How are "Related Topics" chosen ?

[Andrew Neil]

This list, which appears in the right-hand sidebar of every thread:

 

This is that highlighted one:

It is 7 years old, has no replies, and is locked.

It doesn’t seem at all useful/valuable to link to that post ?

[Lina_DABASINSKAITE]

Hi ​@Andrew Neil , 

Can you share what topic you were one when seeing those results?

The information about this component states that: 

The related topics widget performs an automatic search on content on community.

• It takes the title of the topic, and compares it (by query similarity and matching words) to the title and the first post of all existing topics.
• The best matches are the topics which have the most words in common.
• The higher the order is of a certain related topic the more relevant it is to the Topic (order of relevance is from top to bottom).

Feel free to share any examples where you feel it does not match these criteria.

Thanks,
Lina 

[Andrew Neil]

Sorry, I can’t remember which topic it it was.

 

It definitely needs some more criteria for its “best match”

• Not topics with no replies (with the possible exception of very recent ones)
• Favour topics with an accepted solution
• For topics without solution, favour more recent ones

[Andrew Neil]

I can’t remember which topic it it was.

Looks like it might have been this:

 

But the ‘Related Topics’ list is now different:

 

[Andrew Neil]

Feel free to share any examples where you feel it does not match these criteria

 

Here’s an example where those criteria fall down:

So it’s matched the phrase “Has anyone successfully used the” - but the actual subject of the questions is completely unrelated. Looks like this is also how it thinks the NetX Duo one is “related”.

It seems to also be matching anything with “tool” - even though the tools are completely different.

 

[Lina_DABASINSKAITE]

Thanks for sharing ​@Andrew Neil. I will check if this is expected or an error.  

[Andrew Neil]

Related:

 

I think such threads should be excluded as potential ‘Related topics’

[Andrew Neil]

More examples of not related topics:

 

The question is about an MCU, but those suggested topics are about MPUs