"GIN and GiST Index Types" page is about usage in full text search, but looks general purpose

From: PG Doc comments form <noreply(at)postgresql(dot)org>
To: pgsql-docs(at)lists(dot)postgresql(dot)org
Cc: piotrowski(at)prisma(dot)io
Subject: "GIN and GiST Index Types" page is about usage in full text search, but looks general purpose
Date: 2022-04-12 18:43:42
Message-ID: 164978902252.1276550.9330175733459697101@wrigleys.postgresql.org
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The following documentation comment has been logged on the website:

Page: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/textsearch-indexes.html
Description:

Hey,

when you google for "postgresql gist gin index" you will most probably see
this page (or an older version of it) as #1 and the only result from
postgresql.org:
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/textsearch-indexes.html This led me
an others in our team to initially misunderstand that GiST and GIN indexes
are purely a full text search thing in PostgreSQL. But they are of course so
much more, but from this page you would not be able to discover that. (It is
interesting that even searching for `GiST` on postgresql.org lists that page
first, and that for example https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/sql.html only
lists that page if you Ctrl+F for `gin` or `gist`).

It would probably be a good idea to link to
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/gin.html and
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/gist.html (or whatever are the best pages
to explain GIN and GiST indexes) in the introduction of this article to lead
people in the right direction. (Bonus points if this can be added to older
versions of the docs as well, as those are ranking on Google and not
everyone clicks through to `current` I guess - including me sometimes.)

Even more effective would be to update the page title and/or headline to
make clear that it is about using GIN and GiST indexes in context of full
text search only.

For the page content itself, it might be beneficial to highlight that the
code example itself is a shorthand that skips the (implied via the type)
definition of an operator class (although it might be possible I do not
understand the full picture here right now - docs are pretty scarce or hard
to find after all).

Let me know if there is a public GH repo where I could send PRs to suggest
these changes of course.

Best
Jan Piotrowski

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