Message to the Admin

brodie · 01-21-2002, 08:25 PM

hi Admin, just a small suggestion, could you make the search protocol two or three letters, not five, and maybe a site discussion forum?
thanks

lerkfish · 01-21-2002, 08:33 PM

various configurations were discussed before launch, including one version that probably had twice as many forums as there are now!
I believe there was at one time in a prototype a site discussion forum but in the interest of brevity was put on the-table-of-things-we-might-add-if-there-is-enough-interest-at-a-later-date.

griffman · 01-21-2002, 09:15 PM

Brodie:

I just changed the search limit to three characters -- this will let you look for "Mac" ... searching on "OS" is probably not that beneficial, and it greatly increases the size of the indexing operation if we go to two characters.

As for a separate forum to discuss the forum, it may be a reasonable idea. We'll talk about it and see how things go for the first week or so; no need to rush to make a change right away. For now, feel free (as you did!) to drop any suggestions in The Coat Room.

-rob.

griffman · 01-23-2002, 10:29 AM

We've now created the Forum Feedback area for discussions just like this one ... so I'm moving this thread.

-rob.

Roy Vincent · 01-30-2002, 09:50 PM

Quote:


	Originally posted by griffman Brodie: I just changed the search limit to three characters -- this will let you look for "Mac" ... searching on "OS" is probably not that beneficial, and it greatly increases the size of the indexing operation if we go to two characters. -rob.

Okay Rob. But: Allowing three characters is not really enough. Because it applies to certain text of one or two characters imbedded in a long piece of search text.

The other day, somebody had a post about his HD being named by "/". (He probably formatted by UFS, not HFS +, and he did not understand that.) So I searched in your System Forum for the text: Hard disks named by "/" . But I got a rejection. The problem was stated to be: /. Not enough characters there.

That rejection is not welcome. What if someone wants to search for: Files begining with "." ?

I think one should be able to search for text that imbeds in quotes Unix's special symbols. Don't you? And these special symbols can often be one or two characters in length.

If one drops the quotes on these special symbols, the search request is also rejected--in case you wanted to do a check.

On the other hand, if one searches for: Files starting with the letter "a", there is no rejection--just "No matches found". There seems to be a special sensitivity to the one or two character symbols of Unix.

So I think that though you can reasonably stipulate that the entire search text must be three characters or more, you should *try* to allow within search text for the presence of Unix's special symbols of one or two characters in length. Or if not, you should warn everyone to avoid using these special symbols in their posts and to use instead long-hand versions of them: Use " forward slash" instead of "/" and "double dots" instead of "..". (But it is not clear that such long-hand versions would be intelligible.)

Just my two bits worth. Nice forums here. My congrats to you.

griffman · 01-31-2002, 12:13 AM

Hmm ... if a PHP/regex wizard would like to volunteer to take a look at the vBulletin search engine, I would welcome such abilities. Making such modifications, however, is quite beyond my skill level (and I freely admit as much! ;-).

-rob.

01-21-2002, 08:25 PM	#1
brodie Triple-A Player Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 143	Message to the Admin hi Admin, just a small suggestion, could you make the search protocol two or three letters, not five, and maybe a site discussion forum? thanks

01-23-2002, 10:29 AM	#4
griffman MVP Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Portland, OR Posts: 1,471	You win! ;-) We've now created the Forum Feedback area for discussions just like this one ... so I'm moving this thread. -rob.

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01-21-2002, 08:33 PM	#2
lerkfish Site Admin Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Midwest USA Posts: 596	various configurations were discussed before launch, including one version that probably had twice as many forums as there are now! I believe there was at one time in a prototype a site discussion forum but in the interest of brevity was put on the-table-of-things-we-might-add-if-there-is-enough-interest-at-a-later-date.

01-21-2002, 09:15 PM	#3
griffman MVP Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Portland, OR Posts: 1,471	Brodie: I just changed the search limit to three characters -- this will let you look for "Mac" ... searching on "OS" is probably not that beneficial, and it greatly increases the size of the indexing operation if we go to two characters. As for a separate forum to discuss the forum, it may be a reasonable idea. We'll talk about it and see how things go for the first week or so; no need to rush to make a change right away. For now, feel free (as you did!) to drop any suggestions in The Coat Room. -rob.

01-31-2002, 12:13 AM	#6
griffman MVP Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Portland, OR Posts: 1,471	Hmm ... if a PHP/regex wizard would like to volunteer to take a look at the vBulletin search engine, I would welcome such abilities. Making such modifications, however, is quite beyond my skill level (and I freely admit as much! ;-). -rob.