What bucketybuck said, plus just because you don’t use need it doesn’t mean the rest of us wouldn’t prefer to have it back.
So you don’t use it here, have you never searched on Google or Amazon or Youtube more than twice inside of a few seconds, for any of the reasons in the above post? Can’t do that here.
Well, at least one previous poster agrees with you about that.
Sure but I don’t search the boards even a thousandth as often as I might search Google. My question wasn’t why anyone would want to search again after making a typo or failing to find the desired results, but just why one would search *here *with such frequency that the delay became a major inconvenience.
Since it’s a stress test thing, I doubt it would be useful to test on the test server. Even if you get a lot of searches, you aren’t going to get the rest of the changes the board normally has. You just will not be able to hit the test server at the same level as the real server.
Yes, gradually lowering it might be a possible test, but it would need to be done over times when the site has peak load. But this would also have a high time investment.
If I had to guess, a lot of searches that are performed could be done on Google. I know most of mine could, but I like the convenience of having things in order. (Sorting in Google seems to remove results, which makes it useless.) It might be useful to have the basic search go to Google, and only have the advanced search hit the server.
Statistics about how much this reduces searches might allow for a calculation for reducing the search timeout to have current server load levels.
If the “New Posts” function is coded correctly, it should be using a timestamp database index, making it little/no more intensive than what happens when you click in to an individual forum anyway (which is nothing more than a ‘new posts’ search filtered by forum name).
It’s possible that the search is less intensive, but they lack the tools to specify the timeout be just for keyword searches.
Well, and given the many, many other threads about this, I think it may be just more than me and the one other poster.
And my answer was that sometimes you need to sure repetitively in a short period of time because you make a type or failed to fine the desired results, as well as what the previous poster said (board errors).
So you’re trying to find an old thread on something, you search for it, and nothing comes up. Literally nothing. 2 minutes. Try again. You spelled a word wrong. 2 minutes. Try again, don’t see what you’re looking for. and on and on.
From time to time you’ll even see new threads with people asking for help finding old threads just because they’re sick of searching.
Count me as another one who doesn’t even bother to search because I know that it will be an exercise in frustration.
I have been timed out when I didn’t know what for. I wasn’t just coming up with searches to try and really wanting to do it without 2 minutes between. Why would anyone complain about that? The system harasses you and refuses to perform a useful function.
BTW when I say “searches” I’m talking about googling too. For me I can use one google search about half the time. The rest, I’m honing in on the right language to use, the keywords. That means more than one search. Quite obviously you can’t do that here. I don’t think it’s a good thing any more than it would be for google to do this.
I believe we have less posting than we used to. Less activity on the same server means more room for spikes. Do you have (& can you share) any info on our average daily post count over a period of the last year or two?
If they’re throwing an extra hamster onto the wheel that powers this place, then we shouldn’t have the same server issues we’ve had in the past.
ECG, I think you’re defending based upon part of an argument.
I’ve taken to using Google for SDMB searches, as per this stickied thread. It’s far faster and there is no annoying limitation.
But, as people have pointed out ad nauseum when this issue has come up, there are certain types of searches that can only really be done with the internal search function. Google is often useless, or almost useless, for such searches.
Thanks, brah, if only we were made aware of this earlier.
There shouldn’t be a need to use bloody Google for searches. Searches made here should just work.
No! Really??? Golly if only someone had told me that in one of these threads!
So tell me buddy, how do you search by a specific forum for a phrase that a specific poster said within a given date range on Google? Oh wait, you can’t. (actually I think it is possible to do at least some small part of that if you screw around for 10 minutes in some of the more obscure search settings on Google. But that takes longer than the time between search here .).
So, wouldn’t the better solution be to fix the search here so it works like every other vB board in existence?
Let’s face it. The reason there’s a limit on the searches has nothing to do with the searches and everything to do with the behind-the-scenes stuff. It’s as though you took your car to a mechanic and said every time the car goes faster than 20 miles an hour, it makes a horrible grinding sound and begins to spew smoke. And the mechanic says “Jeepers! That’s an easy fix!” And proceeds to put a throttle on the accelerator so the car can’t go faster than 20 miles an hour. Despite the fact that every other car can go much, much faster. “Oh, and don’t forget” he says “Keep off the highway as well. If you need to go somewhere that requires the highway, take a bus to the nearest stop and walk the rest of the way”
This would not have been my idea of an acceptable solution. And yet it’s what we have here on the Dope
One of the things that really bugs me about using google is that it doesn’t pull up one result for each thread, but rather each result is one hit and sometimes it doesn’t even bring you to the correct page (then you often have to go to the full version so the quotes look correct). IOW, if your search term shows up 20 times in one thread, you might get 1000 results and 20 of them all from one thread, intermixed through all the results. Real PITA when you’re trying to find something.
Also, they’re not sorted. I know there’s some way to sort google results by date. But this is all really annoying when there’s a perfectly good vB search engine that works just fine, but TPTB have crippled it so I can’t refine my search results unless I want to spend ten minutes on it and by then I often lost interest.
It’s more like going to a cafe where the toilet has been out of order for weeks, with a sign saying WAIT FIVE MINUTES BETWEEN FLUSHES OR IT WILL FLOOD, and on reminding the owner that he still hasn’t called a plumber yet, being told, “Hey, the McDonalds down the street has a perfectly good toilet, just use theirs”.
Actually, your last car did that but the “fix” worked so well you took your new car directly to the same mechanic and had him preemptively “fix” it as well.
I would suggest 3 searches in a 15 minute period. Let people make a typo and recalibrate their search if they need to! In the name of decency…
Wow, that’s harsh!