Forum search bug

[joeconstantine]

From what I can tell, the forum search does not behave correctly.

For example, the strings:

term#1 term#2 term#3

term#1 AND term#2 AND term#3

"term#1 term#2 term#3"

all produce exactly the same results. This makes it very hard to find out if a question has already been asked before since attempting to search for a particular phrase actually searches for all the terms individually.

The string: term#1 OR term#2 OR term#3 did not work at all at time of testing, but this should be the default anyway without any specific operators (i.e. the same functionality as term#1 term#2 term#3,) so not a real biggy.

[joeconstantine]

Anybody bothered? It's just that we are constantly told to search the forums to see if the problem already exists, and, well, we can't.

[Nunzio390]

I can confirm that every search string that you listed in your first post does not work correctly, as you said. Others as well that you didn't even list. But it's always been that way as far back as I can recall, and is really unrelated to the site design/site webmaster. However, when I answer questions for people who don't bother to use the search feature in the forums, and I'm unsure of the answer myself, I use the search feature (even with the limitations you posted above) and I am still able to find/provide answers for people regardless of its shortcomings.

You can try contacting the forums Admin, Craig (http://forums.winamp.com/member.php?s=&action=getinfo&userid=106), to see if there's anything he can do about it. But I think not (other than upgrading the forums software, which would probably require taking the forums offline for awhile, and that is not good).

[joeconstantine]

Thanks for your reply. However, it really does hinder searching. suppose i was experiencing a problem with jump to file extra - entering the search term jump file extra problem will return ALL posts that contain the word jump, AND ALL posts that contain the word file, AND ALL posts that contain the word extra, AND ALL posts that contain the word problem. There simply isn't a way to narrow your search to posts that only contain all the words together, as would be the standard for, let's say, google. It would be quicker and easier to trawl through the technical support pages checking each and every thread for similar problems. Extremely counter intuitive. :down:

[Nunzio390]

Again... I can confirm all that and I agree that it hinders searching and is counter intuitive.

But also, as I already indicated above, the only remedy is to try contacting the forums Admin to see if there's anything he can do about it. Other than that, there isn't much that you, I, or anyone else can do about the issue.

[JonnyMac]

Originally posted by joeconstantine
as would be the standard for, let's say, google.As a workaround you could try Google. Google's advanced search page (http://www.google.com/advanced_search) lets you limit the search to a specific domain or site. So when you need specific results, you could try your search with forums.winamp.com in the Domain box. If you prefer to use the standard Google (http://www.google.com/) search page add site:forums.winamp.com to the end of the search criteria.

[Nunzio390]

Good workaround, JM ;) :up:

[joeconstantine]

:up:

[ryan]

It's also pretty much impossible to search the term "Winamp" on the forums. :P