I just tried to search for “funniest SNL episode”. Haven’t run a search since the switch to pay service, so I figured I’d check to see if 3-letter words are searchable now. Clicked Search Now, and it came back with results. . . COOL.
Until I saw at the top in leetle bitty tiny print: “The following words are either very common, too long, or too short and were not included in your search: SNL”.
WHAT?!?! For my hard earned 5 bucks a year, I still can’t search for 3-letter words? I know the issue is related to the performance (or lack thereof) of the server, but can’t they afford to upgrade the hamsters now? Get some guinea pigs, or capybaras? Hell, with all this cash, you could even clone the Largest rodent that ever lived. But then you’d have to upgrade the hamster wheel, so maybe that’s too much overhead.
Now that’s out of the way, what would you like to see changed now that the SDMB is actually going to have some scratch in their pockets?
Mods: Since this is technically a (lame-ass) complaint, I posted in the Pit. Feel free to move it to IMHO if necessary.
BTW, if you can’t tell, this is mostly in jest - no flames necessary (like that’s going to stop them). I’m thrilled to contribute to the continued existence of that paragon of knowledge that is the SDMB. I would like to say it’s because I gain fulfillment from doing my part to fight ignorange, but it’s mostly the false sense of self-importance I get when I see “Charter Member” next to my name.
A little patience may be in order. The SDMB has only been receiving subscription fees for a week. Do you really expect the Chicago Reader to be able to requisition, order, receive shipment of, install, and configure new servers in that short a time? Jerry the tech guy only has so many hands.
And hopefully, it’s just a setting in the software, and there’d be no need to “requisition, order, receive shipment of, install, and configure new servers”.
Oh, and I suggest you ask a mod to change the title of this thread to something that describes the subject better. You might get more people who feel the same way to come in and support you.
If that particular feature was disabled because of the load on the server, and if neither the server nor the load on the server has changed, why would they re-enable the feature?
Maybe after April 22 (when the load should presumably settle to a new level), the hamsters will have caught their breath enough for the admins to expand the search feature. Or maybe the Chicago Reader is considering buying new hardware with our subscription fees as we speak. But until then, I’m not holding my breath waiting for new bells and whistles.
I doubt that it’s feasable, even with a significant hardware upgrade. The messageboard has to index every occurence of every word in every post that’s above four letters. It racks up quick. I’ll use my site as an example: 1700 members and 820,000 posts and the database is around 800 megabytes. The part of the database that stores the search info is around 300 megs… almost half of the whole thing.
If I allowed three-letter words to be indexed (most places don’t - I don’t either) the size of the index would easily go up 50% if not more, pushing me over a gigabyte for the whole thing. While this isn’t necessarily a problem for me, this database is a LOT larger. I’d be willing to bet it’s 4 or 5 gigs already. Increasing the search index would only make it more unwieldy.
However, they can add certain three (or less) letter words that the software will index and allow searching for. I did this with common things like “XP” and “MP3” on mine.
I wonder if it is possible to start a convention where everybody 4 letter-izes any word that they think should be indexed by adding a standard character? For example, you add the # character to any 3 letter word you would like people to index. I would rather people adopt this practise than slowing down the system searching for all 3 letter words or them decided which 3 letter words will be indexed.
Plus anybody who used this practice would automatically be thought of as l33t by those in the know.
I very much doubt that we will ever allow 3 letter searches. Our archives are too frigging big.
I already opened a Pit thread about subscriptions.
This really belongs in ATMB, but I’ve answered it for you, so I’m closing it. We are NOT going to have a zillion threads about subscriptions in the Pit.
