[LUCENE-7996] Should we require positive scores?

• Type: Wish
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Minor
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 8.0
• Lucene Fields: New
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Adrien Grand
• Created: 17/Oct/17 22:14
• Updated: 28/Aug/22 15:20
• Resolved: 06/Dec/17 13:07

Description

Having worked on MAXSCORE recently, things would be simpler if we required that scores are positive. Practically, this would mean

• forbidding/fixing similarities that may produce negative scores (we have some of them)
• forbidding things like negative boosts

So I'd be curious to have opinions whether this would be a sane requirement or whether we need to be able to cope with negative scores eg. because some similarities that we want to support produce negative scores by design.

Issue Links

• is duplicated by: LUCENE-8006 Enforce positive scores
• relates to: LUCENE-4100 Maxscore - Efficient Scoring