The Search Function (Or, "Is it just MY computer...??")
 

The Search Function has always been a bit slow and cantankerous for me, 9 times out of 10 I get the "web page not responding" message and if it finally does go through 9.5 times it tells me there's no topic to match. But, the "no response" message, that's what drives me nutty. The whole rest of the site works just fine, I can't understand why the search alone won't respond no matter how many times I try. Is this normal or has no else gotten this on a regular basis? I'm beginning to strongly suspect that my computer is trying to thwart me in yet another inexplicable way.... (The signs are mounting, in much the same way they mount when you're walking home in the dark and your hear footsteps which stop whenever you look over your shoulder. Only in my case, computer glitches haunt my clicks.)

I have experienced no problems so far, neither in a few tests just now, nor before that.
Note that searching in Subject Only can greatly increase speed and efficiency, as can searching by member number, if you know it.

Maybe you can do a few test searches, and report search parameters and results here.

[ November 15, 2003: Message edited by: Sharkû ]

Diamond,

You're not the only one.

AOL is my ISP and, because of that, I find myself virtually unable to use the search function, except for something straightforward like member number. I find that AOL invariably times out before my search pulls up. The problem is especially bad in Books; in the smaller forums, I sometimes have luck. I have spoken with one or two other Downers on AOL and they report similar problems.

Fortunately, I also have access to internet explorer which is slower but does allow me to do searches.

Child

[ November 15, 2003: Message edited by: Child of the 7th Age ]

Before, the searches took forever, like ten minutes, but then I switched to DSL, which takes about three minutes now. So for DSL that's pretty slow.

Okay, here we are: in this particular instance the topic I was searching for was an article about David Salo I had posted way back in January. Since it was so long ago I basically just remembered that it had to do with David Salo but did not use that name in the title itself. So I was searching entire messages for the name David Salo. I finally did remember that the title was "The Man Behind the Translations" so I used that just now under heading only and entered my member number, and voíla, it went through. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

But I am an AOL user so to experiment I switched over to Internet Explorer and used the vaguer method I was trying before, and it went through that way, too. Unforunately, it brought up "TTT - Faramir (David Wenham)".

So, I guess I have to know some very specific things to make it work, but thanks Sharon, you're right, it was AOL causing the "web page not found" problems. So I'll lower the sledgehammer I was waving at the computer. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] (Using AOL is not my idea, by the way).

The reason why searching for "david salo" didn't yield the right thread is that in it, "david salo" only appears in a quote. "salo" spits out 53 threads, the right one among those.
So, unfortunately, the search function does not search within quotes.

As for the other problems, I think that if you rule out the possibility that you used the wrong parameters, the culprit might indeed be your browser and/or connection setup. In the latter case, I suggest a speed and especially tweak test at www.dslreports.com , but only change that stuff if you know what you are doing [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]
Searching on DSL shouldn't take three minutes unless perhaps you are saturating your upload stream 100%.

I am an AOL user, and I have the same problems with searching. It used to work with searches in the topic title, but even that now seems beyond it. I can search using Internet Explorer on the computer at work, although it still takes an inordinate amount of time.

Is there anything that us AOL users that don't know what we are doing can do? [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

Saucepan Man,

Yes, I would appreciate advice as well. I have broadband and had someone verify my speed who knew what he was doing. He basically said I was in the low end of the normal range and nothing could really be done.

My searches in the smaller forums are fine. It is only in books where there are so many pages...

We already have a feature where you can search by the last 5 days, 30 days, etc. Is it possible to enlarge that feature so that you could search by a single year? 2000, 2001 etc.?

Just a wild idea that may take too much time to implement for the sake of a handful of us.

Child

I have the exact same problem Diamond. The search takes so long that my computer just gives up after 5 minutes. It's kind of annoying because if I want to start a new topic, I usually use the search first, but lately I've just not posted new topics that have any chance of being a duplicate.

Your connection speed does not affect the speed of the search. All that’s going across the connection is the parameters of the search from your end to our server and then a return list of topics from the server back to you. The biggest single factor in the length of a search will be the parameters that you use, because they will determine how hard the server has to work to conduct the search.

All things being equal, Books searches will usually take the longest because it’s the biggest forum.

Entire Message searches will take much longer than Subject Only searches.

My experience has been that searching using Match any (as opposed to Match all) of the search terms produces faster results. Of course there are circumstances where you need to Match all to get the result you’re looking for, but it can’t hurt to try Match any first.

My experience has also been that the fewer search terms you use, the faster things run (e.g., searching on only one word will be fastest).

If you’re searching for a specific thread but can't remember its title, a good strategy to use is to try to recall a fairly unique word that appeared in one of the posts and search on that. For instance, if you remember that Sharkû used the word “argumentation” on the thread, Search “argumentation”, “Match any of the search terms”, “Entire Message”, Member Number “3”.

As Sharkey mentioned, the Search function unfortunately does not distinguish punctuation marks. So Valar and Valar. will yield different results. On the upside, you can sometimes use this to your advantage. If you remember that you wrote a sentence that contained haggard followed by a semicolon, searching on haggard; will probably nail the topic you’re looking for.

It would be nice if the “By Date” parameters were a little more useful for our purposes: Since 6 months ago, Since 1 year ago, Since 2 years ago, or something to that effect. This would require sifting through the UBB code and trying to hack it. I’ll add it to my list of “would be neat to have” features that I may someday have the free time to get to.

Hope these tips help a bit.

[ November 19, 2003: Message edited by: Mister Underhill ]

Thanks Mr. Underhill, I tried a couple of your tips and it [trumpet fanfare] worked for the first time in months.

Admirable advice, Mister Underhill. My Search function is now working. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

By some crazy coincidence, Underhill and me seem to have been working on exactly the same thing last night/afternoon, except he posted his right away, while I was working on a longer tutorial. Therefore, I gladly incorporated his post into what I already had and put up the 'SF tutorial' today at http://forum.barrowdowns.com/cgi-bin...&f=14&t=001156.

**EDIT to fix the link.

[ November 19, 2003: Message edited by: Mister Underhill ]

Mr Underhill and Sharku,

Great minds think alike! Thank you for these suggestions on this thread and the new one.

It especially seems to make a difference when I use the "match any" rather than the "match all" option. I am timing out less frequently and getting more results.

So, thanks again.

Child

Sharkey and Underhill, together again!

The link to your most excellent tutorial was slightly mistyped (a period snuck in there at the end), so I fixed it.

Great work!

UPDATE -- turns out that altering the "Search By Date" parameters was easier than I thought. The options now are:

Any Date
Since 30 Days Ago
Since 6 Months Ago
Since 1 Year Ago
Since 2 Years Ago

It's still best to use "Any Date" if you're trying to ensure that you're not creating a duplicate topic, but the other options ought to help narrow searches if you're looking for a specific thread and have some idea of when it was last active.

You can also help us test out the modifications by reporting any strange results that occur from using date limitations in your searches.

Mr. Underhill,

Thank you, thank you. I didn't expect such quick results!

That could be very useful sometimes.

Child

Indeed. I got accused of hacking when I clicked on the link. [img]smilies/eek.gif[/img] [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]

This works for me too, so it seems to offer a good solution for the "timing out" problem on AOL (since both Child and I are AOL users). Although I am at a loss to understand why "match any" should work better than "match all" when using only one search term. [img]smilies/rolleyes.gif[/img]

Edit: Just a thought. It might be worth adding Sharkû's search tutorial to the forum FAQs.

[ November 19, 2003: Message edited by: The Saucepan Man ]