What does everyone think of the new and improved search?

I’m upset because now I don’t have anything to complain about. Fluther is perfect now. :)

I like it so far, but I haven’t played around with it much. It is definitely a great improvement! Way to go guys!

Okay—Where’s the 3-D seahorse porn ? ?

It works a lot better than the old version what what I’ve seen of it so far. :-)

I have never used Search on Fluther. I just read all the new questions when I visit each day .

What new search!?!.......Oh that baby way up there. Yeah just had a go, nice drop down feature. Groovy doovy.

I LOVE it! I love Dr. J.
Thanks Timtrueman!

Wow! this search is really great.

I could never find the “Is your yellow my purple?” question before with the old search if I didn’t type it in just right.

This one found it before I even clicked search…and i misspelled “purple” in the box :)

I lurvin it, I’ve never used the search function before but I’ll use it now!!

Thank Cameron, he did all the work!

Thank you Cameron, you rock!

Wow! @Cameron, the new search appears to be so much better than the old on first blush testing that it is a whole different experience!

{{{{{{{Bows down, salaaming}}}}}}}

I tested it on some questions that I’d searched for using the old system, which came up with nothing useful. This new system got the information right the first time.

Now, about the cake I was promised…

* * * Y * A * Y * * * ! ! ! GOOD WORK ! ! ! * * * Y * A * Y * * *

Pancakes for all the fluther staff . Hip-Hip hooray . . . for @camertron

I’m assuming they’re working on the new search for the mobile site? As it is now I can’t search at all. When I try I just get Neptune munchin’ on a jelly.

Ha! Thanks for pointing out Dr. Sherlock…love it!

For the bit I’ve played around with the improved feature, it’s a vast improvement, so kudos to camertron and the other staff involved. One question: how are the results of a search sorted?

And thank you for removing the Google from the search box. That should help with some confusion.

Wow… It actually works.

My first search failed miserably until I noticed the part where it said to add a @ to a username. Then it worked perfectly.

I like it.

It’s much better.

I don’t like that you can’t sort results.

Still have the old Google search on the iPhone version but at least it’s working again. I’m looking forward to checking it out on my PC. A change was long overdue.
Thanks, Gang of Three!

It isn’t working on my laptop. Do I need to download a plugin?

My first try worked pretty well. although I don’t know how successful it would have been before the change.

My second—alas. I was searching for this question of my own, and I tried every combination of keywords I could think of, both with and without jeruba, Jeruba, @jeruba, and @Jeruba, and including ‘eye,’ ‘eye problem,’ ‘what kind of doctor,’ ‘stye,’ and ‘hordeolum,’ and I couldn’t bring it up. The combination of ’@Jeruba’ and ‘stye’ brought up a long list of hits on @Jeruba and style. So—I’m sorry, but it’s not quite fixed yet.

@weeveeship & @Jeruba
We had to take the new search down for a few hours, to update one last server. It should be back up at around 3AM PST. What you guys are seeing right now is just the same old search.

Well, that explains it. It sure acts like the same old search.

This gives an opportunity for a controlled experiment! I’ll try the same test tomorrow.

And while it’s still down—three more tests:
I’ll try to find via search the threads where

(1) the first reference to beaked Nordic tree penguins occurred
(2) somebody said asmonet was a brat, but she was our brat
(3) Gary/whatthefluther described taking a long walk and getting lost in a foreign city after he had begun to lose his mobility

—now (tonight) and again tomorrow.

———————

[Later] ok, report:
(1) found—it was beaked aliens and Nordic tree penguins [ here ]
(2) not found, though I did find ‘asmonet’ and ‘brat’ together
(3) not found

I don’t even know what the change is. I just searched “search engine changes“and “Sherlock” and came up with nothing helpful . . .
How is it different?

@anartist New search is still down, so nothing is different at the moment. When it comes back, the search box won’t say “google” anymore, and it will work far better. Yay!

Yay although I didn’t have too bad a time with old search once I got the hang of it—‘cept I never could find out anything about those droids I was lookin’ for.

Alright everyone, the new search features have been re-enabled. Happy searching!

All hail @camertron!

Thanx Cameron!

Making up a batch of guacamole, as I was able to find the recipe using the search feature!

I’m starting up my season of feeling like someone poured concrete behind my face, and Thank You @camertron , I found all sorts of great ideas with the New and Improved!!! I foresee being a much more pleasant Jelly in the coming months!

Ok. I do have one complaint. The new search brought back @jonsblondsabitch when you search jonsblond. Oh well. I feel special now.

@jonsblond eheheheheh.

:P

Whoa, search is indeed intelligent! You search “make bob_”, and the very first result: “make bob_ a sandwich”. Brilliant! XD

It is great! I looked up gecko and there it was.

Its fuckin awesome thats what it is.

Ok, here’s my comparison results: I give it better than 50%, but not as big a change as I’d hoped for.

•   My own “eye” question was right at the top of the list on the first try, so that was perfect.
•   I found a fairly large set of references to the beaked aliens and tree penguins. Didn’t realize we’d gone on about them for so long. But anyway, the source thread was among them. So that counts as a success but not a gain because I found them last night, using the old search.
•   Couldn’t find any reference to asmonet as “our brat,” but I’ll allow that I could have misremembered, so I’ll call that a push. (I thought it was in one of those forgettable threads where she and 90s_kid flailed away at one another.)
•   Couldn’t turn up any link to the thread I remember with Gary, and I do know it was Gary. All the keyword combinations I tried produced the same list of hits, none of them right.

So—it’s better than it was, but still a bit wanting, in my estimation.

The most vexing thing, though, was this: if I wanted to go down the list of results and keep trying the next one and the next, I had to retype the string of search terms each time and search again. The results weren’t saved anywhere that I could go back to.

@jonsblond I took care of that issue for you. That name is gone <POOF>. :D

@Jeruba I can’t find the ‘our brat’ one, either. I did find Gary’s post, using the search terms @whatthefluther lost walk. Here it is!
Regarding saving the search results: Open the question or answer link in a new tab, (right click on the link to see that option). That way, you won’t lose the search page you’re on. A different method would be clicking on the “back” button on your browser after you’ve left the search page to check out one of the links. That should take you right back to the search page.

@everyone: Remember to click on “see all”, as the first page only shows the most likely hits.

@Jeruba I think the issue you’re running into is not including the @ sign when you search for questions by a specific user. For number 3 on your list, try this:

@whatthefluther lost in foreign city

This will search all questions and answers by whatthefluther with the text “lost in foreign city” in the subject or description. You could try something similar with asmonet being your brat:

@asmonet our brat

or something like that. Let us know if those search terms work for you. Thanks!

I did.

@Jeruba I saw the answer you linked to already – you left that answer during a time that search was down. @augustlan‘s comment right after your response let you and @weeveeship know this. Would you mind trying again now that search is fully functional?

@camertron, I linked to that comment to show you that I knew the rules. My after-action report was based on following them.

@Jeruba ah. Thanks for the clarification. Could you list all the search terms you tried when searching for that question by Gary? Could you supply a piece of verbatim text from the question or response (just so we can see what’s going on)?

@camertron, I don’t know that I can. I used combinations of his username (with @) and ‘walk’, ‘walking’, ‘lost’, ‘city’, ‘strange city’, ‘foreign’, and I don’t know what else—everything I could remember about the post from more than a year ago. It’s hard to say, now that I’ve just reread it using Auggie’s link above. (It still chokes me up.)

I’ve just tried another fruitless search a little while ago. I must not be getting the mechanics right. I see just those six options without a simple ‘more’ from the initial dropdown. Then if I choose ‘search’ again I get, like, 360,000 results and a ‘see all’ option. I don’t see a way to limit results and narrow searches usefully. I don’t see quotation mark functionality (is it there?). Since I’m usually looking for comments and not for questions, question details, or topic tags, I’m wondering if that aspect of search has actually changed much.

@Jeruba we built search to deliver the most likely results in the first 6 or so hits. The likelihood of the sought-after question being in the other 359,994 goes down exponentially with every 10 less relevant results. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist in those hits, it’s just that, if the question or answer can’t be found in the first 6 hits, maybe it’s time to modify your search terms. That’s how most people search on Google, so we adopted that for the Fluther search.

I think your getting the mechanics right, but maybe it’s viewing the actual results that’s confusing. I used Auggie’s same search terms above (@whatthefluther lost walk) and discovered the question you were looking for as the 7th result. The question’s title is, “Where is the best place you have ever gotten lost?”, which only contains the word “lost” of the words you tried (“lost”, “foreign”, “city”). The answer he left that you so enjoyed contains many more words, the most distinct of which are “Istanbul”, “Turkish”, “wheelchair”, “spinal tap”, and possibly “cigarillo”. In fact, a search for ”@whatthefluther istanbul” pulls his answer up as the fourth hit, ”@whatthefluther spinal tap” the third hit.

One thing that may not be clear is that the search box in the upper-right corner of each page only searches for questions, and you are interested in finding only an answer. Clicking the “Search for…” item at the bottom of the drop-down list will bring you to the full-fledged search page that will show you both questions and answers that match your search criteria.

Hope this helps and happy searching.

I am not finding it easier. Maybe I had just gotten the hang of the old search engine and then lost it. I found it easier to combine searches for jellies and subject matter combined w/o needing the ”@” — as far as I can see the new search engine is just emulating Google’s new search—tracking your keystroking . . . which I am not sure I even like.

I am also not finding a lot of other things easier, better, or more accessible. I used to have an easy time following a PM thread and now I don’t. I used to have an easier time browsing through my Qs and As and others Qs and As using the order listed as a way to track various ongoing things in time. On the whole, fluther looks a little slicker now, but I find it harder to use. And I miss trademark terms like “your fluther”—the branding seems to be eroding and merging with other social sites.

PLUS side: I love the graphic enhancements and I think the blog is beautifully done.

I would love to see time/date stamps on the posts
oooh @camerton I just noticed your last sentence. That the full search is somewhere else. Close but not first choice.
I only ever want to use FULL SEARCH—we don’ need no steenkin’ limitations!
Two clicks to get what you want where there used to be only one? Didn’t think that was good web design.
Thanx for tip, though.

@anartist We do have a time stamp on every answer… it’s just cleverly hidden: Point your mouse just to the right of the “Flag as” line (below each answer), and you’ll see a red paragraph symbol. Hover on it, and it will show you when the answer was posted.

Also, on the profile page, there are tabs at the top for questions and answers posted by that member, in order from most recent to oldest.

@augustlan So that’s where the permalink is! :D

@augustlan Is there a way to unhide questions/answers that have been removed from a profile?

@Pied_Pfeffer I just checked, and yes there is. When you hide one, it still shows up on your full list (I’m assuming only you could see it there), and has a link to “show on your profile” next to it. Yay, team!

@augustlan Thank you! I just tested it, and you were right.

@anartist 99% of the time, most people only ever need to see the first 6 or so results before getting fed up and altering their search terms. I mean, how many times do you actually click “Next” on a Google search? We were just trying to make it faster to find things. For that other 1% of the time, an extra click isn’t that much of an inconvenience. Plus, if you type into the search box and press enter twice (one to close the autocomplete box, twice to submit your search query), you don’t even have to click at all.

Web design is all about trying to deliver the most intuitive solution and the one that you don’t have to think about to use. By displaying the 6 most relevant questions, two most relevant users, and 1 most relevant topic in the autocomplete list, we’ve covered most of the searching bases – at least, that was our hope.

@camertron : I’m very impressed. Most of the tech geeks I know (and I know a lot, I have a strange fascination for you guys) can’t begin to explain things in terms I understand…thank you for being so coherently articulate! I actually understood you! Wow!

@camertron still having trouble with new search—
1 first 6 covers up what I was typing and i cannot correct a booboo
2 my searches are frequently obscure and I don’t find my answer often in the first 6
I thought you mentioned somewhere how to access full search but I can’t find it.

Hey @anartist, thanks for your feedback. Are you saying the dropdown box covers over the search field as you type? What browser are you using? What’s your operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc) and version (Windows 7, Mac OS X 10.6, Ubuntu Linux)? You can reach full search results by pressing enter twice after typing in your search terms. You can also get to full search by going to http://www.fluther.com/search/. Please let me know about your browser and operating system!

Also @anartist could you also supply the following:

1. Several of the search terms you’re using that aren’t working
2. A short list of the top results you get back for each search
3. What you’re actually looking for

Thanks!