The Search function doesn't really work...

…Or else some old threads have been deleted. Which is it?

Sometimes when I search for an old thread I posted 3 or 4 years ago, I get no hits. I widen the search strategy, and in the hits I get, my thread is missing, even though I targeted the words I remember typing in there.

The search function does work for some old threads, but NOT all of them. What is wrong with it? Why can’t I retrieve my old threads? Have they just been deleted, or what? I didn’t think the SDMB was actually deleting whole threads now.

This is embarrassing because I know my mind is going, but I can’t find the search function anymore. I was going to look up threads about sax. Or was it about socks, I can’t find my socks either. Anyone seen 'em?

O nevermind, it’s because I’m a guest, isn’t it?

I predict you’re going to get a few guest “hey what about this” about things that have been dicussed many times before.

Are you sure the specific thread you’re looking for weren’t lost in our Winter of Missed Content, Jomo?

Yeah, Jomo, I’ve noticed the “missing thread” phenomenon myself. The SDMB lost about three months worth of threads from around the winter of 2001-2002. Remember when we were on that temporary board for a few weeks in early 2002?

IIRC, smaller-scale board outages have occurred throughout the SDMB’s post-AOL history, leading to a loss of some posts. I’m not 100% certain about that, though – an admin could give you better information.

I know about the lost threads from December 2001 to March 2002. I wasn’t talking about those. I was thinking of a thread I started back in 2000 and just isn’t there any more.

When I ask it to tell me all the threads that Jomo Mojo has started, it returns 244 threads, and the earliest date of one of your started threads is 1-2-2001.

What was the thread about?

RM, if you’re here, please get back to me. I’ve tried emailing you for two solid days and the emails keep getting bounced back. I’m trying to respond to your request for subscription assistance. Email me at greenfleurdelis@hotmail.com, or post here.

I bet it’s an indexing thing. In order for Search to work properly, the SQL backend needs to refresh its indexes, which is what Search works against. This can be done on the fly if the server has CPU cycles available, but during heavy usage that falls by the wayside. (That’s why the “view” and “reply” counts are sometimes out of whack.) Given everything else that’s been keeping the powers-that-be’s hands full, I’m guessing that staying on top of index functionality has dropped down a few pegs on the priori-meter.

I second the index thing; the other day I was looking for the original 1920s style death ray thread (title: “Are scalar weapons for real?”) The search didn’t find it, but the thread is still there.

The search function hasn’t worked properly since they converted to the new version of VBulletin. The results aren’t always sorted by last posting date, when they should be, and often it will omit very recent threads from the results. If you go back to the search page and make an insignificant change to the search parameters (like changing the “find posts from” value) you sometimes can get those recent threads to appear in the results. This never happened with the old VB, dammit! :mad:

The Jomo Mojo name came into being on January 1, 2001, courtesy of our ever helpful Tuba Diva. Before that, my Doper name was ishmintingas. That’s why you didn’t find anything earlier than that because searching for thread-starter posts only retrieves the current name. Searching for all the threads I posted in brings up (most of) my earliest posts beginning in 1999.

You cannot search for thread starters when the name is no longer in use. I tried searching for ishmintingas as thread starter but it was rejected as an “invalid” name. If you search for threads that Jomo Mojo posted in, the ones that I started in 1999-2000 still show ishmintingas as the starter in the hit list, although my name within the posts has been automatically reset to Jomo Mojo.

The thread I’m missing, I forgot the title I gave it, but it was about playing Yahoo! chess games online. I had the distressing experience of being “booted” from a game, and it was counted as a loss against me. I went WTF?!?! In real chess, if you kick over the chess board, you’re the loser. But in Yahoo! chess you win by upsetting the virtual board. This is sick. I started the thread to vent and to ask why anyone would accept it this way. I can’t remember the answers that other Dopers posted, and wanted to review them because I had the crazy thought maybe I might try Yahoo! chess again. Somebody stop me, please.

I searched using Yahoo and chess as search terms. I searched using booted and chess as search terms, and various other such combinations of words I definitely remember using in the OP. It just won’t come up. I guess it’s either deleted or unindexed. It does make a difference which one. If deleted, it will never be retrievable. If it still exists but was missed in indexing, some hope remains it might again become retrievable if the index bug is fixed.

[bump]

I’m still noticing the same phenomenon; threads which I am absolutely positive exist are not appearing. After the last upgrade, I figured it would take a while to reindex everything, but right now the Search function is telling me that Collounsbury and I never posted in the same thread, which is certainly not the case. What gives? Any news?

The search function is (still) flaky.

If you do a search on “onion” and “headlines”, the thread Possible ONION Headlines (Warning WTC Humor) does not show up.

I don’t think that this is something that the Search function is designed to answer. Last I knew, if you put two posters’ names into the name field, the search engine would return threads where posts by those two posters were adjacent. So if you posted and Collounsbury posted immediately afterwards, the search engine would find that, but if someone else posted in between, that would not show up.

True, but in many cases, the two members will have been quoted using the ‘reply’ button, resulting in the usernames being embedded as part of the actual text of the posts, so searching for the two names in the Key Words field should find those cases, or searching for one username in Key Words and the other in the User Name field should find posts where the other quoted the one.

Besides lost threads from the hack attacks, it appears the SDope search features no longer allow one to go back more than one year! That means I’ve lost some good info I thought would always be in the archives, dang it! :mad:

Do others agree, or I imagining that older versions of the SDBoards allowed searches going further back in time? - Jinx

Hey, I’ll correct myself! Jinx, you’re all wet! You ignorant slug! There is an option to search one year or older…duuh!

Get with the program, Jinx!

  • Jinx

That’s exactly what I was doing. In the interim, I have realized somehow I reset my default search to 1 week ago, but even if I set it back to “any date,” there is still stuff missing that I know exisst and have found on previous searches.

Apparently, text in quote boxes is no longer searchable.
And there is a gap in the searchable post from 08-02-2003 to 01-13-2004. Nothing posted during that time shows up in a search. And no, that is NOT the winter of our missed content.