Thread search

I'm not sure how these are prioritized. Maybe one of the Huddler guys can chime in on this one?

Searching a Thread (especially a large thread) was never easy. But it looks to be a whole lot harder now than it ever was before. You used to have "advanced" functions where you could combine user names, keywords, and post age in order to filter out some of the useless garbage. It appears you can't do any of that anymore. Now I think I understand why the words "Audio Video Science" have seemingly disappeared from the site. The vast storehouse of technical information has been lost, simply because as users, we'll never be able to find it.

To really even look into this, I'd need to know the following:

 

- What search was attempted, and with what options (there are quite a few under the advanced search area)

- What results were expected

- What results were actually obtained

You can filter by recency if search results seem out of order.

Well maybe I'm missing something then. I went to a thread that has about 25,000 posts. In the past, I could search with advanced options, such as combinations of user name, keywords, and post age. All I see now when I select "Search this Thread" is a box to enter keywords into. Where are the advanced options you're referring to?

My mistake, I was referring to the regular advanced search (http://www.avsforum.com/search.php?action=advanced&search=) not the thread search.  Let me take a look.

I believe that the order of results here is relevancy, which is a combination of how often the search term comes up, when it was entered, etc.  It's pretty basic in functionality, so I can see how that might be confusing and/or not that useful when trying to find something specific in very large threads.  It might be more useful to use the regular Advanced Search in those cases.

 

There's an extensive FAQ on how to do advance searches here, which might be helpful.

I should imagine that we could at least add a recency/relevancy option to thread search.  I am going to hazard a guess that a full-scale advanced search in the basic thread search will probably not happen anytime soon, however.

I truly had no idea going into this "upgrade". I don't visit any of the other sites that people have mentioned (HTF, SatelliteGuys, or whatever). But it's pretty clear to me now that this is a disaster.

Why not?  The new format was touted to add functionality, not remove it.

LMAO. I wouldn't hold my breath on search working, ever.

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/t/312171/htf-search-are-you-getting-the-results-you-want

Does this mean no cake and grief counseling either?

Edited by Augerhandle - 6/7/12 at 6:58pm

Ok, that was kind of funny. Thanks for that.

I find using advanced search and using POST and at the bottom setting to display by UPDATE/Posting Date gives me what I am used to.

But like VB, the search I will admit does seem to need some work. We ended up using a completely differnt search engine that helped some and did not hurt the database with each search query.

I know it is a work in progress.

Searching within a single specific thread and ordering the results by date was probably my most used search. This can't be done with the 'upgrade'?

Why can't Advanced Search be added to the single thread as an option, seems an easy task.

Sure, just like disabling tooltips on mobile is an easy task, right?

But now you aren't just fixing one board, any changes you make affect EVERY Huddler board. Suddenly new features make people afraid, See where we are headed with that issue?

Any update on when we might get a useful "Thread Search" function, kinda like what we had in the good old days?
Search by Username, Keywords, and Age?

I've come to the conclusion that there is no more thread search function on this forum anymore, not really sure why the "search" link is even there.

By the way, I just took a look over at HTF and 1 year later it's still the same crappy/worthless thread search we have here, so as Kadath as already noted, "don't hold your breath".

I'm guessing the search is purposely dysfunctional in order to increase page views as you have to look at every damn page and post to find anything anymore, more page views, more clicks, more ads, more money...

Just tried to do a search for the TV show "Fringe" and these are the results I got:

http://www.avsforum.com/search.php?search=Fringe&containingforum[]=34&sort=lastupdate&currenttab=Thread#

Click on the first link and it takes you the the first post in a thread that was started 5 years ago.



How on Earth did Huddler get involved, or even gain clients, in the forum management business with such a total epic fail of a search function, it's mind-boggling!
Edited by keenan - 6/16/12 at 5:28pm

Don't know if this has been mentioned, but it's a big deal to me.

Simply put - there's no way to search for thread titles within a specific sub-forum. The "Entire Site" thing is different than most forums, and would usually be "subject only" or some such thing.

To see this, try searching for "fringe" within the programming sub-forum. If you search by posts, you'll see many hits from a fringe thread. Try to search so that this thread is a result. I couldn't do it.

I really don't understand why it should be that much of a problem. You already have the wheel built to search for a specific username in a thread. Unless you're compiling a database of every thread that I've ever posted in, and maybe every thread I've ever viewed, and maybe keeping records of posts I've composed (but then thought better of) and never hit the "Submit" button. Are you related to FaceBook?

All you need to do is adapt the programming you already have to "Go to your last post" as shown below, and modify it to allow entry of a username. You already have the keyword search capability. I'll give you a pass on the "post age" for now.

Yes, I've done that a few times and it's really the only way to search this forum anymore. Huddler must be getting a revenue split from Google for sending searches their way as to have a search function that is this dysfunctional here must be by design.

Why can't we have a thread search advanced search option that has all the options of the forum search advanced search but is automatically limited to just the thread you are in?

Why not? All it is is automatically limiting the search to that thread. Hardly rocket science.

This should be a priority.

I've never been to a forum where the search wasn't complained about, but I've never really had any problem because you just figure it out and do what's necessary. One of my main techniques is simply searching for a single word, in a subject, and if you pick the right word, you're good.

As far as I can see, the search here is broken and useless. Earlier today I was simply trying to find a thread I had been reading earlier (got to from a link.) I knew an unusual word that would be in the subject and searched every way I could to find the thread and it never turned up. I found the thread by going to the link I originally followed, finding the last post date and going from there in the forum index, but the point is if you can't simply word search subjects and have confidence the results are accurate, then search is broken.

You're absolutely right, it is not rocket science, the in-site search has been crippled by design. Look up the term SEO, or "search engine optimization".

The reason why a comprehensive search engine is not incorporated into the site anymore is because the new managers of the site, Huddler, Inc, want you to have to use outside search engines to find what you're looking for here. The reason for that is, the more a search for something at AVS Forum shows up in those outside search engines the more the site raises in the search engine's results listings, or rankings. It is simple, say 1000 AVS members used the thread search to find what they're looking for, that is 1000 less searches showing up in those external search engines. Now think about how many members AVS has, that's right, a heck of a lot, so that means a whole bunch of external searches being done, meaning "AVS Forum" gets raised higher and higher in the rankings.

The more unique, new visitors to a site means that more eyeballs are seeing the ads and the products that are for sale. Think of it like Nielsen TV viewing ratings, and remember that you the viewer are not the customer, the customers are the ad agencies buying eyeballs for their clients. Huddler makes its money by increasing the site awareness(those search rankings) and most importantly by increasing the amount of unique visitors to the site as that's a number that the ad agencies want to see - how many people are going to see the ads we place there - the more visitors the more ad revenue the site gets, and in turn, the more money Huddler makes. Huddler's business is the converting of communities like AVS into marketing tools to sell products.

Now, to be sure, AVS has always sold ad space and promoted products so this is not something new, what's new is the virtual gutting of the members helping members aspect of the site, after all, me helping you with the settings on your projector doesn't generate a nickel for Huddler. But when I, or you, have to go to Google to search this site for that help or answers, that does make money for Huddler. Huddler doesn't care what it is we do here, we could be discussing rubber duckies, all they care about is increasing ad revenue by selling ads to companies that make rubber duckies.

To put some of this in a bit of perspective, I've seen estimates that indicate this site is worth in the neighborhood of $1.5mil to $2mil, with a daily ad revenue generation of around $300 to $500, Huddler's job is to increase both of those numbers, but especially that daily ad revenue amount.

Hey, it's a business and I don't begrudge anyone for wanting to make a buck, I'm just sad that it's coming at the expense of it's members, people that are finding it harder and harder to help other members and visitors, something we've always done here and done extremely well, until just recently...

I think I can state with impunity that this is not the case.  We can go back and forth all day on how it's worse or better or different in how the results are formulated, and/or how it could be improved/fixed, but there's no generalized Huddler conspiracy to make search crippled on purpose to drive members to Google or anything quite so mastermind-ish as all that.

Then prove it, fix the in-thread search.

+1

I've come here pretty consistantly since 2003 to get help, and to provide help to others. If the search here doesn't work (and it currently doesn't) I don't expect I'll be here much a year from now. An internal search here was SAFE. Searches on Google (or any other search engine) are not SAFE.

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/the-exchange/poisoned-search-results-more-malware-threat-probably-think-150643365.html