Issues with search

[SirAlanClive]

Hi there good people.
As a long time contributor/moderator on the Heroes of Might and Magic 3/4/5 forums I do understand your work load and the difficulties you must have keeping this wonderful site going.

I'm a C# dotNet developer @50 so I'm a serious guy (sometimes);-). I thought this might be of some help:

I'm guilty of starting threads deemed duplicate and thus locked (which I beg to differ on but bear with me...) but that was not done thoughtlessly. I searched for what I expected to be the generic 'How old are you' thread but I didn't find it. I suspected your search filter as I got results like this:

Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms.
The following words are either very common, too long, or too short and were not included in your search : how, old​

The words Age, Old, the sentance How Old Are You, etc fall through the filter.
The word Year gives a mass of results...relating of course to Car Year.
Car returns 0 results
Cars return 100+ results

There are many lists behind the scenes here, Swear words for example are listed and my experience with people looking for 'loopholes' in the lists has been quite entertaining. I'm sure there is a keyword list or at least the possiblility to tweak the search engine.

Many other threads are 'semi-duplicated' and I think a better search function would clean up your site and make your lives easier.

I removed my 'private spat' as I suspect that this type of moderation could affect the innocent person I involved in this post detrimentally.

 

[Famine]

As a long time contributor/moderator on the Heroes of Might and Magic 3/4/5 forums I do understand your work load and the difficulties you must have keeping this wonderful site going.

Do you also understand that it's not a terrific idea to insult long time contributors/moderators?

It's also deeply unimpressive of you to then bring whatever private spat you have from feeling unfairly treated out into the public.

There are many lists behind the scenes here, Swear words for example are listed and my experience with people looking for 'loopholes' in the lists has been quite entertaining. I'm sure there is a keyword list or at least the possiblility to tweak the search engine.

Many other threads are 'semi-duplicated' and I think a better search function would clean up your site and make your lives easier.

Words shorter than four characters are excluded from searches. Amusingly using the search feature effectively reveals both the reason and the answer to your request.

 

[the Interceptor]

I think that "how old are you" is a perfect example of one specific shortcoming of the search function: the problem with short words. I had a discussion with an admin on a vBulletin forum some time ago, and he said something like this:

The forums server has to constantly monitor the forum for all new inputs to make them accessible through the search function. To lighten the load on the server, there is a minimum string length for words, and all words shorter than said length will be ignored. If you were to set the server to monitor every single word in the whole forum, it would probably collapse under the sheer load of information. Therefore, the forum was programmed in a way to put the emphasis on longer words which will likely yield clear search results. This lessens the server load severely, but it also means that there are words which are too short for the search function. And as luck would have it, "how old are you" are four of those words.

EDIT: beaten to it by Famine.

 

[SirAlanClive]

Do you also understand that it's not a terrific idea to insult long time contributors/moderators?

It's also deeply unimpressive of you to then bring whatever private spat you have from feeling unfairly treated out into the public.



Words shorter than four characters are excluded from searches. Amusingly using the search feature effectively reveals both the reason and the answer to your request.

Excuse me, Sir, but I find your reply very rude. My post was made here in this forum as an attempt to be helpful. Where did you find anything insulting?

My 'private spat' as you call it was also just to show that we too care about the service you provide and was meant to be constructive. No where did I express feeling unfairly treated, on the contrary I was full of appreciation for the work you all do and agreed with the thread being locked.

I also understand the way search engines work and I appreciate the constraint of 3 letter words. The second reply I got was informative and for that, thank you.

If you really feel that your reply was justified then I'm sorry I insulted you. Hopefully some of you will recognise my good intentions and be open for other such posts.

I'm surprised and disappointed.

Alan Rossi

 

[Famine]

Excuse me, Sir, but I find your reply very rude.

I find referring to a member of staff as a blowhard very rude.

 

[the Interceptor]

I find referring to a member of staff as a blowhard very rude.

I think he was referring to this member of the forum.

 

[Famine]

I think he was referring to this member of the forum.

Fair enough.

Perhaps a slightly more clear quote next time would be in order? Quoting Interludes and then a response starting

"To Interludes...

BLOWHARD"

appears to be an insult directed at Interludes - and I'm sure being a Brit he'll be familiar with the perjorative form of the word.


So anyway, you have your answer - arrived by, amusingly, the rather effective search function - and no-one's insulted anyone. Hurrah!​

​

​