I know your fucking 2-year old intellect urges you to push a lot of buttons, but KEEP OFF THE GODDAMN SEARCH BUTTON! Searching every user on every forum from two years ago takes a lot of fuckin’ bandwidth, and while you pick your ass for twenty minutes while your search is completing, there’s probably 200 users on the board waiting for a damn thread to load, getting really pissed.
For those of you with the common sense of an ebola-infected gibbon with ADD, I will now instruct you on proper search-conducting behavior:
[ul]
I. Determining your desired results
[li] Before you give in to your addiction to press the damn button, figure out what you want to find. Enter a specific user on a specific forum, or detailed parameters for a forum-wide search. Using your brain now will yield big dividends in the future.[/li]
[li] Find out, roughly, the date of the OP of your desired thread. For example, if you know the thread was started 6 days ago, do not choose “2 years ago”. Makes sense, right?[/li]
[li] Determine the posters in the thread. If the thread was written a long time ago, or the date is unknown, search by Username, preferably whoever wrote the OP. That way, not only do you find your desired thread, but others in which the user participated. Whoopee![/li][/ul]
[ul]
II. Initiating Search Procedure
[li]OK, now that you’ve determined your search parameters, click the Search button (giddy laughter abounds).[/li]
[li]Enter the information. Steer clear of those hazardous “Match Any” radio buttons, instead going for “Exact”. “But how can my puny intellect grasp such a concept?”, you ask. Have no fear, for I have concocted a rhyme using only your grade-level vocabulary. Gather 'round, and partake:[/li]
“Click on Any, and you’re a pity,
click on Exact, or go sit on a tack!”
Sometimes I fear I am too kind.
[li]Click “Perform Search”. (more giddy laughter)[/li]
[li]Marvel at your new-found abilities.[/li][/ul]
[list]
III. Conclusion
[li] The search takes less than 10 seconds. You find your thread.[/li]
[li] Your fellow posters are not interrupted in their thread-reading by a server slowdown.[/li]
[li] All is right with the world. (For now, anyway, but that’s a topic best left for another thread).[/li]Congratulations! You have now completed SDMB Searching 101. Here’s your diploma. You have now started the long hard road out of gibbon-likeness.
Hey hey, don’t eat that. It isn’t food.
Back to square one. Sometimes I wonder why I even try.