Useful searches fail without explanation...

[tetsujin]

This is really annoying:

Try searching for "VF-25" in the "for sale" forum, for instance. The search will turn up "no results".

Not even "the search system is arbitrarily designed to reject searches for terms like those" - no kind of "couldn't do it" message, it returns a message saying the search was successful, with no results.

That's nonsense. Of course there are posts in "for sale" that include "VF-25". And while the search string is short, in this context it's actually exactly what you want to search for. Someone may not use terms like "Frontier" or "Messiah" in their post, but they're sure to write in "VF-25".

[sketchley]

Hmmm... I've been trying to look up posts about the VF-5 made a couple of years ago, and I kept getting the same result; save I thought it was due to their age.

Perhaps the search function is broken? Or there needs to be documentation so us end users know what information we need to include?

[Renato]

Same here, although I was thinking that the search function had been totally useless ever since a couple of board upgrades ago.

[jenius]

Here's what I found, the search function defaults to members (or something other than forum posts) instead of posts. There are different tabs and after it says "no results" in the original section, you have to click the forums icon and you'll get the results you expected.

[sketchley]

Here's what I found, the search function defaults to members (or something other than forum posts) instead of posts. There are different tabs and after it says "no results" in the original section, you have to click the forums icon and you'll get the results you expected.

Mine defaults to forum posts...

[jenius]

Okay, mine was defaulting to "help Files" so if I didn't change that it looked for my search there. I just checked and like you said, it's now 'forums'. My search also found a ton of results.

Edited March 20, 2011 by jenius

[anime52k8]

Is there anyway to adjust how far back the search function actually returns results? I've found that the search doesn't return threads that I know it should, and I think it has something to do with how long they've been inactive. (I think it only does results for the last year by default.)

[EXO]

There's an option to choose dates to span the search, but from what I've tested it only goes back to 2007.

[PetarB]

Recently I've noticed that when I search for older posts - that I know exist, because I made them - the search function can now not find them. Forum upgrade issue?

[sketchley]

That reminds me: I did get the search function working. However, it's only for relatively recent posts.

PetarB, if memory serves, the operators of this site improve it's speed/inter-operatability every so often by archiving older topics. Not sure where that line is, but >EXO< has indicated that it's somewhere around 2007.