Forum search issue. Incomplete results. Can never see page 2 of results

[Bohandas]

The search function for the forum appears to have issues with searches that turn up more than one page of results. Whenever I try to access the second page of results the error message "Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms." comes up even when I know there are additional matches.

For instance a recent srarch for threads with titles containing the word "101" failed to produce a result for the thread 101 things to be found on an island, and I know that the search engine is capable of finding that thread because it finds it fine when I search for threads with titles containing "island"; it seems that there are just a lot of more recent "101" threads and the search program is for whatever reason incapable of displaying page 2 of results

[graymagiker]

The search function on the site is known to be unreliable. It is my understanding (obvs mods correct if in error) that this is a known issue and there are no immediate plans to fix it.

The good news is there is a work around: use google with "site:http://www.giantitp.com/forums/" and then a space and what your search query is. For example "site:http://www.giantitp.com/forums/ 101" shows that thread on the third page of results, as one might expect.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

The search function on the site is known to be unreliable. It is my understanding (obvs mods correct if in error) that this is a known issue and there are no immediate plans to fix it.

Not a mod, but I do want to clarify a bit. The search is the most computationally expensive section of the forums. When it breaks down, it can take a while to fix, because it normally has required the forums to be taken down so indexing can be done in the database & other such delicate operations. That said, the search is quite important to the mods (who use it to track down posts by bots and the like) so it is always on the list of things to fix when our local guru, the inestimable Rawhide, has the opportunity to do so.

Historically, the search has been down on occasion - sometimes for long periods of time, because the servers were just not up to the task - but when it breaks, it isn't always in the same way (e.g. this breakdown is not the same as the previous, which stopped finding recent threads rather than older ones).

Grey Wolf

[ChristianSt]

Also the paging/results number on the search is for some reason awkward/not that helpful.

For example if I do the search you described (for posts containing 101 in their title) it looks like you have full 20 pages of results, but actually it says "Results 1 to 19 of 500" - and with 25 results per page I wouldn't expect there to be a second page at all if the search can't even produce results 20 to 25.

If you do the search for 101 in posts & titles you get more results, but as go on further pages the maximum result gets lower and lower (and it also seems to yield different numbers based on whether you go page by page or if you jump several pages at once).


IIRC Rawhide said it has something to do with how the search works/is implemented - which I would assume is not something that will change any time soonish. (I would guess that it first fetches 500 results fitting the most simple search result but then has to discard some results due to different reasons - e.g. permissions, search filters like "title only" and possible other stuff, but doesn't care to look if there are more results that would also fit the criteria.)

[Bohandas]

The search function on the site is known to be unreliable. It is my understanding (obvs mods correct if in error) that this is a known issue and there are no immediate plans to fix it.

The good news is there is a work around: use google with "site:http://www.giantitp.com/forums/" and then a space and what your search query is. For example "site:http://www.giantitp.com/forums/ 101" shows that thread on the third page of results, as one might expect.

That works very well. Thanks