Search disabled, maintenance, and other changes

[willpell]

Originally Posted by The_Jackal

Searching the forums is incredibly easy, just use Google:

Not "incredibly easy"; I can never remember what the thing you type in to limit the search to a domain is. I think it's "site:gitp.com", but maybe it's "site:http://www.gitp.com" or "site: gitp.com" with that space being incredibly important. if I do it wrong and it doesn't work, I'm often too frustrated to make another attempt.

Originally Posted by SiuiS

Are you playin devil's advocate, going off on a tangent, think my point is wrong or just want the last word?

I think your point is...well, questionable, at least, and maybe incorrect, I wouldn't say "wrong"...and am going off on a tangent, arguably also devil's advocate (frankly I do that so reflexively I'm not sure it can be distinguished from other behavior). Mostly I'm just justifying my own feelings that laziness is not a sin but an inevitability of proper behavior, that we human beings are born and bred to seek the most efficient solution and avoid expending physical or mental effort any way we possibly can, conserving calories and attention span to maximize our survival chances on a second-by-second basis, and so I'm completely within my rights to want idiot-proof one-button access to the search function. (By which same token Rawhide is completely within his rights to say that would be more work than he wants to do, leaving me to complain all I want to until I recognize it's not getting me anywhere and quit wasting my effort.)

[Strawberries]

FYI, it's site:giantitp.com And google will often give you the options of clicking 'find more results from this site' even if you run a standard search, which amounts to the same thing.

[SiuiS]

Originally Posted by willpell

Not "incredibly easy"; I can never remember what the thing you type in to limit the search to a domain is. I think it's "site:gitp.com", but maybe it's "site:http://www.gitp.com" or "site: gitp.com" with that space being incredibly important. if I do it wrong and it doesn't work, I'm often too frustrated to make another attempt.

Too frustrated to do 8 seconds worth of work instead of 5 seconds worth of work is a questionable rubric, though. The cost is negligible, and only inflated by a sense of expectation. It's the equivalent of opening your book and dropping your bookmark; sure, you'll have to read a few paragraphs to see what you recall, maybe flip around a couple pages, but that is barely a hassle compared to the reading of the entire book up until that point, or - to use a direct analogue - complaining about your bookmark falling out until someone else can tell you where it was suppsoed to go.

I think your point is...well, questionable, at least, and maybe incorrect, I wouldn't say "wrong"...and am going off on a tangent, arguably also devil's advocate (frankly I do that so reflexively I'm not sure it can be distinguished from other behavior). Mostly I'm just justifying my own feelings that laziness is not a sin but an inevitability of proper behavior, that we human beings are born and bred to seek the most efficient solution and avoid expending physical or mental effort any way we possibly can

You say my point is off, adn then go on to make my point. This thread has "I didn't know anyone said anything, because the search function doesn't work and I couldn't search". That is, quite frankly, asinine. There are methods of searching which dont involve clicking a tab, opening a bar, typing in a phrase, narrowing down your search results, scrolling through those results, clicking the link you think is appropriate, and seeing whether or not it is relevant. You could instead, go to the section of the site for these problems, click the access link, scroll down, and find the threads.

Specifically, those people who "couldn't find a thread on the topic" didn't look. There are three threads on the topic right there, and willfully ignoring them in order to try and reinforce your point is only going to backfire. You say you have a right to efficiency, and I agree. The efficient solution (based on time and measure of energy expended to get the desired results) is to scroll down the dang page (two seconds, possible a single calorie burnt), and not to make another thread, expound at length aboput how inconvenienced you are, and say that you tried searching and found nothing.

Two seconds of effort versus five minutes of much less productive effort. See?

[Serpentine]

Google also doesn't let you find posts by a specific person, which can be annoying. Doesn't let you find posts about a specific person, either, unless that person has a unique name and doesn't make avatars nor say anything that warrants being sigged.

[Rawhide]

Ok, everyone, stop it. Search is gone because it had to go, and it will remain gone until it is ready to return. There is absolutely no point in complaining about it being gone or what you can or cannot do, it will not make it return any quicker.

If you wish to search these forums, you will need to use an external search engine, there's no two ways about it.

[Rig]

I realize it was negligent of me, given i found another with a bit of scrolling, but simply on the basis of no further threads on it once they're buried, i suggest this be stickied. Apologies if this board doesn't move fast enough for this to be a concern, not trying to endorse lazyness, simply less posts from idiots like me, etc etc etc.

[Elder Tsofu]

Do idiots really read stickied threads before they post though? ^^

[Rig]

Mmh... fair point.

[Surfing HalfOrc]

Originally Posted by Serpentine

Google also doesn't let you find posts by a specific person, which can be annoying. Doesn't let you find posts about a specific person, either, unless that person has a unique name and doesn't make avatars nor say anything that warrants being sigged.

I was able to find That Lanky Bugger's famous (or infamous) story of the Worst D&D Session, Ever just by googling "Giant in the Playground That Lanky Bugger"

Of course quite a few people look up that story, so Google is ready. Don't know how you would go about searching for my aimless babbling...

[Rawhide]

I specifically asked everyone to stop arguing. Therefore, several posts that rehashed the argument posted before my post telling everyone to stop it have been deleted.

[Leon]

Originally Posted by Rawhide

Ok, everyone, stop it. Search is gone because it had to go, and it will remain gone until it is ready to return. There is absolutely no point in complaining about it being gone or what you can or cannot do, it will not make it return any quicker.

If you wish to search these forums, you will need to use an external search engine, there's no two ways about it.

But the people need a topic to complain about. Its human nature to complain about something (feel free to join me on my Bitch about Telstra and its lousy service to any and all ~ 4 days after paying the bill and they still fail to reconnect my landline.)

[zlefin]

what happened to the overnight off for maintenance thing? I know the forum used to be off awhile each night for something; Is there no more regularly scheduled downtime?

[SiuiS]

Originally Posted by Surfing HalfOrc

I was able to find That Lanky Bugger's famous (or infamous) story of the Worst D&D Session, Ever just by googling "Giant in the Playground That Lanky Bugger"

Of course quite a few people look up that story, so Google is ready. Don't know how you would go about searching for my aimless babbling...

Trying to duplicate this gets me like, five results for this thread, and nothing else. Sadness.

[Keris]

Originally Posted by SiuiS

Trying to duplicate this gets me like, five results for this thread, and nothing else. Sadness.

Are you searching with the quote marks around the tags? I'm fairly sure Surfing HalfOrc was just using them to group the keywords together, so while the only time all those words appear in that sequence is this thread, the keywords by themselves will bring up Lanky's thread (though for me, the first result was a thread that linked to three threads in 'the Lanky Bugger Saga', with the original thread a few results down).

[douglas]

Originally Posted by zlefin

what happened to the overnight off for maintenance thing? I know the forum used to be off awhile each night for something; Is there no more regularly scheduled downtime?

The half hour or so of nightly downtime seems to be gone, but I've noticed that the forums always become totally inaccessible (not even a "down for backup" message, just timing out) for about 5 to 10 minutes starting at 2 am Eastern time. So, it's shorter and at a different time, but it seems to still be here.

[Viera Champion]

Originally Posted by douglas

The half hour or so of nightly downtime seems to be gone, but I've noticed that the forums always become totally inaccessible (not even a "down for backup" message, just timing out) for about 5 to 10 minutes starting at 2 am Eastern time. So, it's shorter and at a different time, but it seems to still be here.

Yeah. It's supposed to do that. I think. Used to be 4 AM Eastern time for me.

[The Bushranger]

Originally Posted by Viera Champion

Yeah. It's supposed to do that. I think. Used to be 4 AM Eastern time for me.

This is a different thing, actually; after the last round of server updates, the 4am database backup was history. This is a thing where from 2:00-2:05AM Eastern the site won't load and you get database errors, like clockwork.

[Ralasha]

I have been attempting to locate all of my own threads, since I am going to consolidate all of my homebrew, and get c opies back on my computer since my old hard-drive died.

I'm hoping to get some assistance with this, since without search, I cannot complete my task before the older threads and materials are deleted or archived.

[oblivion6]

Threads you started/have subscribed too? You can reach those through the User CP.

[Zherog]

You can't find threads you've started right now - that uses search.

Try Google with this command:

site:giantitp.com/forums Ralasha "homebrew design"

Keep the quotes so google treats the phrase as the search command. If you post a lot in HD, you'll get a lot of results beyond just your thread. I show 547 results; maybe you can think of a way to narrow it down a bit, but if not you'll have to dig through that list.

[Ralasha]

Kthanks. That's all I needed. Thank you very much.