I don’t really see a subforum on the board index that is dedicated to site specific questions or change recommendations, so I’m putting here.
The search function on this site is not good. I frequently get the “The following words in your search query were ignored because they are too common words” response - with no results - when I try to search within a thread.
However, I am using EXACTLY the word I want to search for in a specific thread. For instance, if I am in the De Negoce thread (which is over 150 PAGES) and want to find references to OG 15, I need to use “15.” Not everyone is going to type “De Negoce OG 15” in their post. At the same time, I am happy to look at EVERY post that contains a “15.”
This has happened to me on many occasions. Can this search function be improved? Let ME decide if a search returns too many results. Thanks.
Also, when I search for something but am off by a letter, having to wait 9 more seconds to search again is killing me. I’m guessing this is probably some sort of deterrent, so it’s really not that big of a deal.
The overall search function on WB can be a bit wonky at times, especially with common words. I recon the common word restriction and time out limits are geared towards not overloading the servers with lots of queries. You can get around it a bit by using Google’s site: operator. If you’re specifically looking for discussions of past de Negoce offers, the easiest way I’ve found is to getting the date of when the offer was released and going to the thread discussions around that date.
I’d love to see WB with a more robust search function, but I know that’s a hard job to sort out and do well; and the cost of doing it can add up. Google does have a programmable search engine web devs can use for their own website, I don’t know if Todd has looked into that or how well it’d work on WB in its current form both vis-a-vis functionality and costs.
This is one that threw me for a loop, as I’ve never had issues with a search, although I know not to do common words like ‘15’ or ‘wine’, etc., as I’ve been declined a number of times, over the years.
In the past, for a brief time, I had a Google search for the site, installed instead of the default one. As with all things, where some liked it, others did not, so it was removed. There are easy ways to add a Google option for the site alone, and I can look into it, if there’s enough demand.
As for the 10 second rule, that’s to prevent data mining - I don’t want to turn that off, and I’m sure you all understand that
Personally, I’ve got no issues with the timing limit. It can be annoying at times, but it’s not unreasonable or overly burdensome. The data mining aspect of it hadn’t crossed my mind, but given that this is a real name forum, I reckon preventions around such endeavours are all the more welcome by everyone here.
I wasn’t around for when the google search engine was used, so I can’t comment on it’s functionality vs. the current engine, maybe others who used both can comment on it. I do tend to have a bias towards sites using the Google engine, but I think that’s mostly because of my comfort level with its operators and having the benefit to being able to use more common word queries. Ultimately it’s what works best for the majority of people here.
I wonder if there’s a plugin to handle accented characters. Searching for “Boucheres in:title” didn’t pull up a thread that I knew existed, but turns out it had it spelled Bouchères. CT manages to search with/without the accents and that would be nice here as well.