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Forum Search

Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2011 5:30 pm
by RichardU
Not sure if this is the proper place, but I have a comment about this forum.

On the search page, there are two options:
Search topic title and message text
Search message text only

I believe it would be better if it was like this:
Search topic title and message text
Search topic title only

The reason is, searching message text is a very broad search. A commonly used term will be in many messages, most of which may not relate well to the search term. "Message text and topic title," is almost exactly as broad. Same problem. However, "Topic Title Only" is a much narrower search, and will yield results that better relate to the search term.

I am a member of many different kinds of forums, and I have seen that many of them start out with the options as they currently exist on this forum. It's so common, I suspect it is simply the default configuration for this forum's software. However, most of them eventually realize the limitations and make the switch as described above.

Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2011 6:07 pm
by ponysmasher
Yeah the search on this forum is pretty wothless. I have better luck using google.
A tip for people who don't know: To limit your google search to only this site, add site:lostmarble.com/forum after your query.

So if I want to search for buttered toast on this forum I'd go to google and enter:
buttered toast site:lostmarble.com/forum

Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 5:51 pm
by RichardU
ponysmasher wrote:So if I want to search for buttered toast on this forum I'd go to google and enter:
buttered toast site:lostmarble.com/forum
That's helpful, but it could be better. The problem occurs when you want to find a thread about a certain topic, but that same topic is casually mentioned in many other unrelated threads.

Maybe the operators of this forum don't really want people using the search function.