I rarely seem to be able to find what I’m looking for when I use the search function. Just now I was trying to see if anyone had started a thread about the latest Toy Story movie and the word “toy” was omitted from the search for being too short. Instead I got hundreds of results with the word “story”.
I have such a hard time using it that I have to wonder if it’s the function or me.
Can’t use three letter words. Just one of our search engine problems.
You CAN use Google search and find it perhaps.
For situations like that, it’s best to choose a related word that might be included that’s relatively unique, such as “Woody” “Lightyear” “Pixar” or the Director’s name: “Unkrich”.
I didn’t realize this, thank you.
How to search the sdmb using Google.. This comes up on a weekly basis, it seems. I think someone should sticky alterego’s fine thread to the ATMB front page.
I wholeheartedly second this. I went in search of it recently, and eventually found it in a FAQ. But the search on how to search is almost as bad as SDMB’s search. Or should I have used Google search to search for Google search?
It’s not you. The folks above are right; the best thing to do is to go to an entirely different website if you wish to search this one. I recently tried using the SDMB search function to look for threads about the movie “In The Loop.” Yeah…
The other annoying thing about searching this website (doesn’t matter if you’re using google or not), is the sheer volume of uncommon words that are used. You might use a phrase that you think will sufficiently narrow down a result but end up getting hundreds of replies.
It’s not just this website, however. I’ve seen many others that use vbulletin that are just as useless.
How about searching my own threads?
I went to user cp and wanted to find a thread I had participated in. I had over 30 pages of threads. I finally gave up trying to hunt through all that.
Is there a way to search through your own posts?
Use “Advanced Search.” Include your own username under “Search by Username,” and a search term under “Search by Keyword.”
I found five posts by you by searching on your username and the keyword “searching.”
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/search.php?searchid=5415240
If it’s actually retrieving anything, then yes.
It is, indeed, stickied on the ATMB front page. The top stickied thread right now is “FAQ - Technical issues for Posting,” and alterego’s post has been incorporated as post #13 in that thread.
There’s also a link to that thread in xash’s “FAQs - Please Read First - Rules, Guidelines, Etiquette, Technical Issues” thread.