In an effort to make the board more accessible to people, I have disabled the “search any date” and “search all forums” functions.
You can still search, but you have to be a bit more specific. Searching any date and searching all are incredibly resource intensive and is the main cause of the bottlenecks we’ve had lately.
I make no promises that this will be a cure, but perhaps it will help as we look for more solutions.
Hope this helps. Please keep me apprised of any weird messages and/or other oddnesses that might happen.
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
Another of those “greater good for the greatest number” sort of things we have to do sometimies.
I might be willing to add on other parameters as needed, but I want to hear from folks just what exactly they need.
At the same time we can’t get too inclusive or we’ll be right back where we started. We simply cannot have the system continually doing searches through a million posts. Well, we can, but that means shutting people out of the system at the same time. Choose your poison here.
Not to be critical or anything… I understand the indexes on actual post content must be huge. But won’t this also increase the number of threads for questions that have already been asked and answered?
Would it be possible to just allow thread title searches for all dates? (Those searches should be much more efficient.) Or allow open searches only at low-traffic times of the day?
Not that I could make a difference, but I say that’s fair enough. The “search all” feature has always been very useful for me but if it’s a nightmare for the boards/server then I’m sure we’ll soldier on somehow without it
I agree. I don’t care as much about the “search any date” (although it seems to make old threads inaccessable), but won’t disabling “search all” just increase the heck out of searches? (“I know someone posted a link to X yesterday…where did I see it?”)
I don’t know if it’s possible, but would a “search all since yesterday” choice be possible? (I see how “search all any date” would be a nightmare).
Well, if it truly does speed up processing time, then I suppose I’ll have to sigh and say “go for it,”
But a few things to consider:
[ul]
[li] Once a thread has been inactive for 90 days, it’s pretty much gone.[/li][li] If you’re searching for activity in threads you’ve contributed to, you now have to do up to 8 smaller searches rather than one large one.[/li][li] If you’re looking to see if anyone has mentioned you in a thread you’ve never seen, it will become significantly more difficult[/li][li] If these additional searches take more time than the large search, the change becomes prohibitive[/li][li] If these additional searches cause an even greater server problem, the change becomes prohibitive.[/li][li] This is the first time I’ve ever used the “list” function in a thread. How spiffy.[/li][/ul]
You can still use the “search” icon at the bottom of everyone’s posts. If you can remember WHO posted on a given thread, look for one of their posts and then simply click on “search.” Of course, if that person has not been around for 91 days or more, you won’t be able to find them at all, except hunting through a forum page by page by page by page…
I’m going to go talk to someone who knows more about this subject than I do, see if I can find out if short searches are better than long ones and if so, why.
And I’m not sure how much we can refine the search parameters, but I’ll look at them some more and see what we can do.
FWIW, this is the first time in I can’t begin to tell you that I’ve been able to access the board in daylight hours. Coincidence? You tell me.
When we get in those “timed out” bottlnecks, I’ve been told we’ve had as many as 200 users at one time not been able to access the boards at all. As one of those most unhappy 200, I can’t help but want to move things along. At the same time, I don’t want to make this board more difficult to use either … but there’s some sort of medium ground there somewhere. Help me find it.
Would it be helpful to have discrete date search parameters, rather than the incremental ones we have now?
For example:
Since yesterday
2-5 days ago
6-10 days ago
11-30 days ago
31-60 days ago
61-90 days ago
91-180 days ago
181-360 days ago
361 or more days ago
Or something like that? Right now, every search includes the dates of all those that are “less than” it, and there’s gotta be a redundancy in there somehow.
Anyone else think it’s a bit ironic that the 90-day limit goes into effect right after we were asked to bump any pre-2000 threads that were worth saving?
I certainly don’t mind getting rid of the “search all forums” option. If you’re looking for anything specific, it’s really not that hard to narrow it down to one or two anyway. And for most of the forums, it probably won’t make any difference if somebody starts a new discussion on an old topic because she couldn’t find the old thread. New voices in GD, new MPSIMS flirting and Pit flaming.
However, I bet the 90-day limit in the fact-based forums–especially GQ and CCC–will cause some problems. Get ready for even more “-gry” and “the whole nine yards” questions from people who never even had the option of searching more than a small portion of the database.
Personally, I think you might be better off getting rid of the “search all text” option and limiting searches to thread titles. Besides, that might even encourage people to post titles that actually describe their contents.
I think that limiting searches to particular forums is fine. However, I would really hate to lose the ability to “search by any date,” at least in CCC, CSR, and GQ (and maybe GD). I don’t know if this can be separately adjusted by forum, but if it can perhaps we could retain that capability for the more factual fora.
It would in case be useful to have more options in the “search by” field, such as the discreet search times that Scarlet67 proposes; or perhaps one that allows “more than 90 days ago.”
Another possibility is might be limiting “all date” searches to off hours and weekends.
I’d much rather see sigs and smilies go than to lose the ability to search by any date in CCC, CSR and GQ, but I don’t know the relative contribution to server load.
We’ll look at your suggestions and see what we can do.
As for not being able to see the really moldy oldies, I’ve been recommending for a long time that we set up a read-only forum of these classics (or not so classics, as the case may be). Gotta teach our newbies to go there first before asking up.
This is very much a work in progress, so your suggestions and etc. are very much welcome. We really want to give you the most we can and accommodate as many users as we can – and all at the same time. We also need to do this with the resources at hand, so please bear with us as we struggle through.
I guess this pretty much sinks my idea for the SDMB Encyclopedia that I posted about here a few days ago, as I will be unable to gather data on the old threads, even if I do it in the wee hours of the morning.
The idea of a “read-only” forum to access some of the oldies or, as I look at them, classics (ala Guy Stuff, Flat Earth, etc) sounds promising, but without being able to do an “all-hands” forum search, aren’t you perhaps inviting more discrete activity? For instance, I’ll now have to do 5 searchs, individually, rather than just the one. Perhaps, I know, yet another suggestion, but perhaps a division and grouping:[ul][]IMHO, MPSIMS, Pit[]GQ, GD[]The rest[/ul]Same goes for the time:[ul][]since yesterday[]5 days[]two weeks[]one month[]one yearany date[/ul]Just my $0.02.
Just thought I would suggest posting an ‘announcement’ to the effect that the search function has been altered (possibly with a link to this thread), so that the users are not unduly perturbed when their searches return no results. This is especially true for the ‘All Forums’ option, which was the old default when you conducted a search.
Thoughts I’ve had (which may require too much “tweaking,” which I seem to remember reading recently was to be avoided):[ul][li]replace the “Search Forum” drop-down with check boxes with (for example) GQ as the default choice[/li][li]change “Search In” default option from “Entire Message” to “Subject Only”[/li][li]change the query that happens when you click on “Search” from a post (the one that looks up other posts by that poster) so that it limits to a smaller time frame; IIRC, it currently returns all posts by that user … how about their last 30 days worth instead?[/ul][/li]FWIW, the options I’d like to see under “Search By Date” are [ul][li]Since Yesterday (for things like the Paula Poundstone thread I goofed up on today)[/li][li]Since 3 Days Ago (for when I haven’t looked at the boards since Friday)[/li][li]Since 7 Days Ago (for when I’ve been on vacation)[/li][li]Since 60 Days Ago (for more general-purpose searching)[/li]All Dates (for real research to make sure I’m not bringing up something that was discussed and settled ages ago)[/ul]
People frequently don’t Search anyway before they Post New Threads, particularly in GQ, GD, Columns, Staff Reports, heck, practically all the forums, so why weep and wail over an alteration of the Search function that changes the way they don’t use it in the first place?
