Shawn, I'm not sure exactly what you mean with the thread title Comparison of "Most Popular" Iris to "Most Relevant", but I found this bit of info about how a simple database search works. Hopefully this clarifies things a bit:

AndreA33 said:Thank you Dave for sending me this information.

"For dynamic access, simply searching for "Iris" will return the results in the order of how many users have the plant."

https://garden.org/thread/view...

So with the database it is all about how many owns a plant, nothing else and I looked at the results to confirm this. Naturally the number of owners will change over time and a few other plants with "iris" as a part of their name may show up in a general search as well.

Thank you for that, William, except, I didn't use the search of simply the term "Iris", by its self. Which probably accounts for the different results obtained, for the various search terms entered, perhaps? Otherwise, how does one "account" for the different types of searches, using, by "Relevance", or "Popularity" ?
I can understand, that it would actually reflect the numbers of plants owned by members, for "Tall Bearded", or using the 'Default", method, though.

Yes, that's also partly, exactly what I was trying to do. Is compare, what was owned in 2015, when it was originally done, to what is owned, now, "four years later" ! Exactly, to see, what has changed from then, until currently.
Because, you may also go back & look at the "original results" obtained, in that Post, by Dave, in that particular Thread, when the "micro- badges" were offered, in that search result, in 2015 .

Shawn, could you please post links to your searches, "popularity" and "relevance", so we all can see what you are seeing?

I assume this is the post by Dave that you are referring to?
https://garden.org/ideas/view/...

Simply browsing the Iris genus by popularity seems to be the easiest way to obtain results as per Dave's post:
https://garden.org/plants/brow...

William, I've just come inside, from being outdoors from watering & it is like a "heatwave" !
I'm, feeling as if I'm about to "pass out", it is so terribly hot & humid out there !
At the top of the page, on the Menu, I selected Plant Database & you may do a "search by Genus" & I think I clicked on that , & then, once you are on that page, you look over to your right , you may click on "Irises".

Then, there is an extensive menu to start with, about how you may do specific searches, including Iris, by "hybridizer," for instance. Or for a particular year, if something won "Honorable Mention", by year... But I'm so over heated, at the moment, I can barely think as even the "cold' water comes out of the tap possibly above body temperature, so even a "cold shower" isn't ! Sorry I'm not much more help than that, at the moment ....I'm almost overwhelmed, from getting over heated, like a sauna.. Even my thermometer quit functioning !

Shawn, I'm sorry about your heatwave.

I assume you are talking about this page, which is one that I use often:
https://garden.org/plants/grou...

However, I don't see any options to sort the results by relevance or popularity on that page. It will simply return an alphabetical list based on the characteristics you search for.

William, that is one way of "searching", but to answer your question, no it isn't the page, which had "Relevance,' or "Popularity" as part of the "search' criteria. I think people are more interested in seeing photos , of Iris in bloom, (either in, or "out of season" ) than using the Database, much, at all. Other than to readily use it, as a source for providing photos, mainly...or to look up a certain Iris, they may be specifically interested in.

Shawn/Steve, you could not be more wrong on that last remark. Why do you think we all monitor the DB? Photos are an important part of identifying an iris but our DB provides us with so much more relevant information. I think the reason you have not had as much response on this thread as you wanted is because most people are not pursuing irises based on popularity.

A photo of a large clump of irises in a fellow growers garden demonstrates the hardiness of a cultivar. When they comment that they divided only several years ago it tells me that the iris in their garden is thriving. This is important information to me. When I look up an iris in the DB and see that 40+ different growers from all over the world have posted healthy pictures of it then it tells me this iris is probably going to do well for me.

Now that you have 'cooled off' perhaps you can answer Williams' question and tell us how to get to the page that has " "Relevance,' or "Popularity" as part of the "search' criteria.". Thank you.

I'm sorry about that Bonnie. But I've got some other more very "serious" problems & ,'issues' going on, that I need to tend to, & think about & discuss, in my life, currently. I don't really care about 'Popularity' that much, either. I've already tree mailed William. I just haven't much time, to dedicate it to "posting 'links'..Sorry about that.
Please , excuse me, for my 'life', for ever having any personal interruptions, interfering with this thread.

No worries Shawn/Steve. Everyone's opinion on this forum has the same value. Good luck dealing with your personal issues/problems. Off to do my daily chores.....

Yes indeed, no worries at all Shawn.
Best of luck to you.

I would just like to point out that just because a particular iris is in widest distribution, doesn't mean that it's most popular, most liked, or even "most relevant." I know we have all had the experience in buying a highly hyped iris, only to find it disappointing in one way or another. I see gardens in my area filled with the most boring of irises. Stuff in widespread distribution that I would never vote for in a popularity poll.

So if you really want to see what most people like, don't go by what most people HAVE. Go instead by the official Tall Bearded Symposm popularity poll, which is posted at https://www.irises.org/About_I... , and click on "resuts of the 2018 voting" near the top of that page.

Since ShawnSteve isn't willing to explain what he's been doing, I'll try. Rather than using this search engine The Irises Database , which was specifically designed to facilitate searching for irises, he's been using the general search engine on this page: https://garden.org/plants/ .

If you type "Iris", "Tall Bearded Iris", "Standard Dwarf Bearded Iris", etc. into the box on that page, the search engine is faced with the fact that there are potentially tens of thousands of matches. Those kinds of searches are resource intensive, so they are limited to showing 1,500 results. If the search engine just picked 1,500 results at random, a big chunk would be of older irises that don't have pictures and no is even growing anymore, simply because there are a lot of irises in the database that don't have pictures and are no longer being grown. That sort of result obviously wouldn't be particularly useful to someone searching the database. Consequently, results are sorted by "Popularity". Popularity, in this context, is determined by counting the number of different members who have uploaded a picture of the plant to the database. That's it, that's all it means. There's no reason to try to read more into than that.

Since it's been mentioned, there are a number of actual attempts at determining popularity of various irises. The Tall Bearded Iris Symposium, Median Iris Symposium, Franklin Cook Cup, Presidents Cup, and Ben Hager Cup all measure popularity in one form or another. It's important to keep in mind, though, those things are determined by the votes of a few hundred people at most. I'd be careful reading very much into them either.

Kent, thank you so much for clarifying how the search engine works.
So nothing to do with the number of owners like I thought, but all about the number of different photographers. Works for me!

A housemate got fined for $250 for littering at 7 11, in front of a policeman, the other day & now can't afford rent & has to move out & as a "result", may need a new housemate, within ten days time. Meanwhile, as I'd just started to rest & drift off asleep but noticed it started getting even warmer..., realized the dryer was running & I got up & asked 'Who's drying clothes, in the middle of a heatwave ?" Well it was Mr. Litterbug, himself, drying clothes, wet from perspiration, from being out, in a "heat index "of 110 to 115 F (With a Dangerous Heat Advisory in Effect!) Welcome, to my "world', of almost incessant , nonsense ...

Now back to the search results.., I can't even recall how my search of Iris including, the factor, by "Relevance", ever came up, but it didn't seem to be some sort of "error," as I even put it in the 'header' of the Thread Title . & I most distinctly certainly recall that I did get a result in the Database somehow, or other & I wrote down the results & listed them, & so then compared that, to 'Popularity" , which I'd noticed could also be "searched' at that time... If it is simply by numbers, then that's fine with me . Yet, it also depends, on exactly which search box, you use, too, as to if you get a "list" with only just the cultivar names , directly beneath the search box & the other search box, which provided photos, too, along with listed cultivar names, (I simply numbered them as a matter of convenience, to do a list, for "ease", while typing.) Compiled one, used to compare , with similar one, to Dave's, with microbages, in 2105
...
(BTW I do want to mention, believe it or not, it is just as dark as coal, where I type, all my posts, in the "Your message,;" area.) I do wish to thank those that were helpful, but I'm still very tired as I never got to sleep, with a hot dryer running, near my bedroom..
I'm so exhausted , I think I ought not water my Mid America Iris during this 'heat wave" as it been just a couple of years since I've bought rhizomes & never did, during summer-ever before !

I'd also like to mention, I simply hoped for a little "discussion" of interpretation about the results & really had not too much expectations, at all in way of responses, & most certainly wasn't prepared for answering question, that I assumed other longer time members may already know the answers to, themselves, as I only joined up this past December. If I had know, about this difficult to locate, sorted by 'Relevance' list I may have paid more attention, to how it ever came about, in the searches I'd performed. As I only joined up this past December.

I mentioned to Shawn in a tree mail that as a hybridizer of SDBs to me the most relavent SDB is Chubby Cheeks, since it is in the background of more SDBs than any other SDB.