^ What he said. ^
Let Google handle searching the SDMB. More visitors -> More subscribers. No searches using SDMB hardware -> Higher board availability and money saved on additional hardware to handle the searches.
What the part I highlighted sounds like is that they’re going to decide whether to charge us more, or cut out the Dope altogether.
Why bother fixing the server(by Ed’s own words it’s doable) if the Dope is being sent down the tubes? It seems odd to me that this has happened right before a lot of the paying members are due to reup.
I’m not nuts about search being down. Especially New Posts, which is my gateway to the Dope. But I’m getting by. (If nothing else it cuts down on aimless browsing when I really should be working. :dubious: )
If the upshot of it all is that the Dope starts charging by the month, cutting back on features, etc., I’ll be disappointed. But I’ll stick around.
But if it’s shut down altogether, I’m going on a five-state murder spree. :mad: You got that???
Why are those the only options?
I do miss the search function a lot. I always come in, and hit new posts (just once, generally) and because I haven’t been posting during the workday, there are usually between 10-13 pages of new posts. I like seeing all the different posting subjects come up in a nice, tempting buffet of threads. 
Good God. I hope no one is seriously considering permanently disabling search. There are a lot of topics in GQ and CCC that come up multiple times as different people become interested in them (airplanes on treadmills, anyone?). It’s much nicer to search and find older threads on the same topic than to recreate an entire fucking explanation from scratch.
There was a GQ thread on vacuum-filled floating spheres this weekend; it took me half-an-hour to find a similar old thread (in part because the old thread had a misleading title; in part because of the retarded 90-second search wait). But, the point is, it was there, and was useful for the newer question.
Searching addresses one of the core reasons for the existance of this message board. The 90-second wait is dumb enough, eliminating it entirely is insane.
I am fucking lost without search. I can’t find a damn thing. It’s like taking a bath with your boots on.
This sucks arse.
I know what ya mean, jjimm. I usually check for any replies to my posts by finding all my posts thru my profile, which is, of course, a SEARCH. After a helpful thread explained how to change thread subscription options, I’m now automatically subscribed to all threads I post in without any notification. I just wonder how many threads one can subscribe to at a time.
I’m currently subscribed to 1961 threads, so it’s more than that.
So that’s the problem! I thought the database didn’t go back earlier than 1999.
What were we talking about? Kennedy’s taking off his hat for his inaugural speech?
I have duly noted that, and now I’m counting the number of states between Indiana and the nearest coast. :eek:
TSD is getting a new business plan? Oh, dear, I can’t wait to see the mission statement. Probably something about embellished trombonifaction control toward more fanfaronic tensegrity in a newly diverse playing field.
He could hop around the country selecting five states at random.
I keep going to do the “New Posts” function, then remembering, oh shit, it’s not there.
Not to mention that we can’t go back and find old threads for cites, or to see if the topic was covered before, etc.
Not to drag this out indefinitely, but we went over the numbers, positive response, gotta tweak a few things. Have no fear, will say more as soon as I can.
So I shouldn’t be using this time to collect the email addresses of some of the people I would like to stay in contact with?
Thank you for the update and positive news.
Could you please consider having Jerry turn back on the New Threads (search)option at least? That would get half of us to shut up at least.
It is not the problem from what I have seen over the time I have been on the dope.
Jim
Give 'em hell Ed!
I’d prefer searching instead!
Well, not to sound unnecessarily negative or anything, but this message board–like all other message boards out there–has always had the capacity to vanish literally in a heartbeat. I’ve frequented several other boards, mostly of the tinfoil-hat type, that did just that. You sit down at the computer one morning, click on the bookmark, and…there’s a “Page Not Found”. So if you’re lucky, you also hang out at a similar board somewhere else, so you go over there and ask if anybody knows anything, and usually there’s a thread already started, and other refugees start to trickle in, and the word gets around about “the next place to go”, and eventually either someone starts up a new board, or everyone disperses to other boards. Such is life in the conspiracy theory backwaters of the Internets. 
TPTB at the SD could decide to pull the plug at any time, and without giving any particular notice, even to subscribers. So, yeah, if there are people here you care about, and don’t wanna lose, I’d make a list of e-mails somewhere, just on general principles. And I don’t think that’s particularly negative advice–it’s just a perception of the way the Internet works.