Searching the forums could be improved

froke

We have all done it:

You have a problem, you search the forums. You don't find an answer, so you start a new topic. The replies start coming in, you are eager for a solution, but the posts just say to search the forum. bummer.

Now I'm not saying that people should duplicate solutions by reposting them, but maybe give clues as to what to search for, or perhaps a link to the relevant post.

But the point I want to get at is the searching of the forums just plain sucks. For example, I was looking for the howto for bootsplash, and I knew I had seen this before, so I entered "framebuffer how-to" into the Quick Search box. The correct thread was way down in the 11 spot. This makes me believe that the Quick Search doesn't search thread titles. I think that thread titles should be the most important match since they are usually a description of the problem and contain all the keywords.

Maybe a quick solution would be to repeat the title at the beginning of a new post a few times, so that if the Quick Search uses matched word count, then hopefully searching will be more successful.

Any thoughts?
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Cocktail · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 24 May 2002 Posts: 93

My first thought to this is that the proper feedback channel should be to the nice people at phpBB who actually code the bulletinboard...

But as you are going there later, why not join up for some feedback.

I absolutely agree with you that in a forom the size of this, a good search engine is essential (although not necessarily very easy to code).
Other features I'd really like is to be able to continue a search inside a thread. For instance when I search for ALSA and Kernel 2.6 I get the 2.6 thread as a result. Now this is a valid result, but compleatly worthless as ALSA certainly is being discussed in this thread, but the thread is so large that finding the pieces I'm interested in requires a couple of hours of reading...
I'd like to see that when I get a thread from a search, I get the option "Next/Previous hit" next to the paging links on the top and botton that takes me directly to the postings containing my hits.

kojiro · Posted: Fri Feb 20, 2004 11:21 pm Post subject:

There's also this option:
Add the google keyword site:forums.gentoo.org or site:gentoo.org

Granted, it's a little out of date compared to the quick search, but it's also a little smarter.
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pbaumgar · Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2004 12:09 am Post subject:

I just started using this forum and I have to say I've been very frustrated with the results of my searches. When I search for a bizarre error message I get way too many hits that have absolutely nothing to do with my error message. I have often gone back to linuxquestions or just used Google to find my answers.

A perfect example is this search for "compiling kerner"....

http://forums.gentoo.org/search.php?mode=results&sid=e2bf50fabdab366e64def093c1c1fe50

Frozensun · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 16 Oct 2003 Posts: 82

I agree. My searching used to get me my answers always. Now I'll search for 30 to 45 min, find nothing relavent, make a new thread about it, and get answered with a link to the post I need (which is very helpful btw), but still kinda frustrating.

I just can't figure out why my searching doesn't work well anymore.

sridharinfinity · Posted: Fri Jun 11, 2004 7:05 am Post subject:

BTW, why all are thinking about posting docs, faqs, howtos, tips ..etc except normal discussions to the forums? Wiki is used just for that. We need to use Wiki rather forums for such purposes.

For discussion about Wiki vs Forums see
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=184351
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MaxDamage · Posted: Thu Jun 24, 2004 3:28 pm Post subject:

I agree with the too long thread problem. The search reports the thread but not the page. In a 25+ pages thread it's as it said nothing.
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Maedhros · Posted: Fri Jun 25, 2004 6:25 am Post subject:

MaxDamage · Posted: Fri Jun 25, 2004 8:02 am Post subject:

torklingberg · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 86

Also how come it is not pollisble to search topic titles only? It is possible to search message text only (good for what?) or both text and topic.

Otherwise I agree with the first poster. Searching this forum is almost impossible, since the good threads are drowned by newer, useless threads.

dhurt · Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2004 8:19 pm Post subject: