I don't know how many time I have seen people say this on this forum and other forums. I have ran many different forum software so I know mostly how they run. Lets get realistic though; I have yet to see a single forum software that has a search where you can search exactly on the topic your wanting to know about (I am not talking about the double quotation marks trick) and even worse the search usually gives you a bunch of worthless junk that is irrelevant to the question you have. Forum search engines just plain suck. The problem is sometimes your wanting to ask something that is very specific or complex. I mean just try doing a search on Google; you can frequently get answers because your searching most the internet for your specific question so you can get an answer from Wikipedia or various other sites you may have never heard of but when your searching the forum; your searching ONE single site making it near impossible to get what you want in my opinion. I just get so tired of people saying "Use search" when the search is just plain unusable unless you basically already know the answer to your question and you know exactly what to search for and then that would defeat the purpose of needing to search the forum. What do you all think?
For instance, you can search pixel format not accelerated (a very common error message) or more colors of beds, but you can't search for a mod that does something (very easily).
Search is bugged. eg. if I search for "Buildcraft", a bunch of other threads about some guy having issues with Tekkit/FTB/whatever come up and not the Buildcraft thread.
Don't give me any crap about "advanced search should work" or anything, if I search for Buildcraft I should find Buildcraft at least within the top 3 results.
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Neckbeards! Doctor Cichocki does not approve of stupidity and neither do I, stop the spread of damned useless rules!
If you're unhappy with our searching tool for general browsing. you can always consult google's "site:" function.
I'll use Ankenmann2's example: by using "site:minecraftforums.net" google only gives you results what come from our forum. then typing "Buildcraft" will lead you directly to the thread you're asking for.
site:minecraftforum.net buildcraft
Paste that into google, the thread will be your first result.
Search is bugged. eg. if I search for "Buildcraft", a bunch of other threads about some guy having issues with Tekkit/FTB/whatever come up and not the Buildcraft thread.
Don't give me any crap about "advanced search should work" or anything, if I search for Buildcraft I should find Buildcraft at least within the top 3 results.
That is how search engines work, if you are looking for something specific you have to provide a lot of information. Just doing a full site search with a couple keywords is going to net you a lot of bum results because a basic search will go through and check every post and every thread for the provided search term(s) because you provided it no direction (so it will search everywhere).
It is up to the end user to wield the search tool. It is impossible for the forum software to implicitly know which forum sections a user does or does not want to search in or if they want just titles or if they want to search posts as well.
Search is bugged. eg. if I search for "Buildcraft", a bunch of other threads about some guy having issues with Tekkit/FTB/whatever come up and not the Buildcraft thread.
Don't give me any crap about "advanced search should work" or anything, if I search for Buildcraft I should find Buildcraft at least within the top 3 results.
But.. Just use advanced search? I mean, seriously now, it takes just a few seconds to set some search parameters in order to narrow down your search.
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.” — Albert Einstein
"Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig." — Robert Heinlein
Then why does Google/Dogpile/pretty much any search engine searching these forums work fine?
That's because actual search engines do things differently. IIRC, Google organises its list based on what items are most relevant/popular (which is why minecraftforums is second when you search minecraft). If it doesn't do this, it does something similar.
This is why when you search "Redpower" in Google, the first hit is the Redpower thread, as it is popular.
Though, I can imagine one way to make the plain search filter for relevance. Selecting a "relevance" option would order the search results, where the top of the list would be threads where the search terms are mentioned most, alongside current "Last Update Time", "Title", "Replies", and "Views" (the last one may sound like what google does, however there are 8 threads with more views than Redpower when you search redpower). I'm not a coder though, or have any working knowledge on it, so I don't know how possible it is.
It might be helpful though.
The forum search engine, however, is different. The forum search searches through both threads, and posts. Only threads have a measuring system for how popular they are ("views"). So since it is searching through EVERYTHING on the forum, the plain search cannot sort things based on popularity. This is why there is an advanced search, so you can be specific enough to get what you want.
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Theevilpplz is so fabulous, hetrosexual men turn bi when he passes by.
That is how search engines work, if you are looking for something specific you have to provide a lot of information. Just doing a full site search with a couple keywords is going to net you a lot of bum results because a basic search will go through and check every post and every thread for the provided search term(s) because you provided it no direction (so it will search everywhere).
It is up to the end user to wield the search tool. It is impossible for the forum software to implicitly know which forum sections a user does or does not want to search in or if they want just titles or if they want to search posts as well.
Search has always been something I hated in forums. It never got me straight to wherever I wanted to go. Because if I want to search for buildcraft, like in the examples, I'm still going to get a lot of threads that show up if someone mentions buildcraft just once.
This site works fine for searching and it isn't a lot of features you have to switch around its 1 drop down which makes it more effective. Keeping with the "buildcraft" example I enclosed images below.
You need to change the search from looking at post text and topics to just topics. My recommendation as far as this goes is that this should be the default not the other way around.
So here is a question, why does this forum have a bad spell check and search, most of the time if i spell something completely wrong i have to put it into google because the spell check here is terrble. So, why not just have google's spell check and search built into the site?
So here is a question, why does this forum have a bad spell check and search, most of the time if i spell something completely wrong i have to put it into google because the spell check here is terrble. So, why not just have google's spell check and search built into the site?
Minecraftforum uses IPB as it's forum software and my previous post just showed that IPB does not have spell check, therefore the issue with your spell check not working correctly is an issue with your browser and not the forum
Minecraftforum uses IPB as it's forum software and my previous post just showed that IPB does not have spell check, therefore the issue with your spell check not working correctly is an issue with your browser and not the forum
Yes, but most sites have spell checks, no reason this shouldn't.
For instance, you can search pixel format not accelerated (a very common error message) or more colors of beds, but you can't search for a mod that does something (very easily).
Don't give me any crap about "advanced search should work" or anything, if I search for Buildcraft I should find Buildcraft at least within the top 3 results.
I'll use Ankenmann2's example: by using "site:minecraftforums.net" google only gives you results what come from our forum. then typing "Buildcraft" will lead you directly to the thread you're asking for.
Paste that into google, the thread will be your first result.
That is how search engines work, if you are looking for something specific you have to provide a lot of information. Just doing a full site search with a couple keywords is going to net you a lot of bum results because a basic search will go through and check every post and every thread for the provided search term(s) because you provided it no direction (so it will search everywhere).
It is up to the end user to wield the search tool. It is impossible for the forum software to implicitly know which forum sections a user does or does not want to search in or if they want just titles or if they want to search posts as well.
Here is where you can define which sections to search (http://www.minecraft...h&fromMainBar=1):
But.. Just use advanced search? I mean, seriously now, it takes just a few seconds to set some search parameters in order to narrow down your search.
"Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig." — Robert Heinlein
That's because actual search engines do things differently. IIRC, Google organises its list based on what items are most relevant/popular (which is why minecraftforums is second when you search minecraft). If it doesn't do this, it does something similar.
This is why when you search "Redpower" in Google, the first hit is the Redpower thread, as it is popular.
Though, I can imagine one way to make the plain search filter for relevance. Selecting a "relevance" option would order the search results, where the top of the list would be threads where the search terms are mentioned most, alongside current "Last Update Time", "Title", "Replies", and "Views" (the last one may sound like what google does, however there are 8 threads with more views than Redpower when you search redpower). I'm not a coder though, or have any working knowledge on it, so I don't know how possible it is.
It might be helpful though.
The forum search engine, however, is different. The forum search searches through both threads, and posts. Only threads have a measuring system for how popular they are ("views"). So since it is searching through EVERYTHING on the forum, the plain search cannot sort things based on popularity. This is why there is an advanced search, so you can be specific enough to get what you want.
You need to change the search from looking at post text and topics to just topics. My recommendation as far as this goes is that this should be the default not the other way around.
The forums don't have a spell check...
That's your browser
http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/345573-spell-check/?p=2341863
Minecraftforum uses IPB as it's forum software and my previous post just showed that IPB does not have spell check, therefore the issue with your spell check not working correctly is an issue with your browser and not the forum