searching archives

[Timothy B.]

Error in the FAQ???

In the FAQ, in the section talking about minimum word length, it gives the suggestion of using a "%" as a wildcard for spaces to make a word longer and therefore searchable. It gives the example of "Big%Block" as a search term. When I search all open forums with that as the search term it returns NO entries. Apparently this wasn't a good example to use in the FAQs??? Similarly, I can't get searches to work using "%" as indicated in the FAQ.

[John W.]

Re: Error in the FAQ???

Timothy,

I just did the same search as you did lower case big%block and upper case Big%Block and got the same results.

Search: Key Word(s): big%block

Showing results 1 to 25 of 500
Search took 3.21 seconds.

Is it possible you were in the Help! forum when you tested? I tested from the home page so I was searching all forums.

In the FAQ, in the section talking about minimum word length, it gives the suggestion of using a "%" as a wildcard for spaces to make a word longer and therefore searchable. It gives the example of "Big%Block" as a search term. When I search all open forums with that as the search term it returns NO entries. Apparently this wasn't a good example to use in the FAQs??? Similarly, I can't get searches to work using "%" as indicated in the FAQ.

[Timothy B.]

Re: searching archives

I am searching in the right place, but following the FAQs precisely, which say to put quotes around "big%block". I tried it now as you indicated and I do get 500 results, but with the quotes I get nothing. You would think that quotes would be useful here, but as you can see they aren't. So, when should we use quotes?

I think you should add a section to the FAQs that list what wildcards are accepted and when you should use them. When to use quotes and when not to, etc.

Here is what is in the FAQs:

What is the minimum word length (4) and how do I find what I want?In order to limit the load on the server you should not search on words less than four characters in length. If you need to find phrases with short words you can work around this.
You can't search on "Big Block" because "Big" has only three letters. You can substitute an percent sign (%) for the space and create a word that is 9 characters long. "Big%Block". This will work on any phrase that you might need to find. Be sure to include the " (quotation marks) for best results

[John W.]

Re: searching archives

I was refining the FAQ as you were writing you message. I will test the " " marks to see if that does need some clarification. OK after testing I find that "big block" will find 500 messages while "big%block" will find none. Apparently within the phrase " " it matches every character and the wild card is not treated as a wild card, but as a character to match. Any suggestions on how to make that all clear without writing a book which no one will read?

[Wayne M.]

Re: searching archives

Wayne,

I did a quick search of the Archives on reincarnation and found you post among four posts that were returned.

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John -- I got it to work using the single keyword "reincarnation". Previously I was (in ADDITION) using the poster's name (mine) on the search page, since I knew the date, the thread title and the poster. So maybe I was over-specifying. And if using the poster's name continues to have a bug in the archives (maybe related to no caps in my old user name on the old board ?), maybe this is why I was drawing a blank.

I will do my archives searches using keywords rather than posters' names, for now at least.

Thanks