I’m sure people have complained before about the poor search function. I’m looking for a post I’m pretty sure I created involving a solar panel build I had for my truck. The post was in the last 5 years.
I can’t seem to get good results when I use the search and advanced search function.
Any advice on an effective way to actually search for something here and legitimately find it?
This?
No
this one
My question is…how can I effectively find this thread using the search function.
I had to go through all my posts to finally, just now find it.
I had to go to the 3 lines on the top right and scroll through ‘my posts’. looking for it. Ironically, your post at least gave me a timeline to better start in my search
Using the magnifying glass and doing advanced search was ineffective and frustrating
One way is if you can remember a specific word or phrase that was used that’s likely to be unique like “Self-amalgamating”.
And then bookmark that thread or post if you think you might want to return to it later.
If you click on your own avatar, then click it again, you can click on “Topics” to get to a list of all the threads you started. You have a lot, but that’s going to be the easier way I think.
If you search for “solar panel” in posts by @Sigene. it’s the 6th thread (of 6).
So click the Search button 
In this search box, click the sliders button on the far right.
Click 
Advanced filters
Include some search words, from your example I’m using solar Truck.
In Posted By, enter the name of the poster
Include a date range if possible to narrow it down. I selected Posted after & 01/01/2020
Below I read is a pull down box that says any, pull down and select I created or are the very first post
All this should narrow it down a lot. This gets no results as Truck apparently wasn’t in the thread, but I removed Truck and got only 4 hits including this thread of course.
What I used in the end:
solar @Sigene after:2020-01-01 in:first
It’s far right for me.
Fixed, thank you.
Geez, I even had my coffee already.
More examples of the political bias on this board!
I’ve always had good success with just typing “@me” and a few keywords in the general search box (not using advanced search) to find threads I started or participated in. Not once had to use the advanced search since the move to Discourse, I think.
ETA: I forgot to explain, @me is a shorthand in searches for @yourusername, so for @Sigene in your case.
Wow! I had no idea @me did that. THANK YOU!!1!
No biggie. Of course that works with any other user too, if you put an ‘@’ before their username in the search box.
I hope Discourse doesn’t allow someone to create a profile called “me”.
Again, you don’t actually type “[at]me” in the search box. You type “[at][yourusername]”.
No, you got that wrong. You actually type “@me” as a shorthand, and that scans to your username. I hope I’m clearer now. The @me is coded in Discourse to resolve to the username of the actual user.
ETA: try it with the search term “@me How do I effectively search”, and you’ll get this thread as first result.
Well damn, I tried doing that at first, and it pulled up users with “me” at the beginning of their name. But I was absolutely wrong - when you do the actual search it works.
That’s how I got it as well, except it was 3rd of 6.
I too found the question rather baffling.
The main difficulty in searching is accurately remembering keyword(s) you actually used in the target thread but not too many more threads. It’s too easy to think you wrote e.g. “truck” when you did not. No search engine can read your mind. Yet.
Which suggests that if you’re getting frustrated that “it’s not finding it”, odds are you’ve mis-remembered a keyword. Try something else.
I’ve noticed that the longer I’ve been a poster / member, the fuzzier my memory of when I wrote something, while I’m still pretty sharp on what keywords I used.
So as a strategy I’ll start by narrowing by keyword, and only then by date. Do a search with no date restrictions at all, sort by thread start date then eyeball the results to see how much time interval covers about 40 hits. Then use that interval to page back in time methodically, like last 1 (or 5) year interval, previous 1 (or 5) year interval, etc. As long as the result set from any time-interval search is smaller than “50+” I know I got them all. The more unique my keyword the larger slice of time I can use and still get less than “50+” results.
Handy trick!