The search functionality has been temporarily disabled for Charter Members/Members until those abusing it today are found and removed. I apologize for the problems they have been creating.
Jerry
Thanks for staying on top of things, Jerry. We appreciate it.
I hope I wasn’t the one abusing the search engine.
What does search engine abuse entail, anyway?
Touching it in its no-no place.
I guess this would explain where the New Threads link went.
I was about to ask about it.
Two minutes between searches, I hope that’s temporary.
Search has been re-enabled with an increase in the amount of time that must elapse between searches.
We’ll see. 30 seconds between searches was getting abused.
Isn’t the idea of 30 seconds between seaches so that it can’t be abused? If someone was running a seach every 30 seconds then it was working, otherwise they would be running them even more often? Of course if someone was doing searches for the sole purpose of taxing the system, then that’s different, but
That’s not possible. If you have a time limit between searches set, then using it that frequently is not abuse. It’s use. If you need to increase the time, fine, but don’t go complaining about abuse when it’s nothing of the sort.
Hmmm.
Stretching out the length between searches is hardly an ideal solution. Finding the search keys that are going to yield the results you want is a trial-and-error process. You try something, realize that you are getting too many unwanted messages, or the one you wanted didn’t contain that keyword after all, scratch your head for a second, and try something else. I wouldn’t really consider, say, half a dozen searches in quick succession to tune your results “abuse”. I do the same with google or anything else with search capabilities.
Yes, I must admit I’m puzzled too. By abuse do you mean over-use of the search engine? I’ve never felt the need to search more than once or twice a visit, if that. But is there a limit to the number of searches one should make in any given period of time?
I’m sure they would have run them every second if they could. We once allowed frequent searches and then moved it to 30 seconds. Now it’s at 2 minutes. Next stop is a captcha to make life even more of a hassle for the innocent. It’s not like I like the situation but I’d rather have the boards functioning than not. It does nobody any good when the boards aren’t responding for hours at a time.
What about touching Google in its “I feel lucky” place? That’s just…creepy.
What on Earth is the point of this? Unless it’s bots running all these searches you claim are the problem, what’s this going to solve?
If someone engages the search engine every 30 seconds for the purpose of tying up the boards, I’d say that’s abuse.
Is there any proof anyone has done that? And for that purpose?
(For my part, I still think the only-one-post-every-60-seconds rule is unreasonable.)
Frankly, I’d prefer a captcha with a 30 second interval to no captcha with a 2 minute interval. A 15 second interval would be better. Sometimes, I realize very quickly that my attempted search did not yield the type of results I wanted, and am prepared to try something else almost immediately. Entering a captcha isn’t that big a deal.
Well, that was sorta my point. It’s not going to slow down the “abuser,” much, either.
What’s a captcha?