Thread: Real-World Searches

First, thanks so much for all the constructive replies.

Now, for the rest of the story...

As noted, not everyone received that lovely Google-search result for a multiple-term search argument; I didn't -- if I had, my original post would not have been. What's more, not everyone uses Google as their browser's search engine; lots of people use "Bing", "Yahoo!", or others.

More importantly, there are some important assumptions at work -- visual and associative.

1. Visual: Placing "Advanced Search" directly adjacent to the Google search box in the navigation bar certainly implies a consistency between them.
2. Associative: One assumes that an advanced search builds on the capabilities of the search box, itself.

Unfortunately, neither assumption is true.

Of the two, the "associative" assumption is the more egregious. Why would I not expect that the advanced search function also uses the Google search engine? Of course I would! (and did) It should! -- and then provide those "advanced" capabilities, such as user name, date range, thread-or-post, etc.

Finally, if I wanted to use the Google search engine with "argument site:URL" syntax, I wouldn't be doing it from within SRP; rather, I'd open a new tab for the Google search. Doing otherwise is counter-intuitive and confusing... and doing so from within SRP replaces the current SRP page with the Google search results, so it's more productive to use separate tabs for the two.

Again, thanks for all the constructive replies... especially to "Hirlau", for not posting his.

Originally Posted by JBHoren

I agree 100% -- that's why I posted not only that I was "frustrated and angry", but clearly explained the issue and the steps I'd taken to solve it, and the unsatisfactory results. Is that a problem for you?

No, it's not a problem for me, I was simply noting that you being angry or not isn't going to fix any of the issues you're having. Now, what may fix them is if you either (1) offer to fix them yourself (2) ask nicely and explain clearly what would you like (3) offer to pay for somebody's time to try to fix them, may be that would entice somebody.

You surely realize that I don't have to do anything, I volunteer my time and skills, therefore I get to chose what I want to do and when I want to do it, if anything at all.
If you prefer I can simply turn off all 'improvements' and 'tweaks' that I've made to the software and you can live with the defaults and direct your questions to the people who develop the software. In fact, until yesterday you were using the default setting that didn't have the 'google custom search', and you can have it back.

Originally Posted by JBHoren

More importantly, there are some important assumptions at work -- visual and associative.

1. Visual: Placing "Advanced Search" directly adjacent to the Google search box in the navigation bar certainly implies a consistency between them.
2. Associative: One assumes that an advanced search builds on the capabilities of the search box, itself.

Unfortunately, neither assumption is true.

Of the two, the "associative" assumption is the more egregious. Why would I not expect that the advanced search function also uses the Google search engine? Of course I would! (and did) It should! -- and then provide those "advanced" capabilities, such as user name, date range, thread-or-post, etc.

The default search that you used until yesterday didn't have any of these issues. But since it still didn't work the way you wanted, please direct your questions to https://www.vbulletin.com. And let me know if you want that default behavior back, I will happily spend the 3minutes to set that up just for you.

As to why I replaced the default search box with the google custom search, the answer is that in my opinion the benefits of using google's algorithm to sort the search results, outweigh the inconsistencies that you noted.

Originally Posted by SirStropalot

Not a complaint, but an observation. As of yesterday, and the near past, you could search with the Google Custom Search at the top of the page with a 2 word search such as "spike point" and you would get every thread with the word "spike" or with the word "point" individually, but not as combined. Now, it's working with i.e. "contains both words". Something changed since yesterday. I'm glad, and to all of our admins, sys. analysts, etc.. Thank You for working so hard for so little reward, and we really do appreciate you, and all that you do!!! THANKS!!!

Sincerely,

Howard

I didn't really mean to. All I did was redo that searchbox, the last time it was done by somebody else based on my original set up a while ago. It looked like an upgrade to the software had done somewhat inconsistent merge, and few things were confusing, so it was easiest to revert to a clean state and redo the search box (another artifact was that the navigation bar got reverted to the default and I haven't completely reconfigured it the way I think it's better).
If the google search behaves differently now than yesterday, today's behavior is the one that google intended

Originally Posted by gugi

I didn't really mean to. All I did was redo that searchbox, the last time it was done by somebody else based on my original set up a while ago. It looked like an upgrade to the software had done somewhat inconsistent merge, and few things were confusing, so it was easiest to revert to a clean state and redo the search box (another artifact was that the navigation bar got reverted to the default and I haven't completely reconfigured it the way I think it's better).
If the google search behaves differently now than yesterday, today's behavior is the one that google intended

Gugi,
I just did an easy search and it seems to work great. Thanks Again!!! Have a great Day!!!

Regards,
Howard

Originally Posted by gugi

No, it's not a problem for me, I was simply noting that you being angry or not isn't going to fix any of the issues you're having. Now, what may fix them is if you either (1) offer to fix them yourself (2) ask nicely and explain clearly what would you like (3) offer to pay for somebody's time to try to fix them, may be that would entice somebody.

Being angry is an emotion, more often than not, caused by frustration. I haven't spent 27 years working with Unix, without becoming familiar and comfortable with searches and regular expressions. "Feeling angry" is not an issue; "acting angry" would be... but I don't confuse or conflate the two -- neither should you. It's more than condescending of you -- or anyone -- to take exception with my feeling angry about something. I made no demands of anyone, just noted and commented. If I have to worry about jamokes like you jumping on one word out of a legitimate post, well, I'll certainly think twice about posting anything, anywhere, on SRP. Acting angry doesn't solve problems, but being angry is often THE motivating force for growth and positive change. I'm into the latter, not the former.

You surely realize that I don't have to do anything, I volunteer my time and skills, therefore I get to chose what I want to do and when I want to do it, if anything at all.
If you prefer I can simply turn off all 'improvements' and 'tweaks' that I've made to the software and you can live with the defaults and direct your questions to the people who develop the software. In fact, until yesterday you were using the default setting that didn't have the 'google custom search', and you can have it back.

I didn't (and don't) expect anyone to do anything. I'm happy to have an explanation. A little scrutiny never hurt anyone. You don't have to do me any favors -- I'm not your friend, not your buddy; just a guy with a question about something he noticed that didn't jibe with his professional experience. If "anger" is an issue for you, a PM would've been better... and I could've told you privately to sod-off, rather than having to do it here, in public.

Originally Posted by JBHoren

You don't have to do me any favors -- I'm not your friend, not your buddy; just a guy with a question about something he noticed that didn't jibe with his professional experience. If "anger" is an issue for you, a PM would've been better... and I could've told you privately to sod-off, rather than having to do it here, in public.

WOW! That's the type of attitude I would expect to see on some other forums, not on SRP. Good luck with any future questions.

Originally Posted by JBHoren

Acting angry doesn't solve problems, but being angry is often THE motivating force for growth and positive change. I'm into the latter, not the former.

Acting angry doesn't solve problems, but being angry is often THE motivating force for growth and positive change. I'm into the latter, not the former. I didn't (and don't) expect anyone to do anything. I'm happy to have an explanation. A little scrutiny never hurt anyone. You don't have to do me any favors -- I'm not your friend, not your buddy; just a guy with a question about something he noticed that didn't jibe with his professional experience. If "anger" is an issue for you, a PM would've been better... and I could've told you privately to sod-off, rather than having to do it here, in public.

Uhm, nobody owes you an explanation. I could've just as easy ignored your post, or taken the attitude that 'if you don't like something, don't use it'.
I'm pretty sure that after 27 years of unix experience you must have noticed that this forum is not a unix shell, and I have no idea why would you expect regular expressions to work.
Of course, I like to hear about people's experience and suggestions, but you didn't really offer any. I don't really care for people acting as if they are entitled to anything, and that's exactly how your original post came out as. If you're just going to be making snarky comments, please save your breath, I don't have any use for them either.

See, the difference between you and me is that I have spent hundreds of hours making sure that when you type straightrazorplace.com in your browser you don't end up to a 'page not found', while all you have done is complain that something isn't working the way you want it to work, without offering even the tiniest amount of practical contribution towards solving it. Despite your playing with the semantics your angry state hasn't motivated you to do anything constructive, so yeah, it is pretty useless.

Finally, I certainly wish that you and everybody else does think twice before posting anything on this site, or anywhere else for that matter. A little bit of extra thinking rarely hurts.

Have fun.

Originally Posted by gugi

A little bit of extra thinking rarely hurts.

Have fun.

Truly, words to live by.

Originally Posted by Theseus

Truly, words to live by.

+1 for that and look at this http://straightrazorpalace.com/site-...e-service.html

I just discovered a problem with Google Custom Search results. Specifically, the results are displayed as URLs for the thread(s) in which the search terms are found, referenced to the page of postings on which the particular post is located (see below).



Unfortunately, the "Page" is calculated using the SRP default number of posts per/page, and is entirely inaccurate for anyone who has configured their settings for a different number of posts per/page (I, of course, am such a user, with my SRP General Settings configured for 40 posts per/page). What happens is that once I follow the URL, I then need to perform a "Search Thread" for the original search term(s), in order to access the relevant posts.

Would it not be more helpful to our users to have the Google Custom Search configured to return the full URL for each post found, rather than referencing an incorrect "page"?