Search problems

[Revdyer]

Many, many, thanks, Xotli.

And remember, searchers, AND is your friend!

[truth]

Your our hero!

[Aldin]

Ave Xotli!

~Aldin, roamin'

[Cavalier]

Originally Posted by truth

Your our hero!

Amen!

[yagyuninja]

Woohoo, I love search! Thanks Xotli!

[Xotli]

Hey, thanks for all the props guys, especially from truth.

Originally Posted by GaryLASQ

guess now i'll have to put my money where my mouth is.

Heh. Actually, that's pretty cool ... since I'm a lameass and haven't gotten my money together to make a donation to the site, at least this way I can feel like I'm contributing, albeit indirectly. (The new kid threw all our budgets out the window and we're so lame we haven't recovered yet, even though it's been a year. But he's coming off formula now, so maybe that'll help a bit.)

Originally Posted by Revdyer

And remember, searchers, AND is your friend!

'Tis true, you can actually type "and". But I like the little radio button for a couple reasons:

1) Typing (e.g.) "heavy and gruts" when you want to look for "heavy gruts" just seems bizarre to me.
2) If you have a lot of words to look for, all the "and"s can get annoying. For instance, say I wanted to find all Aldin's welcome messages. I could type "a and laurel and and and a and hearty and handshake", but it would be simpler to just type "a laurel and a hearty handshake" and hit the radio button and be done with it.

(Note: since "a" and "and" are actually stopwords and you can't do phrase searching anyway, you could actually search for "laurel hearty handshake" and type even less.)

I've been doing so much searching (for testing purposes) that I've come up with a few tips, and a few complaints (please note: my complaints are just sort of pointing out the limitations of our search and are in no way demands that something be done about it):

Sometimes it can be helpful to tell it to show posts instead of topics. Nothing is more frustrating than to have search tell you that what you're looking for is somewhere in a 25-page thread.

What it should really have is a way to combine the two, so that it only shows each topic once, but then lists which individual posts within it have the search term. And maybe a threshhold so that if more than maybe 4 or 5 posts in a thread have it, it just gives a note saying "too many posts to list". Or maybe it only lists individual posts for threads over 1 page long. Or something.

And when you do search by post, I'd rather see a portion of the text that includes the search term rather than just the beginning of the post.

Encourage newbies to spell things right! It's all fine and well to say that we don't really care about spelling, and if you write "Nikita" agent we'll still know what you're talking about ... and we will indeed. But search will not. (Likewise, if someone is looking for "Nakita agents", you're unfortunately going to have to tell them to search for "nikita agents" as well.)

Let me get this straight: I can search the text and title together, or I can search the text only, but I can't search only the titles? What moron over at phpBB came up with that brilliant idea?

Anyhoo ... maybe I should write up a post explaining how search works and then someone could sticky it and you guys could refer to it during newbie training. Or something.

[truth]

Originally Posted by Xotli

Hey, thanks for all the props guys, especially from truth.

Heh. Actually, that's pretty cool ... since I'm a lameass and haven't gotten my money together to make a donation to the site, at least this way I can feel like I'm contributing, albeit indirectly.

Haven't donated anything? You of all people know how much it would have cost me to hire someone to fix the search tables. Thusly you have earned the site supporter tag. Your donation of skilled labor is very generous.

[Dennys]

I know this is heresy, but could #2 be fixed with server downtime? And congrats on your spectaular accomplishment.

I think the Gencon 2008 figure should be named Xotli.....

[Ketch]

Originally Posted by truth

Haven't donated anything? You of all people know how much it would have cost me to hire someone to fix the search tables. Thusly you have earned the site supporter tag. Your donation of skilled labor is very generous.

Indeed, thanks Xolti,
I have an idea for #2, but it doesn't seem very important.
We can talk about it later.

[Xotli]

Thanx again for all the kind words, guys. Sorry I had to disappear for a week again; trying to get work ready for me to be on vacation for a week (not this week, but next).

Originally Posted by truth

Haven't donated anything? You of all people know how much it would have cost me to hire someone to fix the search tables. Thusly you have earned the site supporter tag. Your donation of skilled labor is very generous.

Well, I do have an idea how much one of us thieving consultants would likely charge you for such a thing, but I also suspect that had I not been around, Ketch would have stepped up to fill the void, or we might have just learned to live with not being able to search. But nonetheless I really appreciate you looking at it this way, and I'm quite proud of my new badge there ... a title and a badge all with one thread! Man, I'm moving up in the world.

Originally Posted by Dennys

I know this is heresy, but could #2 be fixed with server downtime?

Well, yes and no. I mean, the ID's at this point are already overlapping, and taking the server down wouldn't fix that. But I suppose downtime might enable us to find the max word_id, adjust all new word_id's from #2 above that, insert them into the tables, then make sure MySQL starts with the new max word_id. (Although I have to admit I'm not entirely sure how to do that last bit there.) But honestly I'm not sure it's worth it. Sometimes a "word" is just a collection of letters that someone has typed ... I can tell you for sure that I've looked at some of them and to call them words would be damned generous. I doubt anyone would be searching for them any time soon. And some are foreign words, which admittedly could make things inconvenient for our Spanish, French, and German speakers around here (and I know there are a few here and there), but the majority of us won't be searching for those types of things. What I really need to do is review the word list and see how much in there is truly worth saving.

Another plan that I've thought of is just to wait a few months and then see if any of those words get added to the site naturally. If they do, I can adjust the word_id's and add the post index info back in. If they don't ... well maybe if those words are never being typed again, they weren't that important in the first place.

Originally Posted by Ketch

I have an idea for #2, but it doesn't seem very important.
We can talk about it later.

Sure, just drop me a PM.

Originally Posted by Xotli

maybe I should write up a post explaining how search works and then someone could sticky it and you guys could refer to it during newbie training. Or something.

Actually I see that Nether already did that. Although I think he's wrong in at least one place ... the site doesn't actually do phrase searching, as I mentioned above.

Originally Posted by Dennys

I think the Gencon 2008 figure should be named Xotli.....

Heh. Yes, and he should be a lich or something. Undead skeletal wizard. Also there should be a squad of skeleton warriors for him to bond with. And ... and ...

Actually, the name "Xotli" comes from the Conan mythos.

Originally Posted by One of the first links that came up in Google

Xotli, Lord of Terror is a great demon from the Elder Night worshipped by the Antillians. Xotli hovers, like a great black cloud with a single eye, above the Great Pyramid in Ptahuacan as hundreds of people are sacrificed each month. Their hearts are cut out, their body goes to feed the dragons inside the pyramid, and their soul goes to feed Xotli.

[HyperactiveSloth]

I'm curious. What would happen if you just made a post somewhere containing all the missing words, let the index absorb them naturally, then do your idea of adjusting their IDs to back index them?

Just curious.

[netherspirit]

Originally Posted by Xotli

Actually I see that Nether already did that. Although I think he's wrong in at least one place ... the site doesn't actually do phrase searching, as I mentioned above.

I'm open to any suggestions of changing, adding or deleting things in that thread. Just let me know, what you think needs to be changed.