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edoloughlin
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 19, 2003 10:23 am    Post subject: Re: Gentoo forum search sucks Reply with quote

I mostly use the forum search when I've screwed something up and need a quick fix. I'm generally not interested in the 'what's your favourite background colour' threads/polls and they do get in the way.

It would be really useful to have a 'troubleshooting search' that excluded the chat-type forums (the ability to do this on the avanced search would even help).
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ikshaar
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 14, 2003 7:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, pjp, thx for showing me that thread to respond to mine https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?p=281165#281165 but it's not very clear ...

Quote:
Not that tough of a regex... For matching (in a generic way) words of 3+ characters and version numbers, I might use the following for matching words to put into the index (offhand, could be more robust):
(\b\w{3,}\b|\b\d(\.\d){1,2}\b)


Either somebody can translate that into something I can use or does that simply mean that it's impossible to search on version number ??
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pjp
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 14, 2003 7:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I only scanned it, but I'm fairly certain that regexp was just a discussion on how to improve the search.

I was mainly pointing you to this thread for the second post, though there may be other related information.
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ikshaar
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 14, 2003 8:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

In summary : it doesn't work... :cry:

If dot of end of line are the problem why not replace them by space UNLESS they are beside a number, so you can keep the search on number without losing words at end of phrase.

4.3 becomes 4.3
end of phrase. becomes end phrase

Only annoyance is for :
xfree-4. becomes xfree-4.

But still the advantages overweigth the annoyance. IMHO.
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 07, 2003 4:31 am    Post subject: Could I get a forums database dump? Reply with quote

I was wondering if I could get a hold of a dump of the forum database?
I would like to experiment with a search engine. I was aniod with the full text emerge command (way to slow), and made a tool that does a full text re search simultaneously through the stable and beta packages of portage in a less than a second. I would like to try the same with the forums.
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arand
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 29, 2003 7:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

This is just a suggestion for future versions of the search function in the forums. One think I would like to see is the ablity search a specific thread. For example the gentoo icon set is like 20 pages long, it would be nice if someone was looking for a specific icon would not have to go through the entire thread to find it, but rather be able to jump to the page that the post was in.

I know there are limitations in phpbb nor do I have a clue how it works but this is a just a general suggestion. I understand if this cannot be implemented.
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pjp
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 29, 2003 2:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'd like to see a thread search feature too. Unfortunately, the changes need to happen upstream with phpbb.
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swimmer
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 30, 2003 2:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Not really contributing to the discussion but I still want to mention it: the Mozilla Search-plugin - I use it and like it ;-)

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perry
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 13, 2003 3:26 am    Post subject: Quick Search ignores titles? Reply with quote

I was going to start a new thread, but decided to post here instead...

I was just searching for DMCA, in regards to the DMCA "violation" of one of Gentoo's mirrors... I just typed DMCA into the quick search box and no threads of interest popped up. I went down to the Off the Wall forum and found this thead. I don't see plain ole DMCA in the message bodies (right now), but it is in the title.

Does quick search ignore message titles?
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masseya
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 13, 2003 5:20 pm    Post subject: Re: Quick Search ignores titles? Reply with quote

perry wrote:
Does quick search ignore message titles?
As far as I know, yes. This is particularly annoying when you know the title of a thread and not where it is located. I'm hopeful that this is a feature to be implemented in future versions of phpBB.
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strawbeard
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 07, 2003 5:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

rac wrote:
(some time ago)... I have changed the default setting of the checkbox in the search screen to "Search for all terms". Hopefully this will improve things in some small measure. ....


I'd expect improvement with an option "Search for all terms occuring in one posting" :idea:

There is a good chance that words occurring in one posting are logically related. 8) Currently all postings of a topic are treated as one big contiguous text. This leads to many useless hits. :x
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 09, 2003 3:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I would suggest removing world from the stopwords list. It is a important word for this distro in particular. I have actually been searching for an hour how to rebuild my world list.
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tecknojunky
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 15, 2003 1:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I wanted to comment on how the forums search function now sucks and stumbled on this thread. It's just because there are now so many threads and posts that the relevancy suffers.

Yes, I do think there is a lot of litter in those forums. Ever notice that, often, when you serch something, the first (often second and maybe a few following) threads are the ones that contains like 15 pages of posts? They must contain just about every words in the dictionary and, by popularity, they get a new post every day, so they always end up at the top.

Luckily for me, I speak french, and can sometime make sens of spanish and italian, so I can make a search on those to rise the relevancy level. But phpBB would definatly need more advance search algos when getting a board this size.

I noticed that linuxquestions.org's forums does have about 2 times the number of users than this forum, but have about the same number of posts. I think that at some point in time, they commit threads into static pages that get googled. When searching the forum, the relevancy seem higher. You don't get the gazillion pages threads at the top. Often, when I resort to google (because here does not work), I end up at one of those static pages that are exactly what I'm experiencing.

I think you should ask them some tips.

PS. ...and Masseya, I must tell you once and for all, I think the kitty is cute.
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masseya
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 18, 2003 2:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

tecknojunky wrote:
I noticed that linuxquestions.org's forums does have about 2 times the number of users than this forum, but have about the same number of posts. I think that at some point in time, they commit threads into static pages that get googled. When searching the forum, the relevancy seem higher. You don't get the gazillion pages threads at the top. Often, when I resort to google (because here does not work), I end up at one of those static pages that are exactly what I'm experiencing.
Yeah, I have noticed this as well. I think using a similar technique here is a great idea. Thanks for posting! I think it is something we'll want to discuss as soon as we get the new hardware situated. It would be a really great way to not only increase the utility of the forums, but also an extremely good way to increase the gentoo user base.

Quote:
PS. ...and Masseya, I must tell you once and for all, I think the kitty is cute.
Thanks! Find out more here. ;-)
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SmegTheLight
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 18, 2003 3:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It would be nice if a search took you to the actual post where the wordlist was found, not just the thread.

Sometimes your answer might buried in a 14 page thread. Having to go to each page, and use your browsers search feature to find the post is a real PITA.
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masseya
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 19, 2003 4:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

SmegTheLight wrote:
It would be nice if a search took you to the actual post where the wordlist was found, not just the thread.
I thought this had been suggested before, but I can't seem to find it now. Either way, this is something that we would want to see implemented in phpBB as well. Another neat idea would be to allow for previewing the first post from each of the top 10 matching threads. This would at least make the chronic useless thread title disease less potent.
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 19, 2003 10:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've been thinking about this search function, and I too would like to see it improved if possible. I think the option of adding keywords to a post would help. Many words are used out of context. For example a search for "gimp" might return a post about screenshots where someone is asking "hey, what's that cool program I can see in your screenshot?", as well as this post. Not very useful if you're looking for info about the program itself.

However, if we could add keywords to posts and search for keywords, we'd get results that at least someone thought relevant. I can't see any major problems in implementing this either (but then I'm not a programmer!) since the keywords could be handled the same way all the other words in the post are. For example, if I added the keyword example for this post, it might be indexed as keywordexample. Then if someone for some reason was searching for example, the search program would look for both keywordexample and example, and perhaps display the hits from keywordexample above the others.

It might be harder to do than I imagine, or perhaps people won't use these keywords so we'll have nothing to search for, but a search function can never judge what a thread is really about. I think we need some more human help for that...

If you're not convinced it could work, imagine this experiment: you could search for threads about sendmail, and in the ones that are useful, post a reply only containing the word keywordsendmail. Then search for keywordsendmail and receive a wealth of useful information! It would be prettier if the keywords weren't a part of the text though, and displayed without the prefix keyword, perhaps somewhere by the subject line. What do you think?
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Klavs
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 21, 2003 2:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Atleast until this search issue is resolved ;) - I should think that making a small rewrite engine setup in apache and phpBB (just run an php script before it sends the output, that changes all urls from

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=87395

to

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php/t=87395 or perhaps just ? to - _ or whatever you might like.

The result would be that Google will Index the Forum, and thus fixing the problem, and making everybody able to get help from the Gentoo forums, without knowing about them beforehand.

I'd certainly like this - and mainly because there are many issues that are actually only found solved in these forums - they're great and everybody should get to learn from them.

I'd gladly help implement this solution - I've done it for MANY Postnuke sites - no problem ;)
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 21, 2003 4:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

maybe this was already proposed, but what about adding a real search engine like this or this to the forum?
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pjp
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 21, 2003 6:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

skunk wrote:
maybe this was already proposed, but what about adding a real search engine like this or this to the forum?

pjp wrote:
Unfortunately, the changes need to happen upstream with phpbb.
The problem with changes to what we use is upgrading to new releases of phpbb. The more changes we make, the more of a nightmare upgrading becomes.
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 21, 2003 6:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

pjp wrote:
The problem with changes to what we use is upgrading to new releases of phpbb. The more changes we make, the more of a nightmare upgrading becomes.

imho installing a search engine alongside phpbb shouldn't be a big problem... the only change you need to do to phpbb is adding a link like "advanced search" which points to the se's search form...
if i missed your point, just kick me in da ballz ;)
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 21, 2003 6:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Changing the url's to search-friendly urls will NOT mean changing the phpBB code - I'm a 100% sure.

You can set php/apache to postprocess your output - and that's where you change the url's (simple search and replace).
and the incoming requests will work - because you rewrite the url's to something phpBB actually understands.

I use this extensively with PostNuke (incl. phpBB for PN) and it works great, and I don't ever change the code either (unless ofcourse I'm bugfixing or adding features :)
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 21, 2003 10:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

SmegTheLight wrote:
It would be nice if a search took you to the actual post where the wordlist was found, not just the thread.

Sometimes your answer might buried in a 14 page thread. Having to go to each page, and use your browsers search feature to find the post is a real PITA.


I am not sure if this is what you mean, but in search options you can select
the method by which phpbb displays the results.

Display results as: () Posts () Topics

If you display by posts, the results will only be the specific posts within the thread that contain your search terms. Combine this with Sort by: and you can sort the results in some semblance of the original thread only including the posts that include your search terms.
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 21, 2003 10:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Imrahil wrote:
Display results as: () Posts () Topics

If you display by posts, the results will only be the specific posts within the thread that contain your search terms.
:oops: Can't believe I never noticed that. Should be very helpful... thanks for pointing it out.
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 5:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

It'd be nice to use a feature in the search like "USE"..

ie

do a search for "games + Nvidia -ATI" So that it looks for postings with nvidia and games in them but if it finds a post with ATI then drop it from the search..
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