I HATE the Search Engine on this Forum!!

[Samiam]

The Search Engine here has suxd since the new forum. There. I said it. Truth.

 

Really, it can't find anything for SOTW????? No posts related to that at all????

 

I searched by SOTW, sotw, Sotw, SOTW Vol 1, SOTW Vol 3, Sotw Vol 1, Sotw Vol, SOTW Vol......nope, not one single post was found.

 

Huh....odd that I see one at least once a day on the board though. The Search Engine should be fired. That is all.

[Jean in Newcastle]

Here are some with the tag SOTW.

 

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/index.php?app=core&module=search&section=search&do=search&fromsearch=1

 

I went to advanced search by clicking on the magnifying glass icon in the top right hand corner. Then I put SOTW in the "tags" space of the search.

[Arcadia]

I just use google to search

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/tags/forums/sotw/

[PachiSusan]

I can't seem to get my "My Content" to work correctly either. There are posts that I have made in threads and when new posts are added, they don't show up in "My Content" anymore. It's frustrating.

[BakersDozen]

Very frustrating when I'm searching for a thread I started, I know exactly what words I used, yet I can't find the thread again. grrrrrrr

[helena]

I agree with all of these frustrations, it's really slowing down my research. Even with the advanced search feature it's not coming easy to me.

[fraidycat]

Yes, it is annoying.

 

The search on the old boards wasn't all that great, so when we were promised a BETTER one with this set-up, that is one thing that I was looking forward to even though the rest of the changes were making my skin crawl - I'm not a big fan of change, it seems. :)

 

Now - we still have hard(er) on the eyes black on white - I still miss the blue, and there doesn't need to even be a search box on the page because it's absolutely useless. If that area was filled with photos of cupcakes and kilts for those who enjoy such things, it'd be a more worthwhile use of space on the page, IMO. And I don't even care about kilts!! As for cupcakes... I'd rather eat them. :D

 

So, to sum it up - I'm still rather disappointed in the "new and improved" boards, overall.

[PachiSusan]

Yes, it is annoying.

 

The search on the old boards wasn't all that great, so when we were promised a BETTER one with this set-up, that is one thing that I was looking forward to even though the rest of the changes were making my skin crawl - I'm not a big fan of change, it seems. :)

 

Now - we still have hard(er) on the eyes black on white - I still miss the blue, and there doesn't need to even be a search box on the page because it's absolutely useless. If that area was filled with photos of cupcakes and kilts for those who enjoy such things, it'd be a more worthwhile use of space on the page, IMO. And I don't even care about kilts!! As for cupcakes... I'd rather eat them. :D

 

So, to sum it up - I'm still rather disappointed in the "new and improved" boards, overall.

 

Wait - you see the forum as black and white? I see white, grey, and blue with a tan band on the top of the page.

[fraidycat]

 

Wait - you see the forum as black and white? I see white, grey, and blue with a tan band on the top of the page.

 

I have all those colors, too, but the part I focus on (the threads) are miles of white background with black text, with the occasional colorful signature and avatar along the sides that I tend to ignore, for the most part.

 

I'm still hoping for custom skins, but I'm not holding my breath.

[PachiSusan]

Ohh, I see. I like the black and white - very crisp and easy to read. I need the contrast for my old eyes.

[Hoot]

Agreed. Lately, the mechanics of this place has just been falling apart, and it seems that those who used to work behind the scenes are nowhere to be found. Last I checked, nobody bothers to even respond on the tech boards anymore.

[TracyP]

I can't seem to get my "My Content" to work correctly either. There are posts that I have made in threads and when new posts are added, they don't show up in "My Content" anymore. It's frustrating.

 

There are a couple threads on this over on the Site Discussion board. In this one they said that they are working on the My Content issue. I guess it became a problem when the big board attack happened. *sigh* These issues are very frustrating.

[boscopup]

I have never used this forum's search feature, either before or after the change. Why? Because Google is sooooooo much better! It will actually catch acronyms (the old board didn't handle 2 or 3 letter acronyms at all). Simply go to google and type:

 

sotw site:welltrainedmind.com

 

Easy peasy. It will search ONLY this site, and you'll get all kinds of threads. You can even do this:

 

sotw vs moh site:welltrainedmind.com

 

to get comparisons between SOTW and MOH. Again, really easy. So save your blood pressure and just use google. You'll be much happier, and your research can continue very quickly and easily. :D I even have "welltrainedmind" saved as a word in my phone's dictionary, so I can "Swype" (Android) that word quickly when I want to search for something on this forum. :)

[TracyP]

I have never used this forum's search feature, either before or after the change. Why? Because Google is sooooooo much better! It will actually catch acronyms (the old board didn't handle 2 or 3 letter acronyms at all). Simply go to google and type:

 

sotw site:welltrainedmind.com

 

Easy peasy. It will search ONLY this site, and you'll get all kinds of threads. You can even do this:

 

sotw vs moh site:welltrainedmind.com

 

to get comparisons between SOTW and MOH. Again, really easy. So save your blood pressure and just use google. You'll be much happier, and your research can continue very quickly and easily. :D I even have "welltrainedmind" saved as a word in my phone's dictionary, so I can "Swype" (Android) that word quickly when I want to search for something on this forum. :)

 

There have been some complaints about threads not even showing up in a google search. Or the thread is there, but when you click on it - it is unavailable.

 

But, yeah, you are still better off going this route.

 

 

 

The old boards were nice for when you wanted to search a specific poster. The only way a poster will show up in google is if someone has asked that person a question or talked to them using their board name. Obviously, that doesn't happen in many threads. That used to be one of my favorite ways to use the boards. :(

[Mom2TheTeam]

I have trouble with the search on this board too. So, I end up starting a new thread with a question that I know I should be able to find the answer to and has probably been discussed/answered many, many times. It's frustrating!

[GailV]

I have never used this forum's search feature, either before or after the change. Why? Because Google is sooooooo much better! It will actually catch acronyms (the old board didn't handle 2 or 3 letter acronyms at all). Simply go to google and type:

 

sotw site:welltrainedmind.com

 

Easy peasy. It will search ONLY this site, and you'll get all kinds of threads. You can even do this:

 

sotw vs moh site:welltrainedmind.com

 

to get comparisons between SOTW and MOH. Again, really easy. So save your blood pressure and just use google. You'll be much happier, and your research can continue very quickly and easily. :D I even have "welltrainedmind" saved as a word in my phone's dictionary, so I can "Swype" (Android) that word quickly when I want to search for something on this forum. :)

 

:iagree: I thought the search function on the old board was just as bad. I tried the new one a few times, realized that I wasn't getting what I wanted, and went back to google. I love the idea of saving welltrainedmind as a word -- I don't have an Android (at the moment) so that isn't relevant (yet!).

[boscopup]

The problem with the Google search was fixed long ago. Someone had accidentally turned off the routing of old-style urls to new-style urls, and that caused Google problems. I reported the problem, and John turned it back on right away. Problem solved.

 

The poster that mentions searching one poster's posts has a good point... That type of search doesn't work well anymore. If you go to their profile to see their posts, it only shows a few of them. I miss that feature. There are some people worth stalking on here. :lol:

[Down_the_Rabbit_Hole]

I tried to use it today for a post I made yesterday and it could not find it, not even in the advanced search. Frustrating.

And I miss the MY CONTENT, that was extremely useful. I am not understanding why it stopped working and why there is nothing being done about it.

[TracyP]

The problem with the Google search was fixed long ago. Someone had accidentally turned off the routing of old-style urls to new-style urls, and that caused Google problems. I reported the problem, and John turned it back on right away. Problem solved.

Not trying to be argumentative. :) But this is a new problem.

 

The poster that mentions searching one poster's posts has a good point... That type of search doesn't work well anymore. If you go to their profile to see their posts, it only shows a few of them. I miss that feature. There are some people worth stalking on here. :lol:

Hear, hear to the bolded!

[nmoira]

There are a couple threads on this over on the Site Discussion board. In this one they said that they are working on the My Content issue. I guess it became a problem when the big board attack happened. *sigh* These issues are very frustrating.

 

 

I think they are part of the same indexing issue. Threads you post to on a given day show up in My Content that day, then disappear the next. (At least most of them do; there's a social group thread in that always shows up in mine.) Threads that do not show up in My Content don't show up in board search. Ditto for other's Content. The master index is not getting updated properly.

[Murphy101]

I can't seem to get my "My Content" to work correctly either. There are posts that I have made in threads and when new posts are added, they don't show up in "My Content" anymore. It's frustrating.

 

Yes. Me too. And my notifications are spotty. I won't get any or all, but when I go to the board, I'll see there has been replies. Sometimes I've even been quoted.

 

But I just figure I'm getting what I'm paying for. Sigh. ;)

[boscopup]

Not trying to be argumentative. :) But this is a new problem.

 

Is it fixed now? I just searched for:

 

search engine site:welltrainedmind.com

 

This thread was the third link, and clicking on it worked.

 

I wonder if they temporarily had the same issue again.

[TracyP]

Is it fixed now? I just searched for:

 

search engine site:welltrainedmind.com

 

This thread was the third link, and clicking on it worked.

 

I wonder if they temporarily had the same issue again.

 

I don't know. My .02 opinion is that everything is wonky right now. These issues seem to come and go from day to day and not affect all threads equally. :confused:

[nansk]

I can't seem to get my "My Content" to work correctly either. There are posts that I have made in threads and when new posts are added, they don't show up in "My Content" anymore. It's frustrating.

I sent a message to the Forum Admin yesterday with just this query.

 

The Search on the old forum used to work very well.

[Dana]

And tags were extremely helpful. They aren't anymore :(

[nmoira]

Is it fixed now? I just searched for:

 

search engine site:welltrainedmind.com

 

This thread was the third link, and clicking on it worked.

 

I wonder if they temporarily had the same issue again.

 

It was... odd, and only the case for the first couple results on the page. I'm not sure now it was random: I think the thread title and URL were just mismatched when the spider indexed them. Hard to tell if it was Google's problem or the site's, or both.

[TracyP]

Re the google search. I was just looking for a thread I started - it is not in my content, ahem - through google. I tried MM 6 and MM6 and finally got it in a search for Math Mammoth 6. But MM6 was all over the thread, so it should have showed up in the earlier searches. Plus I was thinking that the last month or so I have wondered why my search terms get less hits. I used to get pages of results with some search terms, but lately will get only 4-5 hits. I assumed that I was searching less talked about topics, but now I am thinking that a lot of threads are missing. I don't know if this would be a google issue or a board issue.

[Stellalarella]

I have never used this forum's search feature, either before or after the change. Why? Because Google is sooooooo much better! It will actually catch acronyms (the old board didn't handle 2 or 3 letter acronyms at all). Simply go to google and type:

 

sotw site:welltrainedmind.com

 

Easy peasy. It will search ONLY this site, and you'll get all kinds of threads. You can even do this:

 

sotw vs moh site:welltrainedmind.com

 

to get comparisons between SOTW and MOH. Again, really easy. So save your blood pressure and just use google. You'll be much happier, and your research can continue very quickly and easily. :D I even have "welltrainedmind" saved as a word in my phone's dictionary, so I can "Swype" (Android) that word quickly when I want to search for something on this forum. :)

 

 

Thank you

[PachiSusan]

Ok, well, at least I don't feel so picked on that my content doesn't work and everyone else's does!! ;)

[journey00]

I have noticed also and it is very annoying. Now I go to Google and type the key word I am searching and type The Well Trained Mind Forum immediately after. WA LAH! Perfect results. ;)

[Mommy22alyns]

Yeah, I've had an awful time with it too.

[Penelope]

Re the google search. I was just looking for a thread I started - it is not in my content, ahem - through google. I tried MM 6 and MM6 and finally got it in a search for Math Mammoth 6. But MM6 was all over the thread, so it should have showed up in the earlier searches. Plus I was thinking that the last month or so I have wondered why my search terms get less hits. I used to get pages of results with some search terms, but lately will get only 4-5 hits. I assumed that I was searching less talked about topics, but now I am thinking that a lot of threads are missing. I don't know if this would be a google issue or a board issue.

 

 

I have noticed this too. I think it might be Google, because it also happened when I searched another forum that uses a different format than this one.

 

It used to be that I would get a bunch of hits and then I could click on"more results of this type" or "more results from this site" or something like that, and there would be pages of results. Now, though, I might search through google for a certain program and get four results only, when I know there have been gobs of threads discussing that particular program.

[boscopup]

It used to be that I would get a bunch of hits and then I could click on"more results of this type" or "more results from this site" or something like that, and there would be pages of results. Now, though, I might search through google for a certain program and get four results only, when I know there have been gobs of threads discussing that particular program.

 

 

I had this happen back when I used to use AVG. They snuck in this "AVG Search" that replaced Google. It uses Google, but filters out a bunch of stuff. And even after uninstalling AVG, they still had the search in there if I typed in the url box. Drove me nuts!

 

Now if you're having the problem with straight Google, maybe they've been copying AVG search. :tongue_smilie:

[zoo_keeper]

Re the google search. I was just looking for a thread I started - it is not in my content, ahem - through google. I tried MM 6 and MM6 and finally got it in a search for Math Mammoth 6. But MM6 was all over the thread, so it should have showed up in the earlier searches. Plus I was thinking that the last month or so I have wondered why my search terms get less hits. I used to get pages of results with some search terms, but lately will get only 4-5 hits. I assumed that I was searching less talked about topics, but now I am thinking that a lot of threads are missing. I don't know if this would be a google issue or a board issue.

 

 

When I search

tracyp "mm 6" site:welltrainedmind.com

in google, your 3/9/13 thread was the first hit. Is this the thread you were looking for?

[TracyP]

When I search

tracyp "mm 6" site:welltrainedmind.com

in google, your 3/9/13 thread was the first hit. Is this the thread you were looking for?

 

 

Yep. I just searched by your terms and it was my first hit, too. It seems like google is picking out the most likely hits and filtering out all others. Okay, it is definitely google. I tried Startpage and got 10 hits (slightly better), then I tried bing and got 8 pages of hits. I guess I will be using bing to search the forums.

[nmoira]

I just did this in Google and got pages of links.

 

site:forums.welltrainedmind.com mm6

[EmilyK]

I think you are right that google etc is the way to go for now. It works well if you want to find hits on a narrow topic or certain text or program.

 

I miss something that I used to be able to do until fairly recently here -- if there are general topics I am interested in, I would search every am with my coffee to see what had been posted in that area -- ie the words I was searching for until it quit working were (separate searches) french, geography, audio, kindle, music.

That way, I would see if there were any new postings in threads containing those words, without looking through all the subforums that could have postings on those topics. A couple of weeks ago that quit working.

[TracyP]

I just did this in Google and got pages of links.

 

site:forums.welltrainedmind.com mm6

 

I did too. Weird. I am playing around with this and I am 99.9% sure that I have always searched

 

mm6 site: welltrainedmind

 

and had it work just fine. Now it doesn't but when I try

 

MM6 site:welltrainedmind.com

 

that does work. That is it? the dot com? I really don't think I was searching with the dot come before (as in a couple months ago when I said it was working fine), but I have to admit there are really good odds that I am wrong. ;) I must have unconsciously dropped it at some point. Thank you all!

[mathnerd]

I just use google to search

http://forums.welltr...gs/forums/sotw/

 

I go to google and search the wtm forums from there.

[Eagle]

I know there are other search issues and this doesn't solve everything, but I discovered recently that I wasn't using the search box at the top of the page properly. If you are reading a thread the box defaults to searching only that thread. If you are in a forum (say, General Ed) it only searches that forum by default. If you click the words "This Topic" or "This Forum" you can select "Forums", which will search all the forums. Hope that helps someone, it made a big difference to me!

[Sebastian (a lady)]

And tags were extremely helpful. They aren't anymore :(

I really miss tags on the high school board. There were so many good and useful tags over there. Someone would ask a question and another poster could tag the thread with a few references to dozens of related threads. No more.