Search feature unusable

washable_orbit

washable_orbit

Padawan Learner
I’m sorry but can I just say how absolutely terrible the search engine on this website is? Is this on purpose and I’m just missing the point? Does the search engine on here just work differently? I don’t get it.

In the 13+ years that I’ve been using this site, I have never been able to properly search up anything using the built in feature — always having to resort to third party search engines.

As someone who practically grew up on the internet, this is the bare minimum on any site.

I’m sorry for whoever is in charge of this, it is not my intention to offend. But why is it that searching anything up delivers the most lackluster results?

The following words were not included in your search because they are too short, too long, or too common: in
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Except, such words are always the highest priority for some reason. Scrolling doesn’t help. How is this useful? Everyone’s always like “search up before asking”. How?

Ok, rant over.
 

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Also, I understand the example provided was not the best as apparently the articles surrounding this are less than a week old.

This was just the drop that overfilled my cup, or whatever idiom best suits your language and culture lol. The point is that it doesn’t matter what the search is.
 
washable_orbit said:
I’m sorry but can I just say how absolutely terrible the search engine on this website is? Is this on purpose and I’m just missing the point? Does the search engine on here just work differently? I don’t get it.

In the 13+ years that I’ve been using this site, I have never been able to properly search up anything using the built in feature — always having to resort to third party search engines.

As someone who practically grew up on the internet, this is the bare minimum on any site.

I’m sorry for whoever is in charge of this, it is not my intention to offend. But why is it that searching anything up delivers the most lackluster results?



Except, such words are always the highest priority for some reason. Scrolling doesn’t help. How is this useful? Everyone’s always like “search up before asking”. How?

Ok, rant over.
Click to expand...
Try this:
Post in thread 'How to use Search?'
XF 2.1 - How to use Search?
 
washable_orbit said:
Great way to dismiss the issue. But if the admins are ok with having a faulty search engine, then why do I care.

It’s settled then. Thanks for the reply.
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"Search" on any software wont be perfect depending on the expectations. I haven't seen one solution that works perfectly like in regex or sql queries etc. with easy to understand. so having extreme opinions is not warranted. Can you be specific of what are you searching that broke your patience. I always found ways to get what I want.
 
I don’t see it as terrible as you are pointing it out. You just have to be careful what exactly are you looking for by using the filters, for example there are filters that you can select such as; are you looking specifics words on threads tittles or anywhere in the forum? Or words from post written by a member in specific? If you only use the search bar without any filter then it will show you anything with that word(s) in the forum.
I do agree however that there isn’t like any specific order of importance on the results or a type of indexation that organizes the results, that could improve, but it’s also something common on forums type of sites.

Ps: if you are only looking for words or subjects in the sessions, I would recommend you just to use the session transcript page, and not the forum for more effectiveness: Cassiopaean Session Transcripts Search
 
Evan said:
Seems to me that folks like Thorbiorn and MJF have no problem finding anything (and everything) they set out to. Mind you, I don’t possess the skills, but I’ve seen the results of comprehensive searches in their posts many times. Perhaps one of the masters could give a primer.😄
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If you allow me, I think the formula is to have time and patience.

Furthermore, the creativity of the universe makes you search and search and not find. Then you stop searching and you don't find what you are looking for, but you find something that is better.

And only the one who does it and it happens to him will understand the latter.

It's a terrible search engine but there is so much out there that you always learn something by using it.
 
Hello,

you mentioned that you can use external search engines, is this not sufficient?

Then, i cant find any meaningfull results to your search using google site search:

Code: 
"diabetes" "cure" "china" site:cassiopaea.org/forum

Maybe the information is not contained in the cass forum?
 
Most of the easy-to-use search functionalities on other websites are outsourced to third party services. Those third party services:
  • Have a ton of developer and computational resource to make the search effective and easy to use.
  • Mine the data submitted to them for God-know-what purposes.
The built-in search on this forum is maintained by one individual (or a small number of volunteer individuals). It also doesn't send data to any third party service. When you are on the forum for long enough, you will appreciate this second point and will be willing to trade any ease of use of the search functionality for the privacy of what you post on the forum.
 
What Bobo08 said, plus: Our forum has 1.1M posts. That’s a lot. So, if you search for a particular word/phrase, there is a very large chance that it will be present in much more than 1 post. We try to merge similar threads, but sometimes we don’t because you can discuss the same topic with the same words from a different angle. So, without tons of computing power, there is no way for one server to understand context and things like that which would make the search far more effective.

The 1 solution available from XenForo is to pay for a 2nd server, install Elastic Search, and that 2nd server becomes our “private Google” for the forum. Obviously, that’s a large cost for something that is still nowhere near a big search engine.

Given all of that, you have two options:

  • Do a search engine search like: UFOs site:cassiopaea.org
  • Just post and say you can’t find “X”

Problem solved!
 
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