Gentoo forum search sucks

ShakyJake · n00b Joined: 20 Sep 2004 Posts: 46

I'm sure this HAS to have been mentioned, but please dear God in Heaven add the option to "search TITLES only". I can't believe this isn't already there.

rickj · Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 5:18 pm Post subject: Search for a technical term

I suspect part of the problem is that this is a technical forum, but the search is set up for a general, non-technical user. This makes it difficult to search in a specific way, leading to lots of duplicate threads. For example, I have a portage problem, reporting of which must inevitably include the string:

dev-lisp/cl-mt19937

but there is no way to convince the search engine to look for this specific term. Instead it "edits" my search term to

devlisp

which nets me 95 matches, mostly (perhaps all) irrelevant. I don't have the time to read 95 threads on the offchance that one may be relevant, so if the title is even a little unspecific, I have to start a new thread. The next poor boob who tries the search will get this irrelevant post, too.

We desperately need a way to quote a search string and cut the editing right out.

kallamej · Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 6:14 pm Post subject: Re: Search for a technical term

rickj · Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 6:50 pm Post subject:

Fascinating. The exact same search term is now edited, as you correctly say, to

devlisp clmt19937

and shows two items. This was not the result before I entered the two items in question. You can readily check this by editing just one digit, and searching

"devlisp clmt19939"

Possibly the search engine indulges in further editing if it sees a null result, broadening the search in the hope of "helpfully" returning *something*. In fact, of course, a null result can be very helpful.

kallamej · Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 7:27 pm Post subject:

It removes anything it can't find in the word match table. It wasn't always this way, but due to the all too common search phrase "C compiler can't create executables" returning nothing due to strings shorter than 3 characters not being indexed, we changed it to silently drop non-indexed words.
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rickj · Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 7:40 pm Post subject:

Effectively, this means that a null result will be returned only if the search string contains none of the words in the original search string, even when the string is quoted. This is highly counter-intuitive.

May I suggest that the ability to discover that there are no existing posts on a topic is valuable. If the search engine took quotes seriously, i.e as indicating a string which should be used unmodified, that ability would be regained, while still retaining the capability to drop non-indexed words from unquoted strings.

Grahammm · Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2005 3:31 pm Post subject:

What about changing the definition of a 'word' so that special characters (+, -, . etc) form part of the word unless either proceeded or followed by white space. That way 'libstdc++.so.6' and '3.4.3' (eg a version number) would count as words but the dot at the end of a sentence would not form part of the preceeding word.

Cintra · Advocate Joined: 03 Apr 2004 Posts: 2111 Location: Norway

Are you aware of the possibility to use the google search: site:forums.gentoo.org "whatever" ?
Mvh
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Grahammm · Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2005 9:16 am Post subject:

tomk · Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2005 11:02 am Post subject:

rickj · Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2005 4:16 pm Post subject:

This will go a long way towards solving the problems, including the null-search glitch.

masseya · Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2005 7:17 pm Post subject:

cokey · Advocate Joined: 23 Apr 2004 Posts: 3355

XtAzY · n00b Joined: 18 Jan 2005 Posts: 23

yea i dunt like the search feature here... im really new to linux but when finding stuff here via search, even with keywords not listed on the "list", it still gives me phony or unrelated threads... or mayb the phpbb search function sucks

hmm mayb a switch to vbulletin or invision?

cokey · Advocate Joined: 23 Apr 2004 Posts: 3355

hey Ian dude, hows it going?

I do have to say to everyone, i know from first hand experience that tomk and Ian! are pretty much the 2 best people in the world at php
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Theophile · Apprentice Joined: 31 Mar 2004 Posts: 285

I came in here to post a thread with this exact title. Someone help me understand why I cannot perform a serch without my search terms getting removed? If I search for:
required function

it drops "function" and only shows results for "required." WTF is that about??? And it does it for almost every search I do.
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BigBaaadBob · Posted: Sat Dec 24, 2005 5:37 pm Post subject:

That is especially annoying because you should be able to search for a phrase like "media server" but the stupid engine thinks it is being helpful by deleting the word "server". BTW, I mean physically including the quotes like most search engines do, meaing that the word "media" must be immediately followed by the word "server". That is not the same as a keyword search on the words "media" AND "server".

OTOH, I think you can use google search on the forums by using the "site:forums.gentoo.org" feature.

nixnut · Posted: Sat Dec 24, 2005 9:27 pm Post subject:

cuban · Guru Joined: 23 Aug 2003 Posts: 448 Location: Houston, TX

I'm having trouble with some of my searches. Most notably I searched for "nagios perfdata" today and perfdata was removed from my search. Any pointers?
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kallamej · Posted: Mon Mar 20, 2006 11:32 pm Post subject:

Merged the previous post here. Please see my explaination a few posts up about non-indexed words.
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NaiL · Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2006 7:24 pm Post subject:

This is gentoo knowdge, we need it usefull.

doblebo · Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 7:18 pm Post subject: Re: Gentoo forum search sucks