Searching 101

[Stealthbomber]

This isn't really an error or a suggestion so I apologise if this is the wrong place for it but I need help!

 

It's about searching.

I'll run you through the way I do it and then maybe somebody can tell me if there's a better way.

 

If, for example, I'm searching for a particular picture of a 1911 pistol and I can recall that a particular user (let's say it's Marlowe) owns the gun, I go to the pictures forum and then use the search function to search by member name.

I then scroll down the returned list of threads until I find the "Pictures of your 1911s" thread.

Great!

But wait, that thread is 170 pages long and Ican't see any way to figure out what page(s) Marlowe has posted on.

Not great.

 

So, am I doing something wrong or is there a better way to find results?

 

I know each post has a tag number in a thread but I don't see any way that the search results make use of those numbers.

Excuse me if this is addressed somewhere and I just haven't seen it or if there's a way of using the search function that I haven't figured out.

 

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Edited December 29, 2006 by Stealthbomber

[Kousnik]

I think this may be of help to you -

 

You can select to display results as posts not as threads so you can see posts that the user has posted in the thread individualy.

 

 

Is this what you mean?

[Stealthbomber]

I think this may be of help to you -

 

You can select to display results as posts not as threads so you can see posts that the user has posted in the thread individualy.

Is this what you mean?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Ahh, right!

 

Let me have a look and see if I can see how to do it. I have sometimes thought I should be able to return results as posts but I've honestly never seen a way to do it.

 

Wahay!

That was the nudge I needed.

I figured out that if you enter the thread title in the "keywords" box and then enter the required username in the "filter by user" box and then click the "show results as posts" button you can narrow things down immensely.

 

Maybe I'm the last person to figure that out. It wouldn't be the first time.

 

Thanks anyway.

Edited December 29, 2006 by Stealthbomber

[Marlowe]

It's a good point, all the same. I always forget to do this when I search, and end up trawling through fifty pages of thread before I happen across the right post.

[wolfstein5]

Didn't want to make a new topic, so I'm adding to this one. Either I'm doing something wrong, or the search function isn't working correctly.

 

I was trying to find info on "Ghost_Rider's" alleged pistol rig, so I searched for "rig" under his name, in all forums, any date, showing results as posts. I get "You searched for: rig

 

Unfortunately your search didn't return any results." etc.

 

But Ghost_Rider has made posts with the word "rig" in them:

 

http://www.arniesairsoft.co.uk/forums/inde...dpost&p=1071106

 

What am I doing wrong?

[Wege]

I, too, am grumpy about the lack of 3 character search string allowability. Considering that there are a REAM of items out there with 3 letter codes.. KSC KWA KJW HFC to name just a few.

 

I am trying to find the problem and solve for the KJW SIG P226 (ahh those itsy bitsy search strings) yet.. it does not like them.

 

Is that a selectable feature?

[Catman]

I wish the search on here worked a bit like Google does and no it really doesn't work like Google, it tries but doesn't work.

 

For example you might want to do:

"Western Arms" OR WA 1911 strip guide OR takedown

the search on here fails to return results or gives incorrect results

 

Most of the time I end up not bothering with the search on here and going to google where I type:

site:arniesairsoft.co.uk search parameters here

 

Only issue with using google as the search engine is that it might not have had time to spider what you're looking for

[otherrandomhero]

To the 2 above catman: Make sure you have it checked to search in posts, not just in the topic title. If that doesn't help, I don't know what to do.

[Wege]

was doing both.

[Stealthbomber]

I suppose it's worth suggesting that google CAN, apparently, be used in this way.

A google search for "Arnies Airsoft Ghost_Rider rig" might yield decent results. I've heard of people doing this before although, I admit, I've never tried it myself.

[Chris North]

Using Google to search for "Arnies Airsoft Ghost_Rider rig" only brought up 5 results, none of them were relevant (although I don't really know what Wege was looking for). I also tried using the "search current site" button, but all the results were from the Review Database. I probably did something wrong, though.

 

I think a new search tool would be nice after a software upgrade. I don't think that there's a lot wrong with the current one, but I have to usually look through the search results for 20 minutes to get what I want, if it's even here.

[Arnie]

Google doesn't have access to the forums, therefore can't spider them hence it'll only pull up what it can see.

 

Search might be improved slightly, but having not used the new software I can't say by how much.

 

Search term length is currently limited to a minimum of 4 letter words.

[Catman]

To the 2 above catman: Make sure you have it checked to search in posts, not just in the topic title. If that doesn't help, I don't know what to do.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Trust me I know that much

 

 

I have had google return threads before, they used to get dished up in the lo-fi format. Has it recently been blocked from accessing the forum because of past performance issues? It favours the articles more but they either out of date or irrelevant.

 

I decided to tinker about: Searching on the new "Just Handguns" forum (because it's small ) and trying to get only the two take down guides (1911 & M190) that I posted up;

"Western Arms 1911 Take Down/Assembly Guide"

and

"HFC M190/M199 Takedown/Assembly Guide"

note that: being a muppet I spelt "take down" without a space in the M190 title

So I tried different search patterns

 

takedown "take down" +guide -18c +19 = 4 thread results, 2 of which are my desired

"take*" +guide -18c +19 = same results as above

take +guide -18c +19 = same results as above

take +down +guide +19 = still getting the results as above despite the word common to them all is "guide". Obviously the system is ignoring anything with a length less than 4 which is kinda annoying as I would have thought it'd work as long as one of the words was greater than 4 characters.

 

Taking a break I read some other threads and ended up wanting to search "8mm +chrono" of course "8mm" would be ignore so I tried it on the off-chance, of course it resulted in a sea of threads where just "chrono" appears

 

So I tried to fool it a bit with "chrono +8mm*" hoping the asterisk wildcard would count the space and it did but I got too many results so I tried the same trick again "chrono +8mm* +FPS*".... no results to display which is a little odd as it should have returned my post here: http://www.arniesairsoft.co.uk/forums/inde...dpost&p=1310173 and yes "search entire post" was selected

 

Tinkering some more I found "chrono +8mm* +*FPS" worked. Though changing the results to be "Show results as posts" resulted in, frankly; junk where it appeared to be displaying random posts that contained just "8mm" - Like there's different search rules for each option.

 

I'd investigate further but errr tired now and cba'd

[Wege]

as arnie said.. 3characters or less is not happening..

Sigh

[Catman]

as arnie said.. 3characters or less is not happening..

Sigh

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

maybe if you re-read my post?

[Wege]

I would not have thought that * was a valid search string character in this context, as I remember that to mean 'all'. I know, I can be slow at times.

But I still think that the searching system here needs to incorporate an ability for a 3 character string.

That is just my thought and does not detract from the wonderful folks here... maybe excepting that guy just above me..

 

Cheers

 

(edit for spelling, cos I R slow.. >_< )

Edited May 3, 2007 by Wege

[Catman]

 

Well * is a wildcard character so it can mean anything Arnie mentions going to 2 characters in this thread: http://www.arniesairsoft.co.uk/forums/inde...howtopic=106629

 

hehe Oh and I just tried "HK**" in the search and it came back with HK416s , HK33s etc etc. "HK** +MP5*" brought back HK MP5J/K/A results But seems to be ignoring spaces - so using the wildcard gets you part way there

Edited May 3, 2007 by Catman