I know that searching puts a huge strain on the hamsters, so I was wondering if it would be better to search for a previous post on a topic, or to just go ahead and post a new thread.
I am thinking of a specific example but the idea could include other areas, thinking mainly of questions in GQ.
Say, for exapmle, I want to search for the word ‘computer’ there are bound to be dozens of hits. This search will take quite a long time and might not find exactly what I am looking for. Should I just post a brand new question?
The problem with that approach is this: you post your new thread, of which you do not know whether it’s been covered before. Helpful as the GQ posters are, they read your OP and think: “Hey! We did a thread on that last month!”. So, now we have 6 or 7 helpful GQ’ers frantically gunning the search engine, looking for the thread at hand.
Whereas you could have found it with one focused search.
So, you’re not only saving bandwidth by not posting a new thread, you’re also saving bandwidth by not inviting others to search.
Since it’s almost inevitable that someone will happen by and search for earlier similar or relevant topics anyway, I’d have to say you’re better off doing the search yourself, right off the bat.
After I did the search, I could only see posting a new thread if none of the threads I found answered what I wanted to know, or if I wanted a point clarified. And to let others know I’d already done a search, I’d mention it, or link to the most closely related thread.
Probably the best thing you can do is carefully think about your search before you do it. If possible, search only titles and try to pick your terms so that if it’s there, you’ll get it on the first go. I also try to limit it to one forum, but now that I think about it, I doubt this helps.
I like AudreyK’s plan. And when you explain in your post that you’ve already searched, indicate the terms on which you searched - this would prevent people from just replicating your own futility, at least somewhat.
Probably the best thing you can do is run your searches off the Boardreader site. It’s very fast, and completely bypasses the SDMB’s valiant little hamster. Plus, it has nearly all of Our Winter of Missed Content, albeit in poorly-formatted cached copies.
According to those who would know better than I, this does, in fact, help. The database is organized in such a way that it’s efficient to search one forum at a time, and it can then completely ignore most of the database (those parts containing other fora).
New HTML standard (or is it XML?). Whenever you have a tag that doesn’t come in pairs, such as <br>, you’re supposed to put a slash in the tag after the name, to let the browser know that there’s not supposed to be a </br> tag somewhere down the line.
Sadly, a lot of the Missed Content is now gone from BoardReader too. The SDMB seems to be reassigning the threadid numbers from that period. Once the numbers get reused, BoardReader seems to pick up the new thread with that number and overwrite the cached thread with the same number. (I printed out some threads when we first found out about BoardReader that are no longer there.)
Those threads are still there as far as I can tell, HS. Just click on the “Cached” link instead of the thread title. For instance, here is Boardreader’s cached version of one of the Geneva Convention debates from January. It only takes you to the new thread that’s been assigned that threadid if you click on the link in the thread title from the Boardreader search.
femtosecond, so far as I know, there never was a plan to reconstruct the lost threads. While it’s certainly possible, it would be a nightmare of a job, and I would suspect that it would require the SDMB to be shut down for an extended period of time (a week, perhaps?) if everything goes right (which it proably wouldn’t). Given that there is only one person with the required expertise and authorization to do this, and he does not have huge chunks of time to be working on this board, and given that there are several thousand people who would go stark raving bonkers at going without the Dope for a week at a time, I’d say that trying to restore the lost posts is a decidedly unwise idea.
This was said even before spurdon offered to provide the raw data.
I wasn’t really thinking about database surgery, more of creating single, static html pages plus an index (doesn’t need to be pretty), then putting it in a folder somewhere on the board server.
The only known copy of the Winter Of Our Missed Content wouldn’t be just someone else’s cache anymore, and the data would be back again (and could be browsed through and linked to) on a server the Chicago Reader has control of.
At least our admins should request the data from BoardReader to have a second copy (don’t forget to send them a coffe mug!), even if you print it out to put it under the short leg of Cecil’s wobbling throne until someone finds time to convert it. Heck, let me have the raw data and I’d be happy trying to see if I could do it.
Can we add something to the “search” feature? Many times I’m looking for a thread started by a particular poster and since the hamsters don’t like me (since whenever I try to search using the title of the thread, I always get get a “no results” response), it would be nice if we had a button for “Thread Started By” in the user name search. That way, the hamsters wouldn’t be throwing out every thread in a particular forum that a poster had replied to, and only those threads that they’d started.
