Works fine for me. "Search this thread" for the term "thread" and I got two results. Now it should be three, including this post.
Remember, search terms are character-specific, so a search for "MIDD273" would not match any post that contains "MIDD-273" or "MIDD 273", and vice versa. And since the contents of the post are entirely up to the poster (what words they include, etc), there's no way for a person to predict which posts have the content they want -- let alone a search algorithm.
Item 1:
The "search" excludes three-character or less searches. Since the identifiers of a good 3/5ths of JAV titles begin with a three character sequence, you pretty much make 3/5ths of the obvious search terms out of bounds. This should be dropped to excluding 2 character sequences (which is still annoying but I gtant that search would probably be rididulous), and/or you ought to encourage some mechanism for adding the ids (ex: ATI120 & ATI) as keywords for posts which contain such referents (and this assumes the
keyword search is not
also limited to >3 chars, which may well be the case). If the reference count goes over a certain rational number of entries (say, 1000), then fine, cut it off and warn the user, so they know they need to cut it down. Better still, allow them to do a boolean "AND/OR/NOT" search , something there's no evidence the search mechanism supports as all despite the fact that it would be quite useful in finding a specific entry. All searches, IIRC, are handled as "or" searches which is far, far less useful than if they were all "and" searches. I can reproduce an "or" search with multiple searches. I can't cut down on a thousand results from an "or" search by any given mechanism, since "search this thread" doesn't work, as shown below.
Item 2:
Remember, search terms are character-specific, so a search for "MIDD273" would not match any post that contains "MIDD-273" or "MIDD 273", and vice versa.
I'm well aware of this. But the instance in question it was a four-char search in a thread with multiple four-character occurrences of the code -- I reduced the search down to something as simple as MIDD which OUGHT to find
all three of the above examples you provided. I can't tell you the exact example of this that triggered this comment but I suspect that if you go to a large thread you KNOW contains a number of MIDD, or MIAD or some other occurrence, it won't find all of them.
Here's a
working example of this defect --
this thread has an
SSPD in
this entry (see the next to last file referenced, which is an SSPD)
Now, pull up that thread, click on "search this thread" and enter "SSPD":
http://www.akiba-online.com/forum/search.php?do=process&searchthreadid=111388
The response?
1. Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms.
QED -- either the "search this thread" function
a) does not work reliably,
b) does not work at all,
or
c) does not work in a manner reasonably expected.
I contend that, in all likelihood, the same error occurs with the whole search function and not merely the "search this thread" sub-function.
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I do wish to re-iterate -- this is an acked "beggars can't be choosers" issue --
you're under no obligation to deal with it -- I'm not "commanding you to fix my problem" -- but given that there are thousands of items listed on the site, the tools provided for looking for
specific items strike me as
woefully inadequate, as well as ineffective, for the task.
I'm trying to make sure that you realize this is intended as
constructive feedback and not "whining demands for satisfaction from people under no obligation to me in the first place"...
Ideally, it should be
easy to find the entry for any specific item if you have the jav box code, assuming someone has posted it up. I would think that you would concur with this.
I've instead found it frustratingly difficult, partly due to the lack of a good search function that actually provides decent results. I think part of it is probably due to the forum software, but that's the kind of thing you guys can possibly "fix" eventually by kvetching in the right ears about it.
I'd also think that providing a standard set of searchable keyword formats (i.e, MIDD, MIDD256, MIDD-256) appropriate to each entry posted should be
encouraged (NOT
required) as the"ideal standard" for a top-flight poster. It would make the place a bit less chaotic, probably cut back on multiple posts for the same subject matter, and make the whole site much more useful and user-friendly in finding a specific file one wants.
:study:
