It happens more often than not that my attempt to bring up a search will produce this result, even though i have entered the search only once.
Why is this?
Perhaps you had previously clicked on “New Posts”? That constitutes a search.
The search engine here is admittedly a bit wonky. This happens from time to time. For some reason, some folks are more prone to it than others.
If the search engine here is giving you fits, you can always search the board using google:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=638051
I just got this several times. I get it after clicking the post-count to get Who Posted? window. That click doesn’t count as a search I don’t think — I’ve done this before and, anyway, can get multiple Who Posted? windows within 120 seconds.
Furthermore, the message is always “Please wait 120 seconds” or “Please wait 119 seconds” even if I deliberately wait 5 seconds after the Who Posted? window appears.
However, if I wait 120 seconds after getting the Who Posted? window my search succeeds. Yay!
For the umpteenth time, a simple solution to all these woes and bugs is to simply replace the
One search every two minutes
throttle, with a
Three searches every ten minutes
throttle, or such.
HTH.
PS: There are many useful searches that can be done via SDMB Search that cannot be done with Google Search.
Many of the buttons that you wouldn’t think counted as a search actually do, although I’m not sure which.
That sometimes happens to me. What I suspect may have happened is that when I clicked on the button to perform the search, it somehow registered as a double-click and was interpreted as a second request to immediately perform the same search again.
It’s much too sensitive, like a hair trigger. It counts everything as a search. It isn’t like that on other sites so I reckon it isn’t the users fault and it doesn’t need to happen.