same thing as selecting a category, studio, or a pornstar, then it's manual browse-and-filter time again.

Let's start simple...

If a user types "Stacy Cruz" into the search box, what should the results be?

list of page-matches on the SLR site? (currently what happens; not ideal I think)
view of videos involving Stacy?
"actress page" for Stacy?

You have the /pornstars/stacy-cruz and similar pages, so that is probably sensible... but what if a user's intent is just finding videos? In particular, this is relevant when adding another condition to the search: "Stacy Cruz stockings".

What I'm getting at is that there seems to be a mix of ideas of what kind of results are being asked for, with no way for the user to express their particular intent (find videos, or find "pornstar info"). Maybe it's enough to assume that a strong match for a pornstar (only) gives their page, while a weaker match or further keywords assumes video search? Another option is an explicitly separate entry field or button to submit a video-database-search versus a site-search.

Searching for videos...

Now let's assume we're interpreting a searchbox entry for returning a list of videos.

An entry could have several phrases. Each phrase might match tags or be a fuzzy string-match on title or description (maybe with match-weight highest for tags and lowest for an imperfect match in the description). One problem is determining each phrase. Either some "smartness" is needed (identifying multiword tags and names, then issuing fuzzy matches on remaining substrings and words), or syntax has to be exposed to users, like comma separation or quotes. "Stacy Cruz non pov daddy" would need to pull out "non pov" as a tag, and not mistake it as "pov" nor as something to match against text (whereas "daddy" is left for fuzzy-matching text). While "Stacy Cruz, non pov, daddy" is easier to handle but users would need to be hinted/informed of the syntax.

Generally a user will want the intersection, or join, of each phrase... rather than the union. This might be assumed, so no support for expressing the union. I don't think that would be a loss, and it keeps usability simple.

Also, the results are really more of a sort rather than search, showing highest match scores first, but scores below some threshold (eg. zero) not included in the results.

To make other sort orders (eg. by date) useful, the number of search hits might be selectable, with quicklinks for groupings. By groupings I mean that the search results will probably have clustering, for example in 1000 results there might be 300 around a 90-100% match, while another 300 might all be around 60% +/- 10, and the remainder down around a 30% match (say, +/- 20%). In this example, three quicklinks would be available: 300 (90%), 600 (50%), 1000 (10%), showing the size and the minimum match rating.

Negation: While it might be tempting and convenient to allow negations in the search string, I think it ultimately adds too much complication and this functionality can be better served by filters applied on the search results. (One complication is the syntax used to express negation in the string, and user understanding it. Another complication is negation on items matching title or description fuzzy-matches... here it is too easy to miss implicit negation in the text body and thereby get opposite results from those
expected.)

A base set, or "view", will typically come from a search result, or simply selecting a category or studio link. Or, the default being the entire library of videos.

From here it's useful to narrow the view with filters... which I'll cover in a followup post.

willowisp

Filtering the current view...

Maybe for any current list (view) of videos, a filter section is shown in the left panel.

Range filters on numeric data like: play length, fps, available res, dates (published, addition to SLR, modified/updated/remastered). These have two settings, marking the low and high limits for the current view.
Negatable boolean filters from: tags, studio names, or other metadata like premium, purchasable, trailer only, purchased (by user), downloaded (by user).

Range Filters:

Length
  0-5-10-20-30-45-60-inf
FPS [capture|final]     <- select either capture framerate -or- final interpolated/postprocess framerate
  30-60-90-120
Resolution
  2K-3K-4K-5K-6K
Time since [published|added to SLR|modified]  <- one of these time-qualifiers is selected
  0-1d-3d-week-1m-3m-1y-3y-inf

Note: Some of the range sliders might be quantized like shown, while some like Length might offer a continuum between markings.

Negatable Boolean Filters:

Toggled on to accept only matching results.

Able to be negated, to filter-out matching results.

The current list of possible filters is the union of tags+studios of all videos in the current "view" or set. The list could be quite long, especially for thousands of entries. It would be cumbersome for a user to be given all possible data to filter on, but we could suss-out the more useful tags to divide the current "view".

First, some filters will match most or all current videos -- these are uninteresting (so can be ignored) because they wouldn't reduce the set significantly.

Let's work with an example of starting with a search/listing of Stacy Cruz videos...

In this example, "Chestnut", "Boobs" and other actress-descriptive tags match all or most of the Stacy Cruz videos, so they're not very interesting filters -- applying them wouldn't reduce the set at all.

Interesting filters would be in the mid-to-low range of matches, especially for large sets (to reduce them). Though for a small set of matches, higher-hits like 70 or 80% might be of interest too.

Out of 44 "Stacy Cruz" videos, let's say we have a count of tags like this (I mocked these up):

180 (44)            ^
boobs (44)          |
chestnut (44)       |
long hair (44)      | uninteresting filters
trimmed pussy (42) _|______
cumshots (32)
POV (31)
blowjob (29)
cowgirl (25)
reverse cowgirl (23)
doggy (19)
non POV (18)
missionary (17)
close ups (13)
tit job (11)
solo (9)
camera movement (8)
threesome (7)
creampie (7)
POV kissing (7)
stockings (6)
high heels (5)
pussy licking (5)
fleshlight (4)
BDSM (3)

Maybe large-count items are instead offered as a negated filter, eg. "no trimmed pussy (2)". It's not so interesting to filter out the two items from a larger list, but maybe someone interested in the negative will like to pare the list down to exactly what they're after (I don't recall seeing Stacy with a furry bush, but let's pretend!).

Tags might be hinted (manually, or through machine learning) with display thresholds. For example, the typical position variations (doggy, cowgirl, etc) might not be interesting to show as a filter unless they are uncommon (eg. less than 30%) in the current set, or if we have few filters shown anyway. The rationale being that many videos will have a variety of these tags aside from otherwise-special cases like solo or lesbian voyeur (which imply that none of these positions are present). Comparatively, POV or solo should show up as filters except in cases where they encompass most of the set (eg. threshold for these might be 90%).

Studio filters might always be available; maybe foldable/collapsable.

So, after reducing the raw set of filters behind-the-scenes, a user might be offered something like this:

(no) POV (31)
(no) non POV (18)
(no) close ups (13)
(no) tit job (11)
(no) solo (9)
(no) camera movement (8)
(no) threesome (7)
(no) creampie (7)
(no) POV kissing (7)
(no) stockings (6)
(no) high heels (5)
(no) pussy licking (5)
(no) fleshlight (4)
(no) BDSM (3)
 no  trimmed pussy (2)

Studios:     <- maybe this is collapsable
(no) perVRt (24)
(no) TmwVRNet (4)
(no) VRTeenrs (2)
(no) SexBabesVR (2)
(no) CzechVRFetish (2)
(no) CzechVRCasting (1)

This seems like a useful list of filters, and serves as a quick reference for some of the variety of material available in the current set.

Note: The (no) might be a faded prefix which can be clicked: toggling the negation and toggling whether the filter is active, while the main text of the filter just toggles active or not.

In sets with even more variety (eg. the entire SLR libary), there will be a "long tail" of low-count items... I'm not sure of the best way to manage these. Maybe the display list of filters has a set limit of shown entries and the tail is simply cut short. As filters are applied to reduce the set, the smaller matches may fit into view. Maybe a user toggle to show the full-list or truncated one.

Similarly for studio filters, the length of the list might be truncated by collecting the tail-end under a single "Other" filter. Again, maybe the option to unfold this into the full list.

Now, lets imagine the user selects filtering to show "POV" and "no camera movement" (asterisks here denote active filters on the current view):

(no) POV (29) *
(no) non POV (3)
(no) close ups (3)
(no) tit job (9)
 no  camera movement (29) *
(no) threesome (7)
(no) creampie (6)
(no) POV kissing (7)
(no) stockings (3)
(no) high heels (2)
(no) pussy licking (1)
(no) fleshlight (4)
(no) BDSM (1)
 no  trimmed pussy (2)

Studios (collapsed)

The current view (on the right) would have 29 videos shown (or not all at once if paginated).

It might be most user-friendly to sustain the same order as before toggling any filters, so that items don't jump around. However it would be prudent to not show filters with "zero" count to allow more room for previously un-shown filters... but this would cause some movement of items anyway. Experimentation needed?

So, these are some thoughts I've had on how I might like to be able to find things in the ever-growing library of SLR videos, without making it complicated to use for anyone (I hope).

Aerowen

I think a lot of the other ideas mentioned are great but as a programmer having that many things to filter on quickly becomes a bit of a nightmare to manage. I think if we even get some of the more basic filtering along with combining of tags (like milf+anal+90fps) to search for scenes, that would be great already.

willowisp Negatable boolean filters from: tags, studio names, or other metadata like premium, purchasable, trailer only, purchased (by user), downloaded (by user).

This exact list is something I've managed to do with a userscript, but that of course only works on the current page of scene-thumbnails and not the entire library. I was working on adding a "hide selected studios by default" feature too but it seems that might be coming soon on SLR so I might drop that and if possible release this script on github soonish.

I mostly wanted a way to track my download history on scene thumbnails but added a few filter buttons later, here's a screenshot of Adriana Chechik's page where I'm hiding unavailable scenes and 'buyable scenes' are faded out (each button has three states; ⚪show/⚫faded/❌hidden), normally 20 scenes are shown on a page but with those filters only 3. Also one of the premium scenes shows the downloaded-checkmark ribbon in the top right corner of the scene-thumbnail. Those show up on browsing pages and can also be filtered on. It makes it real easy to quickly check favorite pornstars for any new scenes I haven't downloaded yet.

Because with thousands of scenes in premium it was getting real hard to remember which scenes I already downloaded. I think like myself many people are probably using the heart-flag on scenes they download which of course is not its intended goal. So it might be good if SLR started tracking which scenes you've downloaded server-side as well, and also give us the option to mark a scene as "owned/downloaded on a different site", similar to how Steam allows you to ignore games you own on different platforms but still allow Steam to use it to recommend similar games. These stats could then also be used for a better "recommended for you" section, which is currently quite useless since almost always shows scenes which for me are marked as already downloaded.

Will have to come back to this tomorrow lol, been awake for like 30+ hours and need sleep... 😴

SamSuppVR

willowisp Thanks for the feedback.

Philip

Guys, you'll have all the sorting in the world, just give us a bit of time, there are more urgent things that need a priority right now. Sorting will be improved this year for sure, I'm working on something flexible so we don't have to make too many corner cases for everyone

Philip

This will be my before the bed read for tonight...

mebejoe

Wow--way too technical for me to get into, but I agree that the search function could be better. Being able to select multiple categories at once would be a huge improvement. For example, I want all videos that have blondes plus threesomes plus massage.

willowisp

mebejoe "I want all videos that have blondes plus threesomes plus massage."
I know! This should be basic and trivial -- and largely the value of having tags in the first place! I don't know why it doesn't work -- it seems as though only specific URLs are permitted, like the developers need to explicitly declare a page. Initially I wondered if there was a decision for only serving what amounted to static pages... but later realized they do have user-controllable "favorites" so that can't be it.

And I saw doublevr post this link: https://www.sexlikereal.com/tags/female-pov-lesbian-vr Which at first glance seems to be an arbitrary combination of tags... but I wasn't able to get any other search combo to work, even by manually building a URL in a similar way... which leads me to the speculation that it needs to be a dev-christened page to exist and that this was given as a quick-hack solution to someone's immediate issue. I don't really know, but I'd like what makes sense to work. 🙂

l7DZn795MhkI

If you already suggested this in your massive wall of text I apologize, I didn't read it all but did CTRL-F on 'alphabetical' and 'sort'.

It would be great if categories, studios and models could be sorted by alphabet in the SLR (phone) app. It's hard to find things currently, I have no idea what order they are in. Could be I'm just dumb though :⁾

willowisp

l7DZn795MhkI Sorry, yes, I only mentioned sorting briefly in how the search results might need to be constrained under partial-matches for purposes of sorting by other criteria than search relevance. And then I only offered "eg. by date" as an example. So it's good to call out alphabetic as an option -- Once you can pare down a decent list it's useful to control its sort-order!

Aerowen

willowisp "I want all videos that have blondes plus threesomes plus massage."
I know! This should be basic and trivial -- and largely the value of having tags in the first place! I don't know why it doesn't work -- it seems as though only specific URLs are permitted

About this, before this current site design it was possible to combine at least some things like: Premium, sorted by recent AND only 90fps scenes. I still have the old bookmark for it: https://www.sexlikereal.com/virtualreality/premium/sort/recent/fps/90 but that no longer works, those slider toggles in the sidemenu are no longer toggles for your current category or studio like they were before. With this new site design the tags and filtering stuff went two steps backwards.

And that "female-pov-lesbian-vr" link, that's all one tag. I'm guessing they just make combined tags into one manually when someone asks for them but that's a kinda wrong and messy solution. I hope it's only temporary while the actual good filters and tags combining stuff is being developed.

mebejoe

Philip and SamSuppVR

Great! Thanks for letting us know..