That’s like asking how much would I pay my mechanic for him to add time-travel capability to my car. I would pay a lot, but I don’t think he can pull it off. 
Thank you, Frank. If, I may, I wish to reiterate one of my earlier points to all involved:
Rubystreak, yes. I am an asshole. No arguments there. But I’m an asshole with a point. Do you want to bankroll the necessary changes?
The dope is what it is. There is a finite amount of money involved. DEAL with it.
Only if I actually get the searches. I’m sure we’d get banner ads first, and then, maybe we’d get the faster searches, and maybe we wouldn’t. Maybe we’d get the faster searches but they’d get taken away when someone crashes the board. Know what I mean?
MWAG: I am already paying for it. How much do you expect us to pay? Really.
The same amount I do.
Jesus, you’re like somebody that walks into a Waffle House and complains that the steaks aren’t done right.
Rubystreak, is there a reason you’re arguing with someone whose main point is “UR N IDIOT!!!1”? If you’re just a glutton for punishment can’t you spare us all the grief and just slam your hand in a drawer or something? 
I’m in just that kind of mood tonight, I guess. I should stop.
No way. Google searches of message boards are horrible. The results are disorganized and out of order, and you can’t search with the same various criteria that you can in a regular search.
Rubystreak, slacker, That’s it? No counter point? “I’m taking my ball and going home”?
My point isn’t simply that you’re an idiot, although I do believe that, my point is that everything comes with a price. You want improvement, but you offer no solutions that you would be willing to pay for. There is just no fucking pleasing you.
Pathetic.
Could we force the banner ads just on them?
There are only a couple people in this thread that are concerned about faster search times. And oodles of people who spoke out against banner ads. The math seems pretty easy. Big minus small and all that.
I have a potential solution. If they upgrade the boards to the latest version, there will be many features that have bypassed and optimised the memory problems this version currently suffers, freeing up its potential use via the search function.
I agree - but if we’re in a situation where searches are crashing the board and/or forcing it to be pruned repeatedly, I’d take Google over nothing.
I got to say, I really don’t understand your response and references to me, Monkey With a Gun. Why bring the word “perfect” into the discussion? Why try to pretend that what I’m asking about is unattainable or outrageously expensive? Seems a pretty lame thing to do.
I’m surprised that no one has pointed out the obvious. There is no time limit at all on manual searches. So if the 2 minute lag bothers you, you can search by opening each thread and doing a Ctrl-F on each page until you find what you’re looking for. I think sometimes we overlook the simple solution when we’re trying to complicate things.
Been reading Swift again, Lib? 
To answer Frank’s curiosity, I’d say that I’d be willing to pay more, but many wouldn’t. Same with banner ads.
But that’s not the point. I’m no techie, but some suggestions for improvement made here and elsewhere aren’t necessarily expensive or even hard to do.
Heck, if it’s a matter of upgrading the software, call me an impecunious spendthrift, but I don’t see how $160 is going to break the bank. Throw in another $135 and they’ll install it for you. Plus, add on another $300 and you get a year of phone support.
I know it’s craaaazy talk, but spending $595 doesn’t seem like it would cause the [del]Chicago Reader[/del] Creative Loafing to force it’s employees’ children to sell pencils on the streetcorner.
Well, Ed said that new stuff could be coming our way.
Of course some us remember what happened the last time such things were promised to us.
I think the problem is - and I’m encountering it at work with another system - that TBTB have spent a long time extensively customising the current version of vBulletin. Upgrading isn’t simply a case of copying the new software over the top of the old. Each customisation would have to be redone, then fully tested, on the new software. That would require a test server, properly also a staging server (which I’m guessing doesn’t exist), and a copy of the database, which presumably would require work for the upgrade, and the process would probably take a few weeks, with minimal staffing.
These same staff, meanwhile, would have to run the live server at the same time, increasing the workload and thus the amount of time such an upgrade would take. Then at go-live you’d have to take another copy of the database, make whatever changes that are needed, test it, then launch. And if anything went wrong during this process, we’d all be going bananas.
I am not defending this, just telling it like (what I think) it is.
I personally think upgrading should happen way more regularly - perhaps by removing some of the customisations. But that would probably require further investment by the Creative Loafers.
What the fuck? If this is true, then do it! In Ed’s thread explaining the change (link in Tenebras’s thread), he explained that this is mostly a software problem. Are you saying that there is a software solution to this problem?
I’m surprised to hear that the SDMB has customized vBulletin so much. I was under they impression that they were against customization of the software. I tried to do a search about that, but I didn’t find what I was looking for, and I would hate to crash the board or anything.
And there are those who dispute that theory. No one has shown (to the public, at least) conclusive evidence that one 4-minute long search is all it takes to bring the boards down.
I think the present rule is like a Pascal’s Wager of traffic control.
A local, one-page-at-a-time search is a LOT different from a search on 10 years worth of data from all posts. Hardly comparable, even if you were to script a Cntl/F search on all threads.
[…staring in awe…] I bow to your superior Swiftian powers, my lord.
(On the off-chance that you were serious, this has to be the least customized site on the world wide web. Their reticence to alter even a byte of code is legendary.)