3 Character Search

6th

I used to be able to search for 3 character words like mac by putt them in quote marks like this "mac" .... havent been able to do it for a couple of weeks - has something changed?

seamus

I recall Conor talking to me about this and how it would bend the database roughly over a pole and rape it with a 16-inch dildo.

So he's fixed that bug

6th

but it would be worth it ... 16inches isnt really that big!

mike65

Pain in the ass, RTE WHO SAS IRA, so many three letters names/words out there.

6th

6th

eVeNtInE

This post has been deleted.

Ross

Not until we rewrite search, sorry

Conor

Most 3 letter words take roughly 2 minutes to search for. That absolutely murders the database. Even one of those searches at a time causes issues for queries to the same database so making it a subscriber feature isn't really a solution.

Red Sleeping Beauty

I'm looking for a thread about the BBC and can't use the search .

Conor

http://www.google.ie/search?q=bbc+site%3Aboards.ie

Adjust keywords to taste.

DeepBlue

Ross wrote: »

Not until we rewrite search, sorry

That answer implies a plan somewhere down the line to rewrite search. However this thread is prefixed with [Won't Fix].
Just wondering whether there is a plan to improve the search to allow three word searches or if it's so low priority that effectively it isn't going to be improved?

Conor wrote: »

http://www.google.ie/search?q=bbc+site%3Aboards.ie

Adjust keywords to taste.

Yeah, it's a workaround but far inferior to searching a specific forum for keywords in a title for example.
Would there even be a way of limiting a three-letter-word search to titles in a specific forum rather than all of boards? Wouldn't that lessen the hit on the database?

Failing that is there some way of allowing for concatenating the search string? E.g. Searching for "Mad Men" currently results in nothing but a searching for "Mad+Men" should result in something?

Conor

DeepBlue wrote: »

That answer implies a plan somewhere down the line to rewrite search. However this thread is prefixed with [Won't Fix].
Just wondering whether there is a plan to improve the search to allow three word searches or if it's so low priority that effectively it isn't going to be improved?

There is a plan to fix search but I can't give you a timetable for when it will be sorted. Our ability to predict development tasks in the future is slightly clouded by the imminent release of vBulletin 4.x. When we get to see what that looks like we'll be able to better plan several future tasks. Search is one of those things.

The [Won't Fix] refers specifically to <= 3 letter search in vBulletin 3.x on boards.ie. If search is good enough in vBulletin 4.x we'll be able to take down the restriction. If not, we'll probably be providing another mechanism for structured search on boards.ie and if we have to go down that route accommodating short searches will be a feature we'll have to design for.

DeepBlue wrote: »

Yeah, it's a workaround but far inferior to searching a specific forum for keywords in a title for example.
Would there even be a way of limiting a three-letter-word search to titles in a specific forum rather than all of boards? Wouldn't that lessen the hit on the database?

Yes, all of those would improve the situation (restricting short search terms to titles only would give the biggest improvement). How much, I don't know without benchmarking them. I'm hesitant to spend any significant amount of time on them until we know the long-term timetable for handling search. I'd hate to hack vBulletin's search (those options above are not simply configurable) only to throw away the code shortly afterwards.

Ultimately though, those changes would be short-term workarounds. I'd much rather find a more permanent solution to searching boards.ie.

If it turns out that fixing search needs to be deferred for any significant amount of time, I'm sure we'll re-examine implementing workarounds like that.

DeepBlue wrote: »

Failing that is there some way of allowing for concatenating the search string? E.g. Searching for "Mad Men" currently results in nothing but a searching for "Mad+Men" should result in something?

Hmm, I thought that worked. I haven't used that in ages though. I'll have a look.