I’m going to 'splain something here and then we’re not going to talk about this anymore, at least not in this thread.
When we allow someone who has been a pain in the patoot to return as a member of this board – as we did with Silo – it’s understood that they will pay more attention to how this board operates and they will cooperate with board personnel. They’re back on a highly conditional basis, as we already found their behavior wanting in the first place.
Silo knew the rules – and knew better – and chose to be a jerk. We have a solution for that.
First rule of this board (official) is “Don’t be a jerk.”
Second rule (unofficial, but no less important) is “Don’t screw with the moderators.”
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
who thinks that “rolling eye” posts show a lack of respect – and nads.
sorry, someone had to
And thanks for the extension to two years. I still want the old search back, but I also want the SDMB to provide me with a sex life, so I guess I can live with wanting.
We are considering the Sex Life option for members in good standing, but the pricing chart is a real bitch to figure out. Do you pay us, or do we pay you? Double-rates for leaving the lights on? Do we have to respect you in the morning?
Anyway, to get back to things that annoy the mods in a different way…
I don’t know how big the SDMB db is, but there are many search engines that should be able to search very quickly. Autonomy, for example, can easily reside on another computer and process the searches there. I work with it - it is extremely fast (although the docs are poor). You would merely need to write a piece that sends it each document meta-data and text to index, along with an identifier. After that, when someone queries, send the query to autonomy, get the result back, plug it back into vb-land, and that’s all you have to do.
Autonomy is expensive though, and other search engines (Verity, etc) aren’t much cheaper. Luckly, there are a few free engines out there ( Lucene(http://www.lucene.com/ is one). They may not have the nice separate-server capability Autonomy has, but that’s not too difficult to program by hand.
It wouldn’t be a snap to do, but it’s doable, and the results would be quick searches with virtually no load on the server.
With the kind of actions you have been taking recently, you’re absolutely right. Any comment on them would only be at home in the Pit.
Excuse me, I’ll just toddle over there now.
Esprix, if that’s just a smartass commentary on the world, that’s fine.
If there is some hidden text, here, I’m simply missing it. (I get the feeling I should be hanging out, more, in the Pit or MPSIMS so that I can keep up with who is supposed to be at odds with whom. Chat is out. I’ve been to one chat, years ago, didn’t enjoy it and am not going back.)
Someone asked in a new thread to hear about a specific experience dopers might have had. I had described my own relevant experiences in an older thread (and thought I had explained it well) so I wanted to link to the older thread. (It also held other folks’ stories I thought the OP in the new thread might want to read).
I do a search for myself as username, MPSIMS, last 60 days, jail & insurance & sorority. No hits. IMHO, last 60 days. No hits. Could it have been in the Pit or GD or GQ? Or maybe it was simply longer ago than that…
I try various permutations and eventually find the thread I’m looking for after about 8 consecutive searches.
Now manny people wonder, and I must ask: isn’t this at least as much of a burden on the SDMB servers as doing a single search for any date in any thread matching the original parameters?
II.
I would again like to express my support for a read-only “archives” board on a separate server with its own separate search engine. You could keep EVERYTHING (no more pruning) and history-obsessed folk like myself could search the archives and link to them, and yet keep the current posts (last 90 days, let’s say) on the main server, which should then be robust and trim and nimble on its metaphorical little feet, yes?
AHunter3 it took you longer, yes. But many searches are not as difficult, yet, to ‘make sure’ one would set the perameters to ‘all forum’ (since it couldn’t be set for instance to check ‘MPSIMS and IMHO only’), and ‘any date’ ‘just in case’. Then, the server is checking every thread that’s every been done, vs. checking the threads in one forum for the past 3 months. big difference in work load.
look at it this way. By using our own brains to filter out some of the unnecessary checks (gee, I **know ** I didn’t post it in CCC or ATMB), we’re saving server usage.
sorry, please let me note for the record that I was not assuming that I’m a mod/admin here, or that I can speak for them, just offering another observation about the work load on a server.
By checking the searches you did, you avoided searching the 2015 threads in ATMB, the 1294 in CCC, the 698 in CSR, the 5159 in GD (and those are BIG ones), the 26543 in GQ, and probably half of the 6451 in IMHO and half of the 24796 in MPSIMS, (don’t know if you checked the 4161 in the Pit).
In addition to eliminating a couple of the forums to be searched, this breaks your search into smaller bite-sized chunks and should give the server time to chew a bite of the vegetables and bread between each mouthful, rather than jamming the entire tuna down it’s throat head first.
Or, at least that’s our current theory.
Please remember, this is all experimental right now. If what we are trying doesn’t help, we can always revert to the old protocols. We’re just looking for some empirical data at this point. There’s nothing that says what we are doing is carved in stone, or irreversivble.
Well, what I’m about to offer isn’t “empirical data”, it’s “talking out my ass” data. But we use what we have.
When this was first changed, I commented here that the test for me would be how well the system worked on a Monday.
Well, except for about an hour and a half period from about 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm, I had no problems logging on and reading posts.
For a Monday, that’s a tremendous improvement!!
So, I hereby retract my wish for the return of the “search all” feature. If disabling it allows me to log on during Monday afternoon, I want it to stay disabled.
And thanks to the mods, admins, and techs for their works! Great job, and it’s appreciated.
I’m terribly sorry you had to see that, tomndebb. To bring you up to speed - I suspect it is Esprix commenting on an issue regarding the UnaBoard over here. If so, I imagine it is going to make Tuba pretty damn angry…so I would just ignore it.
But then, I could very well be wrong…I am so many other times.
I can’t access the Search function at all. Yes, I have e-mailed TubaDiva, who says the techs are onto it. (Thanks for the replies). What I’d like to know is – is this just me? Or does anyone else have problems? What did I do to offend the great Search gods? This didn’t happen before the change.
Icewolf, do you have cookies turned on? The Search function was recently restricted to registered members, and if you don’t have your cookies on, the board can’t tell that you’re registered.
Great job, and it’s appreciated.