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Ask HN: Why is Confluence search feature so bad?

8 pointsyuvalsteuer6 comments
On HN

I have used Confluence in multiple organizations and have always been disappointed by its search feature. Am I knit picking or is the search in Confluence just plain bad?

My problems with it:

1. search terms need to be percise.

2. Complicated advanced search.

3. Slow

How would you make it better?

Comments

It just sucks and always has. Beyond saving I think. I also think the whole concept of a completely free knowledge base where anyone can create articles of extremely varying quality that will be globally searchable is a horrible idea. That kind of system needs an editor to work. Example: if I search for system documentation for a specific system I get various employees' personal notes on how they wrote a oneliner in 2012 to do something specific in that system.

Seems like a search related problem.

Wasn't that your question?

One thing I learned when consulting across companies is that there are multiple versions of confluence. I’m not sure how many, nor what the distinguishing factor is in terms of search, but one has a search functionality which is hardly inspiring, but not notably terrible

Would any of the organizations you've used it in be willing to pay more if it worked better?

is this a trick question?

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