Apparently you can, but it takes some effort.
The five minute fix has been in place for several years.
It was last revisited by Jerry in the fall of 2008 when we migrated to the new server. Even with the new server and the system upgrade it was found to be necessary to remain in place. As far as I know there are no plans to change it.
Another thing, IIRC, the five minute search was originally implemented because some people where trying to bring down the servers by searching over and over and over and over again. Wasn’t that the case? I tried looking for it, but got a database error and I have to leave for work so I can’t try searching again right now.
You’re probably remembering this thread, where Jerry rather overenthusiastically branded eight searches in a row as abusing the search function. It did crash the board, true, but it seems unlikely to be intentional.
Were we or were we not told it was to be temporary/short-term?
And has a lesser restriction or no restriction been field-tested?
Simmer down. She has to search to see if that’s what was said. This will take roughly 12 weeks.
Was it meant to be permanent? Probably not. IIRC it was hoped that by updating the software and having more server capacity the system would be able to run fine without it. But that’s not what happened and so the search delay had to go back in, it has proven to be necessary. As was stated earlier it’s a tradeoff for better overall system functionality. Without the delay in place there’s more problems with reading and writing to the board and other necessary functions.
I don’t think I’m putting words in Jerry’s mouth by saying this but I do believe he had come to the conclusion that the only thing that would fix the search situation would be to go to a third-party search engine altogether. This has been considered in the past and might be considered in the future if time and resources are available. But as far as I know Jerry has no plans to do anything else to the system at this time so what you see at the present is what you get and should be what you expect to see and get until such time as changes are announced.
Off topic humorous anecdote:
I was reading the thread and at the bottom of my screen was post number 16 by Cisco, and I thought to myself “Hmmm, wonder why DSYoungEsq hasn’t jumped in yet.”
And then I was pleasantly rewarded as I scrolled to the next post.
Yes, but this time I was critical! Notice the sad smiley! 
The question that never seems to get answered: how is it that just about every other equally large, if not larger vBulletin-based message board can function perfectly well without having a 300-second delay between searches?
Actually, I know of at least one medium sized board that I participate on that has eliminated the search function to avoid over-taxing the servers.
It is always a function of resources, and we’ve never had sufficient resources for this Board.
Can we at least agree that it’s disingenuous to say that “it was ascertained” that the 5 minute delay has to stay, despite the new server, when nothing else was ever tested? It was decided, but it wasn’t decided based on actual, you know, evidence.
It seems like if the people are here, the resources should be a direct result. At least that seems to be the case on every other large messageboard I know of. The only other large board that I know of that charges money is Something Awful but I believe (someone correct me if I’m wrong) they have A LOT more functionality than us.
Why not eliminate “New Posts”, for a time? As much as I hate to say it, perhaps that could be doing it?
Do you mean ‘go to first new post’ or elminating new posts entirely?
No, because that’s not what happened.
We did try going without it, the board locked up, we put the delay back in, it stopped locking up. How much more evidence is needed?
Since the new hardware installation, has anything shorter than 5 minutes been tried? If so, what were the results? If not, perhaps a gradual shortening of the delay period could be attempted; try reducing the delay period by a minute at a time until a noticeable impact is observed?
*** Ponder
When I get a call at work from a client who’s having a performance problem, my first goal is to get them up and running again. Sometimes while troubleshooting, I inadvertently find a workaround, similar to how Jerry found that increasing the search delay to 300 seconds seemed to prevent the board from locking up. It would be extraordinarily lazy of me to just advise them to use the workaround forever, kind of like when Jerry decided to leave the search delay at 300 seconds indefinately.
I know, Jerry’s busy, has lots on his plate, many other responsibilities and demands on his time, yadda yadda yadda (I sure wish my clients would buy that excuse). Maybe he’s already run a trace to find out where the search process is hanging, researched whether other boards have had this problem on this version and how they fixed it. I don’t know. What I do know is that if he had put a fraction of the effort into fixing this problem that you, Ed, and the other mods have put into defending him, it would be resolved by now.
By the way, telling us to just go use Google is even more pitiful because you’re basically admitting that Jerry is just not up to the task of fixing it.
One medium-sided board does not equal most larger boards.
Insufficient resources? We don’t know what’s really powering the SDMB, except new dedicated servers every couple of years that should be able to handle a busy message board. I hope the powers that be aren’t knowingly purchasing servers they know are woefully underpowered for the task at hand. We’re never given the specs of the servers, and to suggest fixes violates an unwritten “no junior administrating” rule; I got smacked down with a warning about that a year or so ago.
Can someone teach me how to do a google search on the SDMB? It can’t be as simple as just opening the Google homepage and typing the text below, right?
“Maastricht” AND “<thread subject>”
