Search Noob! But I did I swear!

[pnasci]

I want to be a good boy, not break any rules, and this is my very first post, so here goes. This is a fantastic site, with tons of great information, that's why it's all the sadder that the search capabilities are very lacking.

Since the Search Nazis are many times quick to point out that a Noob hasn't searched, I'll point out some problems with the search engine.

1. Blanket prohibition on 3 letter words - I understand that we don't want a meltdown eventime someone puts the word 'the' or 'and' in the search box, but what about 'cce'? 'fps'? 'mpg'? 'avi' These are all legitimate search topics, yet it can't be done. A better approach would have been a blacklist.

2. No phrase search - This is unforgivable. This is something even the most basic search engines can do. I can go to Google and type in

Green Gum - gives green AND gum in the page (Doom9 can do this)
"Green Gum" - gives me occurances of the exact phrase "Green Gum" (Doom9 incapable - gives same results as typing green gum)

I can't put in "capture to mpg" -it would give me every instance of pages with those three words SOMEWHERE on the page - not what I want.

Now if there's a way to do these things, and I haven't found it - my humblest apologies, and I will have a big serving of Crow for lunch today :)

[killingspree]

so... your point is??

no seriously, insulting the moderators (and other senior members) is not the best way to introduce yourself to the forum...

and about your concerns about the search - engine, it definitely has the limitations, but you'll get used to it! furthermore, it's planned to switch to vbb3, which then would be searchable by google and therefore eliminate your problems...

and finally... this should be in forum / site suggestions, as it doesn't have anything to do with the actual topic of the forum

kr
steVe

[Doom9]

Blanket prohibition on 3 letter wordsNot true.. the limit is 2 letter words. And this is mainly a performance issue.. I'm afraid we're not talking about some fortune five hard and software we're running this board on, and the shorter the search word length, the more resources the search uses. The search engine is also very limited as compared to say google, which automatically filters out short words and uses stemming and other tricks to make the search more effective and less resource intensive.

As for phrases, this is a limitation of the search functionality of this board. I don't know if there's any bulletin board software that would support searching by phrases, or that's anywhere near as intelligent as google.. you have to consider that most bulletin board softwares are free, and those that are not may have more features, but it's not a search engine package (search engines are a million times more complex than a bulletin board software, and a lot of research goes into those engines, whereas a bb is more your standard 08/15 software).

but as killingspree pointed out, once the upgrade happens, this board will be searchable via google and you'll have all the features google offers (though since a board is by definition dynamic, you won't always have up-to-the-minute search results - something which the built-in search engine can offer, and you cannot limit your search by forum, poster, date and such (which the built-in engine also can offer). So you can see, it's always a trade off.

Since the Search Nazis... That's not going to earn you any sympathy points, especially on a board that many Germans frequent. Plus, I can only speak for myself and the mods, but we'd never tell somebody to use the search engine, if an apparent search would not yield the result we're hinting at. If the search result would be on page 10, we'd never bash somebody for not having searched.. but if it's in the top 3 results, with a really obvious search term, then that's a situation where the search should've been used.

[pnasci]

I'm glad to hear about that up upgraded functionality, that's really great news! Phrase Search and Search Within Results are really important in sifting through information. I realize that freeware stuff is nowhere near what Google and Amazon are using, but a phrase search is not rocket science - the 'space' character is just another character that happens to be in between two words, effectively making it one giant word that can be searched for.

As for posting in the 'wrong' forum - I was following the rules that said to post in the newbie forum first until you get the hang of where things go.

I'm sorry if I came off hostile, but I've been on so many other forums where noobs are chastized for not searching, and many times they deserved it - but many times not.

I'm also very sorry over the term 'Nazi', [fillintheblank]Nazi seems to have become such a common term in American pop-culture (Soup Nazi from Seinfeld and so on) that we sometimes use it without thinking - especially on a board like this that has international exposure.

And boy oh boy was I wrong about that 3 letter thing - (I went back and read the error message - it's *minimum* 3 letters) *smack* *self-flagellate* *kick*