SpudFiles

hey, the quick search has bugged me for a long time, not just that but even the more detailed search bugs me as well.

The thing that bugs me is that it defaults on "search by post time" rather than relevance.

I find it extra work to change it every time I search.

Whats worse than that, is I will admit that for the first 3 months or so I did not even know it was searching by post time.. I always just thought the search sucked and I could never find what I was looking for, until one day I noticed that in the actual search page it said post time.

Now I consider myself very well versed in the way of the internet and forums.(I'm a Web Designer by profession)

Now I see all to often that new users on the site ask for information and we presume that they are just lazy(most of the time they are), but then again, If they assumed that the default search would be the correct one like I did, they would simply use the search and not find what they are looking for.

Idk to me its common sense that search should be done by relevance and it should be the default sorting action.

Now I'm obviously not saying that we should get rid of the other sorting functions, I'm just asking for the sort action that makes sense to be the default, be the default.

Here is an example of a quick search and how the default sorting of post time makes it longer to find what I was actually looking for.

So I did a quick search on "RC-P240" which is a gun that me and imortal87 did, the search results had 3 pages, the very last result on the 3rd page was the actual page of the gun.

Another search that I did was "Delay burst disk mine" which had 661 pages of results, I went through the first 6 pages and couldnt find anything close to what I was looking for.

Now I realize that if a person actually knew that search by post time was default, or even noticed it, they could click search, then type in what they are looking for, then change the drop down to "search by relevance", then hit search, but shouldn't that be default? Especially for quick search?

any comments?

Now I see all to often that new users on the site ask for information and we presume that they are just lazy(most of the time they are), but then again, If they assumed that the default search would be the correct one like I did, they would simply use the search and not find what they are looking for.

I totally agree with the above statement as well as your idea...

The system has no way of calculating relevance at the moment.

Nice though it would be, it's not currently feasible.

It's not too hard to use the search if you set it up right and narrow down the results with author and making sure it's actually searching for all terms, not each term.

Ragnarok is correct, it's hard for a computer to judge how relevant a topic is.

I believe the biggest problem with the quick search is that some newbs try use it, then cannot find what they want, so they post a topic, and get flamed for not searching.

Perhaps a sticky?

i quite agree, it wuld be alot easyier for new people to find wat there looking for, i only jst figgured out u culd change the priorities wen i read this, wish i knew that ages bak

I find the quick search to be unusable. Perhaps you could write a script to search google for whatever is in the box, and then add "site:spudfiles.com"

That's what I do when I get desperate

And all this time I thought it was just me...

Quick search=Useless, maybe link that button to the actual search page...

on a slightly differant but similar note....

How much of a pain would it be to set up a forum section with referance materiels stickied in a given order... pick someone to mod it so that all irrelevent posts are zapped and the topics don't turn into 500 pages of repetitious info...

then we would need another forum to argue about the order of the stickies! In my memory, the longest topic is around 60 pages of ITWOST. But I understand your point

ramses wrote:then we would need another forum to argue about the order of the stickies! In my memory, the longest topic is around 60 pages of ITWOST. But I understand your point

Actually, the topics could be handled similar to the chatroom topic... The first post is permanent and when people add info in reply posts, the mod/'s can move relevant info to the origin post and delete the extras every coupla days or so...

things that would be good would be:

ammo fitment(taken from ammo ideas thread).

online and mail order suppliers.(for cannon materiels, projectile supplies, etc)

pipe/tubing charts for dimensions and specs.

Links to conversion calculators.

You get the picture...

Basically a where-to forum instead of a how-to forum...
We Have the Wiki for the what they are and how they work,
we have the how to section,
and we could have a referance section to connect the dots between what/how to build and where to get parts/supplies/info for the actual building...

Ragnarok wrote:The system has no way of calculating relevance at the moment.

Nice though it would be, it's not currently feasible.

It's not too hard to use the search if you set it up right and narrow down the results with author and making sure it's actually searching for all terms, not each term.

couldnt something like this be done:
or http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/ ... earch.html
for details.


Either way, even if it can't be done, at least by post subject would be better...

The Spudfiles forum map? Pretty much the "Forum" button on the top of the page. The main problem I see with the search is the amount of results returned, (there is a lot of info to sort through here).

"Topic Title" is the closest to "Relevance" as of now that I can see, like search by "keyword".

I understand what you all are saying, I know of no magic tricks to make it any better. I set the number of results returned to 25, that makes it a bit easier.

It also helps to title your threads to what it's about and to be sure and put them in the right section. I can easily say most of my moderating is moving threads to the proper section.

If anybody here can write up a how to on using the search that works well, I would be more then happy to sticky it and praise your work! But make sure it's tested, and works well. Sounds like a goal to set.

well can we get the quick search or at least the default sort to be post subject or topic title?

I sent PCGUY a PM, he should be chiming in soon on this.

bump...

Even PCGUY agreed in this recent thread:
http://www.spudfiles.com/forums/viewtop ... tml#288500