how does work the "search" option in this new forum ?

ecz

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I made a few checks.
I tried to find a post in the AAR forum where the word "cradle" exists in the title of the thread; well, I got
no response "no result found"
Of course at least one post exists (it is in the first page) and has the world "cradle" in its title.
I used the search option "this forum only" (which I guess is the AAR forum) and also "search titles only" (which I guess are the titles of the threads) but with no luck.
It seems the search option has some problem OR I'm missing something obvious.
 

Dr Zaius

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I think this is a known issue which is a result of the old posts being moved into the new system. The new search function is powerful, but I don't think it's as good a finding content which was originally cataloged as part of the original forum.

Posts which have been created after the forum transition should show up better.
 

Paul M. Weir

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Depending upon the package, there might be the ability to regenerate the search database. Reorganising the underlying databases and their tables occasionally is usually a good idea anyway as large number of inserts and deletions (deletions not much of a problem with GS type of applications) tend to 'tangle' the indexes. The database indexing will still work but usually slows down due to split index pages and forward referencing.

To give one an idea what I am talking about, say you initially load up old data from a previous application (as has been done with GS's port). Taking a simplified index with values going up in 10s, so the first index page has 10, 20, 30, ... 200 and is full. You now insert a post that has an index value of, say, 144. The existing index page has to be split with 10, 20, 30, ... 140, 144 and a pointer to a continuation page that is added with 150, 160, 170, 180, 190 and 200. OK that's a gross simplification but as time goes on you get more and more 'split' pages, that have to be followed in the index and things slow down.
 

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I think this is a known issue which is a result of the old posts being moved into the new system. The new search function is powerful, but I don't think it's as good a finding content which was originally cataloged as part of the original forum.

Posts which have been created after the forum transition should show up better.
So, in two or three years it might serve a function. In the meantime, it's even more useless than the search function on the old site. Win!!
 

ecz

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it seems that the search function works in the Rules & Errata forum
 

jrv

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it seems that the search function works in the Rules & Errata forum
Search "works" in the sense that it does something, but it is not returning all results that it should find. Search for "Firelane bypass" in rules & errata. I get nothing; you probably do too. This thread (http://www.gamesquad.com/xenforo/index.php?threads/firelane-bypass.124850/) is titled "Firelane bypass" and is from 2015. It is not found (I found it using google and translated the URL from old-style to new-style). That does not meet my expectations of how search should work.

JR
 

ecz

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I could be wrong but if memory serves the same thing happened a few years ago when the site go through a similar transition.
It looked all lost, but at some time things improved and the search function revived properly.

I'm not a PC/informatic guy but I suspect that someone of the forumites could fix the bad thing in five minutes if allowed to operate.
 

bprobst

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I think your memory is playing tricks on you. The internal site search engine was always appallingly bad on the old site. The available evidence suggests that the new search engine is worse (well ... perhaps the engine is fine, but since it won't use the data we want it to use, it's worse than useless). It would be more productive to remove the search function altogether, because leaving it there sets the trap of people innocently thinking that it has some purpose.
 

jrv

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google continues to serve up old pages for search results. If you use my bookmarklet you can translate those old URLs into new URLs. I don't know if google will drop the old searches, but I suspect they will once they realize the URLs are dead. I don't know if google will scan the new URLs comprehensively, or it will only scan recent pages. My first impression is that google is only scanning the thread titles and is not scanning the thread contents on the new site. The gamesquad search does seem to scan the contents for recent posts.

JR
 

Dr Zaius

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I put in a support ticket with the Xenforo techs who actually did the software migration to see if there's anything that can be done to improve search function efficiency with threads that were created on the old system.

It seems to work very well with new content.
 

jrv

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I put in a support ticket with the Xenforo techs who actually did the software migration to see if there's anything that can be done to improve search function efficiency with threads that were created on the old system.
Thanks.

It seems to work very well with new content.
The search still has the weakness that you can't search for words that are "too short". ASL has a lot of technical terms that are two characters (PF, TH, MG, CH, etc). Google search would gladly search these terms, which made it absolutely necessary in many cases.

JR
 

Dr Zaius

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Thanks.



The search still has the weakness that you can't search for words that are "too short". ASL has a lot of technical terms that are two characters (PF, TH, MG, CH, etc). Google search would gladly search these terms, which made it absolutely necessary in many cases.

JR
It isn't that it can't do it, it's the fact that two letter searches will absolutely hammer even a fairly robust server. If lots of people start running those type of queries, it will slow the site to a crawl.
 

jrv

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It isn't that it can't do it, it's the fact that two letter searches will absolutely hammer even a fairly robust server. If lots of people start running those type of queries, it will slow the site to a crawl.
For whatever reason that two character searches are disallowed on gamesquad, google search was often the only way to get what I needed. I don't know for sure, but right now to me it looks like google search is only finding the thread titles in the new site, not the contents of the posts. If so, that's an unfortunate loss of a very valuable work-around.

JR
 

Dr Zaius

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For whatever reason that two character searches are disallowed on gamesquad, google search was often the only way to get what I needed. I don't know for sure, but right now to me it looks like google search is only finding the thread titles in the new site, not the contents of the posts. If so, that's an unfortunate loss of a very valuable work-around.

JR
Holy cow, give it it chance. Even after a webmaster sends in a request, it often takes the big search engines a month or so to get around to indexing all the content on a site. And a big forum like GS, one with 1.5 million posts, will probably take even longer.

If I had to guess, it will probably be 3-6 months before all the search engines are finished updating.
 

jrv

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Holy cow, give it it chance. Even after a webmaster sends in a request, it often takes the big search engines a month or so to get around to indexing all the content on a site. And a big forum like GS, one with 1.5 million posts, will probably take even longer.

If I had to guess, it will probably be 3-6 months before all the search engines are finished updating.
Not trying to be harsh. I am only reporting the evidence I have see so far. I tested with a post from the last few days, right after the upgrade so google would have a chance to index it. Google indexed the title as shown on the forum page but not the contents of the thread as best I can tell. Perhaps we do have to wait longer; I have no idea. I know that google does not exhaustively index sites but I don't know exactly what they leave out. And being able to search for old threads is not what most people come here for.

JR
 

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I am pleased to discover the "ignore" functionality still works, and my ignore list is intact ;-)

JR
 

Paul M. Weir

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For all we know GS's internal search engine could be trawling through the initial loading to gather keys as well as indexing the new stuff. Thanks for putting in the support query.
 
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