Problem searching the board (but folks, try not to search)

About This Message Board
#1

I wanted to know if someone had started a new Enterprise thread. So, I thought a quick search from yesterday would be less of a workout on the hamsters than having to open one or two Cafe Society pages. However the search failed. I am puzzled because I’m subscribed to one that should have popped up in the search. Searching entire posts (yes, I confess I’ve done a couple) seems like overkill when I know what I’m looking for must be in the title.

I searched using the following criteria (without the quotes):
Search By Keyword: “Enterprise” and later “Enterprise*”
Search By User Name: “”
Search Forum…: “Search titles only”
Search For Posts From…: “yesterday”
Sort Results By… “in descending order”
Result: vBulletin Message box with “Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms.”
It should at least have found “Enterprise: Exile spoilers”.

I concerned because if my input was good and the search failed to work correctly, maybe faulty searches are putting an unnecessary strain on the hamsters.

  1. Did I search correctly?
  2. Is searching less of a strain than opening a few windows simultaneously?
#2

I once had the same thing happen to me … I searched for something “since yesterday” which I knew should be there, but it wasn’t found. I wondered if it’s something to do with time zone differences. What does the search engine mean by “yesterday”?

:confused:

Julie

#3

For the past few days, every time I’ve tried to search for anything, all I get is the “Your search is in progress…” screen. I once walked away from the computer for half a bloody hour, and when I came back, my search was still “in progress”. :mad:

Corner Case: The search engine can get a bit skidgy when you search in titles only. Also, I’m a bit unclear on your choice of forum: “titles only” is not a forum. Did you search only in the Cafe, or “all forums”? Other than that, you didn’t do anything wrong. But I’d search for “entire thread”.

Shrinking Violet: it means in the last 24 hours. If the thread was last updated less than 24 hours earlier, your time, then it should be included in “since yesterday” when you do the search.

That wasn’t very clear, was it. Okay, suppose you’re in the eastern time zone (USA). If you haven’t done so already, set your option to EST. Now suppose the last post in the thread you’re looking for was timestamped 1:15 PM when you looked at it, with your EST setting. If it was posted by a west coast Doper at 10:15 AM their time, or a UK Doper at 7:15 (?) their time, it’s still 1:15 PM to you. So you should be able to bring up the thread in a “since yesterday” search at any time until 1:16 PM, your time, the following day.

#4

Corner Case even though you said not to, I searched anyway. I mean, I tried not to, but the impulse carried me away. Anyway, I got the same result you did.

Rilchiam, when he said “Search titles only,” that’s what he (sorry if you’re not a he, Corner Case) had selected under the “Search forums” area of the search page.

#5

Rilchiam,

I can’t do a search either - it hangs up after I enter the search parameters. I have a cable modem.

This is extremely frustrating, but I am trying to figure out a way around it…

#6

Not sure what’s going on. I’ve put a call in to the tech department.

your humble TubaDiva
Administrator

#7

An update on the situation.

Jerry sez:

"The server has been restarted.

“Don’t know what is going on with search. . . The general issue is the server is overtaxed. Between 1000 to 7000 MySQL database errors happen on the server every week. It’s highly likely we have database inconsistencies leading to search inconsistencies. Rebuilding the search engine index would take two weeks. I don’t have time to do that.”

Hopefully a restart is all it takes to fix things. Amazing how well that works sometimes.

your humble TubaDiva
Administrator

#8

Wow - and I was worried that I had had 3 errors in 31 months. :eek:

I can back this up. Re-indexing the UnaBoard took nearly 16 hours, and we had only about 100,000 posts at the time. Multiply by 40 times the number of posts here, and…

And, of course, when Search is re-indexing, the server is slowed to a crawl. Worse than the normal lunchtime crawl, too. The SDMB would be essentially unusuable whilst re-indexing.

Sadly, eventually it might have to be done in the far future. Search has no good ability for easy incremental repair (without involving some serious person-time), and the errors will accumulate until finally the Search function becomes somewhat hard to use. Overall, however, I’d say the SDMB Server is doing a very good job, given the traffic/resources ratio.

#9

Why not turn off the search function all together and link in FAQ or MB front page to use Boardreader.com, or something similar?

#10

I found a topic in a few seconds.

Just use:
http://www.google.com

In the search box put:
site:http://boards.straightdope.com enterprise

Note: You must include this:
site:http://boards.straightdope.com

Your pal, handy