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This Bulletin Board SUCKS!

amdpoweramdpower Posts: 110
in AMX General Discussion
My God! What is it going to take to fix the search for this forum? I've sent several emails to AMX with hints as to how to fix it to add boolean searches. Has anybody figured this out? I can't believe how horrible this forum is now. Without search working properly, it is useless. Anybody else agree or am I crazy?

Comments

  • viningvining Posts: 4,368
    amdpower wrote: »
    My God! What is it going to take to fix the search for this forum? I've sent several emails to AMX with hints as to how to fix it to add boolean searches. Has anybody figured this out? I can't believe how horrible this forum is now. Without search working properly, it is useless. Anybody else agree or am I crazy?
    Yep, I'd have to say you're crazy! :) Actually while you might be crazy I can't personally say since I rarely search and therefore no not of what you speek. I feel it's easier to read every post on a daily basis and commit everything to memory. :) Yeah, like my cooked brain could do that! :)
  • amdpoweramdpower Posts: 110
    Well, then there is our answer! I'll simply submit my search query to you via email, you can then parse all of the posts from your memory and email me back the results! :)
  • DHawthorneDHawthorne Posts: 4,584
    I imagine it's a low priority. It's a third-party developed BBS system, and anything not part of the distributed package has to be either (1) hacked manually, or (2) be available as a plugin from either the developer or the user base. The target user base for forum software are social groups, and I imagine the search features included are sufficient for that. Since we are inherently more technical here, I'm sure we could benefit from better search capability ... but honestly, I've never felt it was inadequate for the kind of searching I ever needed to do.
  • ColzieColzie Posts: 470
    amdpower wrote: »
    Without search working properly, it is useless. Anybody else agree or am I crazy?

    Agreed! This forum used to be my first stop for tech support. A quick search often provided me with an answer.

    Now it is nearly useless. I'll still generally attempt a search, probably out of habit, but I end up with pages of useless results. Even the "here is how to search our new forum" rules don't help.
  • ericmedleyericmedley Posts: 4,177
    I dunno, I can usually find what I'm looking for. I'm old enough to remember the bad-ole-days of the internet when you were lucky if you could find anything anywhere by any means. It's pretty rare that I cannot find what I need within a few reads of posts.

    It's certainly better than a google search.

    Like Dave says, it's an off-the-shelf solution and it is what it is.
  • AuserAuser Posts: 506
    DHawthorne wrote: »
    It's a third-party developed BBS system, and anything not part of the distributed package has to be either (1) hacked manually, or (2) be available as a plugin from either the developer or the user base.

    But the point is that the search USED to work exactly as everyone required it to and now it just returns junk.

    The signal to noise ratio used to be quite good but after the upgrade the search results return too many posts which are of no relevance.
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 0
    Are you adding Thread Tags?

    I thought the user inserted thread tags assisted in searching. Am I wrong?
  • truetrue Posts: 307
    Auser wrote: »
    But the point is that the search USED to work exactly as everyone required it to and now it just returns junk.

    The signal to noise ratio used to be quite good but after the upgrade the search results return too many posts which are of no relevance.

    No; search used to be AND only and didn't honor quotes. It made it hard to find contiguous stuff.

    Getting VB to support proper searches would take about 5 minutes. Frankly, AMX makes their money doing other things so I doubt search (or the stupid C*** filter) will be fixed any time soon.
  • AuserAuser Posts: 506
    auser wrote:
    But the point is that the search USED to work exactly as everyone required it to and now it just returns junk.
    true wrote: »
    No; search used to be AND only and didn't honor quotes. It made it hard to find contiguous stuff.

    I'll rephrase - the point is that the search USED to work more like everyone required it to and now it just returns junk.

    A perfect example is finding a code snippet for a mathematical log function. You can't search for log as you'd get a bunch of threads about logs in Netlinx devices. You can't search for math as that's a very broad range of topics and you most certainly can't do a search for math + log as the forum search feature does not support this type of search.

    The previous implementation of the search function allowed you to do this.

    I can no longer find old posts that I want to refer to which makes these forums a much less useful resource. In addition there are far more posts asking basic questions as people can't search for threads where these questions have already been answered on the forum.

    Regardless; please AMX, please, please, please, please fix it. I can't understand why we can't return to the old search functionality. :(
  • roognationroognation Posts: 138
    Forum Lameness

    We had some traction with AMX on this subject over here, but it seemingly died:

    http://www.amxforums.com/showthread.php?5468-Forum-Feature-Request
  • ProdigalProdigal Posts: 90
    Unfortunatelly I'm with this one.

    It's a drag to find anything useful using the search now.
    Unfortunatelly I can't allways take a peek on the forums to see whats up on them, so I'll just search later, because someone had that problem or question before, that I'm having now.

    But at the moment you either ask again the same question or better google it!

    The rest of the forum works just fine, just the search option that is not very...pleasant!
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