If it’s not hard to program, a 240-second delay every second search would serve your purpose just as well, I think, and be much less annoying.
I do an average of, perhaps, two searches per week. But the two searches are often back-to-back, due to the need for a correction or refinement.
If you’re searching, use google search instead. These days you can just put ‘at boards.straightdope.com’ at the end of your google search, you don’t even have to go into advanced search options.
The syntax I’m familiar with is to append site:boards.straightdope.com to the end of my search.
For example, I could search for searching the SDMB with Google site:boards.straightdope.com and it would only return results from this site.
Wait – you want to make the wait time longer? :dubious:
Why?
No, he wants the average wait time to be the same.
“240-second delay every second search”
I agree this sounds like a good idea. I frequently have to wait to refine my search, because my first search doesn’t turn up what I’m looking for. Although I would vote for 3 searches then a 6 minute wait, if this were a democracy.
On the few occasions when I have been foiled by the 120 second rule it has been a typing error and the 240 second delay every second search would have served me just fine.
Same here–except sometimes the error was choosing threads instead of posts.
The problem with using Google is that it doesn’t always return complete results. I’ve just searched for one of my posts, and Google failed. The board’s search never fails to find the truth.
Oye, its better than the 300 second rule we used to have.
Also, with Google you can’t restrict the search by username, thread title, posting date, etc. the way you can with the board’s own built-in search.
Yes, you can. (This is basically the same link that Arnold Winkelreid provided up-thread, but goes to the specific post.)