Definitely not working

Your analysis appears to be correct

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Grow with data: Dynamic Sports Data | eBay store

Well uh, I did stay at a Holiday inn once :P

Definitely broken, I performed the ultimate test.

Hopefully Dan offers you a prize! Like ST swag or tools or something. :P

It's OK. Based on most of the posts, I don't think the search has ever actually worked.

on it.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I didn't think anyone actually used the built-in forum search feature. My success using it has been marginal, at best. I always use google with the "site:forum.slowtwitch.com" added to whatever search I'm looking for, and always have far better success.

Bingo. They should just redirect the search box above to do that.

it's back working now. we had a reboot this morning and solr didn't come up on boot (for those who're interested in that stuff).

as for our search function ever actually working, i gave myself a task, to see how many times you've used the word "poop" in a post, what came up is all 7 times you've done so. it took me 15 seconds. what would you like me to search?

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

My guess is that people aren't getting to the "advanced search" to search for Threads vs Posts. The link to get there isn't exactly in an intuitive spot.

i agree about that. i'll see if we can do something to make that more obvious.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I use it all the time in the classifieds to look for specific parts. Helps a ton

I appreciate the search function, I really do, but for practical purposes it's usually worthless for me whenever I search for anything meaningful. For example, find where I gave a user a bulleted list on curing their IT Band issues. Username nickwhite (me). Let me know how many steps it takes you to find that information.

Then, go to google, and do a search (here is the example at google).

I can almost find what I'm looking for instantaneously on google, where I have to sift through tens of pages of results using the Slowtwitch search engine.

The google fu is strong in you

It takes you 1 step here. Go to hot forum topics. Turn the arrow down. You don’t just get threads, you get a curated list of the current most helpful threads on l IT band syndrome. Pardon! I don’t mean to talk you out of it!

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Well.... Shit. I never even realised that was a clicky. All this time! That is good to know.

To elaborate a bit on my previous comment (so that it doesn't come off as a blanket trashing of the forum search function)... most of the time that I'm searching something on ST, it's the result of some random thought that has popped into my head during the course of my day. Rather than having to (1) navigate to the ST forum (2) go the search function (3) go to the advanced search function (4) see results, I can simply go to the address bar of my browser (which doubles as a Google search bar) and type in whatever I want to search on with the appropriate site filter (e.g., site:slowtwitch.com) and have results in a few seconds without having to actually navigate through ST-land to get there. I'm not saying I couldn't get the same results with the ST advanced search, it just takes many more steps to get there.

there are times when i also go to google to search something. try as i might, i can't seem to do what google does better than google does it. however, because i know how to use both our search functiona and hot forum topics, most of the time i go there, because of the nature of what i'm searching for. but i might be searching for things you aren't.

that said, i'm constantly looking for ways to upgrade what we do. and, if you knew the power of hot forum topics, when properly curated, you'd be very interested in that tool.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman