Forum search frustrations and tips

Gentree

I've finally got fed-up with the number of hours I waste searching gentoo forums and not finding what I need.

So I spent the last the last couple of days installing phpBB on my local system so I could see if I can improve the search ... it's open source, so maybe I can contribute instead of getting frustrated.

In the process I have found out a number of interesting things:

I'm not alone. Lots of gentoo users complain that they find the search inadequate .

phpBB has a system of "MODs" for exactly this kind of add-on, indeed there are some officially approved ones which could be useful improve the search.

Most are small and easy to add in.

Recent failures on forums.gentoo.org were due to the exessive load caused by the number of search requests.

What you should know about phpBB search.

There is a "stopword" list that silently eliminates frequently used words from the words we type into the search box.
That is why the search sometimes dumbly fails to find words we know to be a post. (try world file !)

When it says "No posts found" this is why! check out the list and avoid using these words:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?p=1689269#1689269

Also anything under 3 letters is not even indexed : so dont look for "qt"

Full-stops become spaces so we can never search for a version number : phpBB-2.0.1 becomes just phpBB, the rest is dropped.

The good news:

Big tip you can use Google to search the forum. Try the following in Google- site:forums.gentoo.org world file

The bad news :

official admin line is that anything not in the standard phpBB package is too much trouble to maintain so we're stuck with it. :evil:

I am hoping this message will help in understanding the limitations thus lowering frustration levels and helping to do effective searches.

The poll, I hope, may get the admins to look at this issue and consider the need to implement some changes. This would reduce the load on the system and make it work better all round.

Without the use of the forum I would have binned Gentoo a few days after _trying_ to install it.

Here's hoping...

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Deranger · Veteran Joined: 26 Aug 2004 Posts: 1215

Gentoo Forums "search" sucks big time! I use mostly Google for searching

Please fix it, or disable it

Maedhros · Posted: Mon Oct 25, 2004 4:45 pm Post subject:

I liked the idea that came from this post: use a different search tool. There was never any official response though, so I don't know what people think about it.
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holmis · n00b Joined: 16 Mar 2003 Posts: 72 Location: Sweden

I voted "Useful" since I have had lots of use for it.

But I do think that the search engine should not silently leave out keywords. It would be good if it toold users about the keywords that have been left out from the search.

Naturally a better search engine would always be nice -- but I wouldn't say that this one is not very useful.

Maedhros · Posted: Mon Oct 25, 2004 5:15 pm Post subject:

Oh yes, just to clarify, I voted Useful as well, since it works, and I use it often. It's just that sometimes you have to know exactly what you're looking for,

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Gentree · Posted: Mon Oct 25, 2004 5:39 pm Post subject:

Yep, well I've used it thousands of times since Gentoo became my main OS so technically I have to say I found it useful as well.

I also found it very frustrating.

If it worked better I probably would have had to use it about 5 times less than I did.

Thanks for voting , I'll get my brother is Florida to rig the results later!

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Linux, because I'd rather own a free OS than steal one that's not worth paying for.
Gentoo because I'm a masochist
AthlonXP-M on A7N8X. Portage ~x86

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20552

Including more info you've already gathered would've been good. Such as my response to one of your posts, and replies after another post of yours here.
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Gentree · Posted: Tue Oct 26, 2004 3:17 am Post subject:

Sorry I never even saw either of those replies >

To · Posted: Tue Oct 26, 2004 10:18 am Post subject:

I've runned a phpBB for over 2 years, and I've added several MODs. I can't consider them a security risk, but some of them may be heavy on the databases querys. That's why I don't recomend on big forums like this one.

Tó
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Shopro · Posted: Tue Oct 26, 2004 10:40 am Post subject:

I also think that MODs are sometimes really heavy on the database. I haven't used phpBB 2 years yet, but i have also tested many MODs and find them not so easy to maintaing if the whole phpBB need to be updated.
IMHO phpBB's search is both useful and not so useful.
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Gentree · Posted: Tue Oct 26, 2004 10:50 am Post subject:

Shopro · Posted: Tue Oct 26, 2004 10:55 am Post subject:

Yeah, EasyMOD does sound like the solution for this. But it has to become much better, since now it has screwed up things for me few times

I really hope it would be stable soon.
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matt_w · Apprentice Joined: 17 Nov 2003 Posts: 233 Location: UK

It's really useful, IMHO

Just make sure you separate queries with AND..

ie 'kernel AND modules' instead of 'kernel modules'

cyberpatrol · Posted: Thu Nov 04, 2004 3:29 pm Post subject:

I only answered useful because I couldn't find anything neither with qt nor with qt-3.3.3. :-(

Qt - at least qt-<version number> - must be found with forum's search.

And where is the list with the stop words?

knefas · l33t Joined: 21 Dec 2003 Posts: 828

zdawg · n00b Joined: 06 Feb 2004 Posts: 25 Location: Canada

I voted nader .. use Google. The site search should just link to google.
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xenofon · n00b Joined: 21 Dec 2004 Posts: 12

Apart from the search problems already mentioned, it should be possible to search for Writer... It's almost impossible to find my own posts and check for replies (unless there's a way to do this that I'm not aware of

gentoo_lan · Posted: Sat Jan 15, 2005 10:51 am Post subject: