The name of the campground is important because the algorithm used for searching is not very forgiving. If a admin changed the name of the park in Cardwell, MT, "Lewis & Clark Caverns State Park" to the official name of "Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park" it would be helpful in searching. Jim
The attached screen shot from a Montana State website clearly shows the park as "Lewis & Clark Caverns State Park". I find no references to the park with the word "AND" spelled out as you prefer.
Check out http://montanastateparks.reserveamerica.com/homeLeft.do?mode=submit But you be the boss, so no more input from me!
With all due respect, the website from which I excerpted the screenshot was a Montana State Parks site, ReserveAmerica is a commercial service run by a contractor and is not under the direct control of the state whose parks are listed on its pages. You made a specific observation about a particular park and requested that its name be changed in the RVPR database to conform to the What I did was attempt to verify your assertion that this was the official name of the park which it does not appear to be.
Most people use "and" and "&" interchangeably without thinking about it. We have lots of listings under both "Lewis and Clark" and "Lewis & Clark." We even have a "Lewis-Clark Resort." The problem is that the system won't find the listing if the word used in the search is not the same word used in the listing. This is something that I think the system should be able correct by possibly ignoring these words so that the search results would display all Lewis Clark listings regardless of the word used in between. However, I am not a programmer, and this may not be something that can be done, but if it can, it should be.
Not quite true. If you search for just Lewis Clark you will find all the Lewis & Clark listings plus the one that is "Lewis-Clark". If you search for "Lewis and Clark" you don't get any of the "&" listings.
If the programming and programmers can work with it, "approximate string matching" used with the search function could be helpful. Also known as "fuzzy string searching", it allows for variables like the "&/and" substitution, as well as correcting spelling errors. Google's search engine is an excellent example of that. Wikipedia has a pretty good description of the process, albeit a somewhat technical one: "Approximate string matching"
I said, "the system won't find the listing if the word used in the search is not the same word used in the listing." And this is correct. If you search for "Lewis and Clark" it does not find "Lewis & Clark" and vice versa. I didn't say anything about what it would do if you completely leave out and/&, but it is interesting that when you do this, the search displays the "&"s but not the "and"s. And thanks, NYDutch, for your input. The whole thing is "fuzzy" to me, but I'm sure a programmer would know exactly what you are talking about.
