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David Plankton

I AM HIM.
Joined
Jul 31, 2005
Messages
6,077
Not a problem or technical issue -

It's still early days but I think the search function might actually work this time. Try it, you might like it.
 
Not a problem or technical issue -

It's still early days but I think the search function might actually work this time. Try it, you might like it.

Rev_dino managed to rebuild the database/index (or whatever you call it), before we were only searching part of the total because it got broken at the last 'upgrade'--or possibly the last two upgrades.
 
searching a selected forum doesnt seem to work, get board-level results (searching for anvil in fortean culture) ?
 
searching a selected forum doesnt seem to work, get board-level results (searching for anvil in fortean culture) ?

Where (in / on the forums) were you when you initiated the search, and did you select 'This Forum'?

I went to Fortean Culture and did some searching under the selection 'This Forum' (including searching on 'anvil'), and it worked as expected.
 
from whats new selected search icon / advanced / threads / entered keyword and highlighted sub-forum
 
I can't replicate the problem. When I follow the navigation path you specified and select 'Fortean Culture' as the target forum I get 6 hits on 'anvil' - all within Fortean Culture.

Do you still get results from across the entire forum when you repeat this action?
 
yep, 1, 2 and 4 are this thread, 3 is fortean films ...
 
Are you using the latest version of Flash Player? I wouldn't think the built-in Search would be relying on Flash for user interactions, but the problem has to be something in the set of software involved in your transactions rather than the Search itself.

Another long shot theoretical possibility is that the Search requires some sort of JavaScript transaction to specify the search parameters, and you've got JavaScript disabled. Still, I'm not understanding why JavaScript should or would be involved in setting up a database search.
 
... I tried searching for UFO by thread titles the other day and got nothing....
 
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... I tried searching for UFO by thread titles the other day and got nothing. ...

The search (-able) database does not (and never did ... ) index words as short as 3 letters. A search on "UFO" will return nothing. A search on "UFOs", however, will return hits.
 
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The search (-able) database does not (and never did ... ) index words as short as 3 letters. A search on "UFO" will return nothing. A search on "UFOs", however, will return hits.

Right, gotcha ... thanks EG.
 
The search (-able) database does not (and never did ... ) index words as short as 3 letters. A search on "UFO" will return nothing. A search on "UFOs", however, will return hits.
Is this a limitation? Forteans do love their acronyms - ABC, BVM, BEK etc
 
The following words were not included in your search because they are too short, too long, or too common: anyone, seen
ought anyone be omitted ?
 
ought anyone be omitted ?

The search database screened it out, probably because the number of hits exceeded the max limit for results. The limit is set at 1,000, and searching on "anyone" yielded over 9,000.

If you have no choice but to search on "anyone" alone, go to Google and do it after entering "forums.forteana.org" into the Site field.
 
i was searching for my prior post using anyone seen ghost (title only) cue hundreds results as only ghost was used ...
 
i was searching for my prior post using anyone seen ghost (title only) cue hundreds results as only ghost was used ...

The resident search engine can handle quoted strings. If you'd entered:

"Anyone seen a ghost" (any which way; it's not case sensitive)

... you'd have received less than a page of hits, including multiple ones leading to the thread.

If you want to get a direct hit on a specific post, you need to search on one or more specific words you know were within that post.
 
ah and inserting a word in quotes will bypass the omitted search term lookup ?
 
still not getting what i need ... i can see that i have posted on the anyone seen a ghost thread from the icon, how can i use the search function to locate my posts on that thread
 
got it ... search using this-thread from the drop-down within the thread itself
 
got it ... search using this-thread from the drop-down within the thread itself

Right ... Sorry I didn't respond sooner - I was working elsewhere within the forum.
 
I would suggest getting search to work properly would be a better use of time.

The resident search facility has been working quite well since last autumn's migration. The required rebuilding of the forum's underlying database resolved a number of gaps and glitches that had made the earlier forum's search capability a running joke.
 
I have to agree with Enola, the search has worked a hellava lot better than before, for me, anyway
 
I posted this today: https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/animal-escapes.13810/page-5#post-1935720
But the Thread: https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/animal-escapes.13810/ isn't showing under General Cryptology.
I can find the Thread if I search for Animal Escapes in the text but not if I only search for the title.

I can't replicate the issues you describe.

The "Animal Escapes" thread is listed as expected in Cryptozoology: General.
I can readily find it using the forum's Search facility, limited to titles only (with and without enclosing quotation marks).
The "Animal Escapes" thread is listed early in the search results when searching on these two words (as a quoted string or not).

However ...

Your latest post is not showing up in this last listing as a hit in a non-title search. That won't happen until the forum's search database goes through its next update cycle and your post is known to be affiliated with the thread.

The word "escapes" does not appear in your post. If you search using "escapes" there's no hit on your latest post. If you search using "escape", the latest post is included in the search results.

This different behavior occurs because the Search can identify "escape" as a subsidiary string within "escapes" (in the thread title) and thus generate a hit using "escape." The reverse is not true - the Search cannot (and should not) associate the longer text string "escapes" with a shorter text string.
 
I posted this today: https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/animal-escapes.13810/page-5#post-1935720

But the Thread: https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/animal-escapes.13810/ isn't showing under General Cryptology.

I can find the Thread if I search for Animal Escapes in the text but not if I only search for the title.
I tend to use the Rynner method: go to the Google search page (yes, I know he didn't use Google), type the title of the thread you're looking for adding forteana forum at the end, hit the search button and click on that link to take you directly to your desired thread .. it's a lot less 'fussy' than the search function here.

edit: having said that, I've just tried to re find this thread using that method and it didn't work.
 
I can't replicate the issues you describe.

The "Animal Escapes" thread is listed as expected in Cryptozoology: General.
I can readily find it using the forum's Search facility, limited to titles only (with and without enclosing quotation marks).
The "Animal Escapes" thread is listed early in the search results when searching on these two words (as a quoted string or not).

However ...

Your latest post is not showing up in this last listing as a hit in a non-title search. That won't happen until the forum's search database goes through its next update cycle and your post is known to be affiliated with the thread.

The word "escapes" does not appear in your post. If you search using "escapes" there's no hit on your latest post. If you search using "escape", the latest post is included in the search results.

This different behavior occurs because the Search can identify "escape" as a subsidiary string within "escapes" (in the thread title) and thus generate a hit using "escape." The reverse is not true - the Search cannot (and should not) associate the longer text string "escapes" with a shorter text string.

When I search the titles for Animal Escapes I get the odd result in Screenshot 2 below.

When I go to the General Cryptology Page my post shows on the right hand column as being latest post, Screenshot 3
Screenshot (3).png
Screenshot (3).png
. But when I then click on General Cryptology the Animal Ecsapes THread doesn't show. It may be a quirk with my pc/browser, I'm using Chrome.

Screenshot (2).png
 
When I search the titles for Animal Escapes I get the odd result in Screenshot 2 below.
When I go to the General Cryptology Page my post shows on the right hand column as being latest post, Screenshot 3. But when I then click on General Cryptology the Animal Ecsapes THread doesn't show. It may be a quirk with my pc/browser, I'm using Chrome.

I still can't reproduce the behavior you describe.

Double-check that you're using the latest version of Chrome and Flash Player. I don't know about the Chrome bit, but I have (completely different / unrelated) reasons to wonder if there's something amiss or in need of updating that involves Flash.

Edit to Add:

Did you click on the "Show ignored content" link to see what might happen?
 
I still can't reproduce the behavior you describe.

Double-check that you're using the latest version of Chrome and Flash Player. I don't know about the Chrome bit, but I have (completely different / unrelated) reasons to wonder if there's something amiss or in need of updating that involves Flash.

Edit to Add:

Did you click on the "Show ignored content" link to see what might happen?

When I clicked Show Ignored on the search, Animal Escapes showed up but it made no difference inside General Cryptology. I'll try a new Chrome later.
 
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