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Why Is The Search Feature LESS Then Useless?


litespeed

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Moderation Note: This thread has been moved from Questions and Answers to the User Feedback forum.

 

My email reported a response to my post regarding [Origin of the Universe,,,,Bang or no Bang - in the Astronomy and Cosmology forum of Science Forum].

 

The link provided did not render either the question nor my response. Indeed, the search function for the actual forum did not find my own user name. Talk about titts on a boar hog.

 

What the hell good is a scientific site that can not even search on my own user name, let alone reliable register discussions on whether or not black holes are hollow.?

 

I suspect the "Madonna" fan site does a better job. Jesus Christ. OOPPS. Any number of Evangelical sites would show this place up as, well, some sort of Purgatory.....

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ADDENDUM

 

I have more then a decade of Forums Participation, and the forum structures have been in technical decline the entire time. The best models were the NYT forums, which have been defunct for YEARS. Salon.com used the same functional system until just recently.

 

In both cases, the various forums were listed on a single screen. Click on a forum, and dozens of topics were displayed on a single screen. Click on the topic, and the next screen displayed was the last screen the user viewed. This screen might have been created weeks prior, but delivered the user into the discussion exactly where he left it.

 

IT services just simply suck. I have been using PC's since I built my own twin 360 Floppy 256k unit back in the early 1980's. ALL the problems with hardware and software of that era exist to this very day, but with more and more diverse possibilites for screw ups.. I will compare Windows 3.1 with Vista and it will bring tears to your eyes.

 

"GATHER ALL THE SOFTWARE PROGRAMERS AND WATSERBOARD THE BASTARDS."

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Moon

 

The only reason I moved from Windows 98 a few months ago is because the new archival ink printers need at least XP. The difference between 98 and XP is that XP is extrodanarily intrusive. With 98 I coulb be up and running jpg photo albums creators in seconds. With XP I go get a cup of coffee while each and every software provider I ever used sends me addvertisements, warnings, messages, suspect updates and questionnairs to fill out.

 

After the coffee I return to click"close" on so many subwindows I think I should commission a software programmer to write yet another program to close all these other windows with a single click. My God, I can only emagine what Vista is like. My lady friend has vista and can not even turn her laptop down without half an hour of updates. EACH TIME!

 

Further, I do all my computer work, 8 megapixel jps included, on my dumpster Pentium III. For awhile I wished for a Pentium IV to use the accelerated graphics REQUIRED by Google Earth. Google, however, has recently relented. I now call up Google Map and simply click on 'Street level" The Pentium III can keep up with my DSL just fine.

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CL

 

Its not my job to debug forum errors. TEN FRIGGN YEARS ago I could enter various forum discussions at the exact place I left them by simply logging on with my user name. Apparently Microsoft has been laying off workers in the last half decade or so. How else to explain the decrepit, DOS inferior requirements now.

 

Really, DOS bulletin boards were better back in the mid 1980. And believe it or not, without graphics they were every bit as fast using 14K dial up modems. I can read ASCII every bit as fast as Courier Western (New).

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NOSTALGIA

 

I used both graphic and text internet browsing up until the mid 1990's. I used Netscape (Firefox) for general browsing, and LINKS for fast research. Fast? Just for kicks I used an 8088 with 2.4 K modem. I would get an entire screen full of text in less then two seconds. Simply signed on to the ISP with CROSSTALK, including the letter "U" for Unix.

 

This became impractical when the web sites stopped identiffying their web links with text. All I would see on the screen would be [link]. That was a bummer because there was no high speed internet to display the graphic in any sort of fast time. Even 56k modems did not do this graphic stuff worth a damn. Accordingly, internet browsing was made inferior for a period of at least 5 years. DSL has closed the gap a bit.

 

There is still no way in hell DSL can display the front page of the NY Times as fast as 14k modem would display the text version. But its fast enough. Instead of two or three seconds with 14k text, it might take a few seconds more to get the visual version. So. Now I can SEE a plane crash and not just read 'plane crash' on my screen.

 

This, however, is not to be confused with serous progress. Unless, of course, you are a gamer!

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CL

 

Its not my job to debug forum errors.

 

What errors? I simply searched for posts by litespeed in the Astronomy and Cosmology forum and got exactly that, 12 hits all in the "Are Black Holes Hollow?" thread except for one in the "Origin of the Universe,,,,Bang or no Bang" thread. I got the same results using the search tool for that forum. I also found 9 replies to user litespeed in that forum using the forum search tool. What is it you're not able to do?

 

BTW, did you know you can find all of your posts under statistics in your user control panel?

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Your search worked fine for me....

 

It appears you can't link to a search. In short I searched for posts by user litespeed in the Astronomy and Cosmology forum. Performing the same search on the keyword litespeed instaed of the user will fetch posts where litespeed is addressed in the post itself such as replies to litespeed.

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The search works fine. I don't know why the OP needs to give us his history of computer experience, but there is no reason to troll our forums like that.

 

@C1ay: you can link to searches but not results since the results are only cached for about an hour. :turtle:

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Clay

 

It did not work. I clicked 'search this thread'' typed 'litespeed' and was presented with YOUR posts, and nothing but your posts. Really. Is this such a difficult technical problem? I have been debating whether to resign from the site in frustration, or to continue.

 

I decided to continue as a gadfly and 'agent provocateur'. I will shortly enter an appropriate forum and post 'Why Rational Atheists Should Be Afraid." Specifically, if I get my scriptural ducks in a row, I will suggest replacing the term 'Supreme Being' with "Superior Being".

 

Reading the Old Testament I found it very easy to imagine Moses did not meet with God in the enclosed tent, but instead met with, chuckle, a Space Alien! For a thought experiment, place earth at Advancement Level 5 (Five Thousand Years of Recorded History. Then place the tent visitor at Advancement level 5 to the tenth power.

 

Yikes? I should hope so! If so, we must all hope they have both a sense of irony and humor.

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Clay

 

It did not work. I clicked 'search this thread'' typed 'litespeed' and was presented with YOUR posts, and nothing but your posts.

 

The first result I get is *your* original post.

 

Really. Is this such a difficult technical problem?

 

Since it is apparently not a technical problem, the answer is "no".

 

Closing this thread since Litespeed has had his questions answered and is starting to post about things unrelated to User Feedback.

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I feel your pain, litespeed. :) Hypography’s search functions do work, but are, IMHO, lacking in user-friendliness, and require a bit of effort to learn to use effectively.

I simply searched for posts by litespeed in the Astronomy and Cosmology forum and got exactly that, 12 hits all in the "Are Black Holes Hollow?" thread except for one in the "Origin of the Universe,,,,Bang or no Bang" thread. I got the same results using the search tool for that forum. I also found 9 replies to user litespeed in that forum using the forum search tool. What is it you're not able to do?
It did not work. I clicked 'search this thread'' typed 'litespeed' and was presented with YOUR posts, and nothing but your posts.
I believe there’s some miscommunication in progress here.

 

What C1ay refers to by “searching for posts by litespeed in the Astronomy and Csomology forum” is clicking “Search this Forum” on the forum page, in the resulting dropdown, clicking “Advanced Search”, then entering “litespeed” in the User Name box, clicking the “Show Results as: Posts” radiobutton, can clicking the “Search Now” button. What I believe you’re doing, litespeed, is entering clicking “Search this Forum”, entering “litespeed” in the dropdown box, and clicking the “Go” button.

 

The non-advanced search searches only the title and text of posts in the selected thread or forum. User name is not part of the title or text, so is not searched. Most experienced hypographers learned long ago to use the advanced search most of the time, with affords more search options, including the one to search only posts by a specific user.

 

There’s also a forums-wide advanced search, which can be reached by clicking “Search this Forum”, “Advanced Search” on one of the forum pages. This search function used to be available on all pages, but as of the most recent restyle, even I can find it anywhere but on the forum pages.

Really. Is this such a difficult technical problem?
It’s helpful to understand that Hypography runs under the VBulitin forum webapplication. While this is a widely used and pretty good application that allows a lot of customization, configuration, and extension, and many of our administrators are expert in customizing, configuring, and extending it (Tormod is particular expert, but, despite my admin title, I’m regrettably far from expert :(), we’re more limited in our ability to change its fundamental behavior than we would be with an application we wrote ourselves. We’ve flirted for over a year with the idea of writing our own “wonder app”, but as we nearly all have full-time day jobs and are not employees of Hypography, but enthusiastic volunteers, finding the time for such a bottoms-up project has proven difficult.

 

Until the day that all our user-friendliness issues can be resolved, we’ll all need to know a handful of tricks, such as using advanced searches. Hopefully, via this post, you’ve now learned that important trick, litespeed. :turtle:

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One more note: if you're not getting what you want, another alternative is to use Google with the "site:" keyword. If for example you're looking for Buffy discussing "nothing" you can go to Google and enter:

 

Buffy nothing site:hypography.com

 

...and you'll get a whole lotta 3958 from Buffy...

 

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information, :)

Buffy

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I believe there’s some miscommunication in progress here.

 

Miscommunication or a lack thereof? I thought to say more but his OP didn't appear to be actually asking for any help in how to use the search features correctly:

 

What the hell good is a scientific site that can not even search on my own user name, let alone reliable register discussions on whether or not black holes are hollow.?

 

I suspect the "Madonna" fan site does a better job. Jesus Christ. OOPPS. Any number of Evangelical sites would show this place up as, well, some sort of Purgatory.....

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