I guess there is no reason to mention how much I dislike the new search and its inability to view my threads... :(

And this morning, the search by post date is not working AT ALL. When you do the sort by pulldown and click post date, it will think for a few seconds, then return those useless "relevance" results. :td:

Yup, I noticed the same last night. Grrrr. :)

Am I the only one that would prefer old search with spotty performance versus this alternative?

No, you are not alone.

I don't know about anyone else, but I've never had a problem with the old search and think that it is fast enough, thank you very much. Is speed what this is all about? I won't even pretend to know a single thing about such technical matters, but FWIW, I'm fine with the old way. I'm sure they're working on it (we need an icon for "keeping fingers crossed" - maybe they can get to work on that next!).

I too am baffled that a more stable search engine cannot display results in a variety of useful ways. Let's hope that the subsequent development gets us back to where we were, albeit without slowing the site down, which I guess is the instability cited.

I'd like to be able to see threads to which I have contributed to see whether there have been responses since I last looked without having to click through the threads to find out when I made my contribution and whether there are other submissions I haven't seen.

On both searches I tried the result page has the moderation drop-down menu. I'm not a mod, so this should really be looked into.

P.S. And no, I don't like the score thing and the linking-to-the-first-milepost-in-a-thread-instead-of-the relevant-one thingy one little bit.

Honestly, this adhoc change reflects an arrogance matched only by legacy airlines, major US political parties, and eBay. It screams "We did what was convenient for us, whaddya gonna do about it? Where else you gonna go?"

The legacy carriers are mostly bankrupt, 'nuff said.

The political parties are a mess of infighting at the moment.

eBay is learning its lesson as traffic was down in 2007 compared to 2006, with professional sellers moving to Amazon and the local sellers moving to craigslist.

Disregard your user base at your peril, lest some of your talented and influential users leave and work to build your competitor. When your community mods are unhappy enough to speak out publicly, you have serious problems.

I guess the fears voiced by users when Randy sold FT to IB are coming true.

I'm in the minority, but the new search just takes some getting use to. I've not had any problems finding any thread I search for or listing links.

Was that RBP mine? :eek:

Problems: Search by User
 

I just did a search by user for my user name for 1 day for all posts.

Problems: Search by User:

1. Search didn't find my last 3 posts, which were anywhere from a few minutes old to 12 hrs. old.
2. Results shown don't show my text, only the (partial) quoted text (unless I didn't quote someone) - this is a new problem - it used to start with my text, which is much more usable when searching for a post by a user.
3. It's only 74% sure it's relevant even when sort by Post date is used (it does sort by date, just lists this idiotic "relevance" also)! How can it not be 100% since it was one of all my posts?
4. Post time/date on search results don't match time/date on the same post when clicked on from the search results. Example: Search results lists "02/07/2008 22:26:51", but actual post lists "Today" [08Feb], "1:26 am".
5. Moderation drop-down menu at the bottom of the results. - Should this really be there, or is it there but non-functional except for those who actually have these privileges?

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by your "the linking-to-the-first-milepost-in-a-thread-instead-of-the relevant-one thingy," but if you mean clicking on a thread title in the search results takes you to the first post in the default page of the thread - it was that way in the old search also. You have to click on the link inside the actual quoted post, below the "Posted By..." link.

The performance problems had nothing to with the speed of search requests. Rather the old search engine was bringing the entire site down.

I was close to walking away for a while and I'd rather FT perform well in the interim while they hammer out a new search engine rather than timing out and having connections reset yet having the (theoretical) capability to use the old search engine. YMMV.

I'll have to agree with you on that one, but there are serious issues that aren't being addressed here. The least they could do is acknowledge the issues and post them along with the status in a single master post. A lot of us would be okay with the problems (for a reasonable length of time) if they're acknowledged and a status is posted for each one.

I think that's because there's a delay of at least 12 hrs. where posts don't show up in the results. (see my post earlier on search by user problems)

EDIT: That's annoying for a regular FTer, but a major problem for a moderator! Mods and Admins should have real-time access to a list of posts by any specific user, even if it can't be available to the rest of us..

I agree, but I don't have any confidence that this is going to happen. I was more confident when Randy's crew was running the show, to be honest. IB doesn't seem capable of telling us anything -- they remind us of airlines obfuscating the reasons for flight delays in that regard. I hope they prove me wrong, but I have my doubts.

Unfortunately, I have to agree with that also. The moderation drop-down issue a few of us have mentioned should really be looked at soon.

I agree with you that the FlyerTalk's performance of late had been very dismal, and the elimination of the traditional search engine has appeared to rectify the underlying problems.

But why is it that FlyerTalk seemed to run fine for a long time -- subject to occasional disruptions, some scheduled, others for emergency maintenance -- with the traditional search engine intact? Though I have zero experience or knowledge of web development, it seems improbable to me that the traditional search engine was the cause of the mayhem or that getting rid of it was the only way to solve the underlying problems.

I will second that, as the site was becoming pretty much inaccessible. The problems I encountered would definitely seem to have disappeared with the replacement of the old search engine.

The problem could also have been solved by increasing the minimum interval between searches to, say, a minute.

Add me to the list of people who want to see functionalities of the old the "My Threads" function reinstated!

I can live with the fact that the new function links to the first post in the thread instead of my post, but what annoys me to no end is that I can't tell whether or not there have been any new posts to the thread from the search window. Also the time lag is in getting posts to appear in the search is ridiculous.

And can anyone tell me how the supposed relevance is calculated when I search for my own posts? If I search by username, all posts should be 100% relevant if made by that user - I get 176 pages of posts with a relevance of 55% to 33%? ...?? :confused:

:td::td: to the software as it stands now. :mad:

I'll also toss in that I miss the thread total post count that was in the 'old' search results. It was helpful in determining whether to click on post itself(ie. large total post count) or the start of the thread(ie. small total post count).

That interval is the biggest PITA I have ever seen. Sometimes you end up making a mistake in a search (which needs refinement) and you try to resubmit and you get the infamous "Resubmit in 8 seconds message." If we need that interval, fine, but it would be nice to be able to put that on a list of things to eliminate once things stabilize.

Or wait the 8 seconds and submit automatically, that would be OK, too.

If you use the Subscribed Threads in Folder: Subscriptions instead of "My Threads" you will get a list of all your subscribed threads with the ones with newest posts to them on the top. Provided you use the default setting to automatically subscribe to any thread to which you post, you'll get what you want. I've been using this feature for years to see what threads have received new posts since I last refreshed/reloaded the page, since they're on top and in bold type. I keep one tab open with this list and another for each of the forums I regularly visit.

There is no time lag on this list either, which means it refreshes/reloads in real-time, as does a forum index. The time lag is more of a problem for moderators and administrators, using the search by user, than for the general FTer.

EDIT: BTW, if you click on the link inside your post, below the "Posted By:" link to the user, it will take you to that (in this case your) post, rather than the first post in the thread. - Sorry that works in the "My Posts" search not the "My Threads" search.

It's very easy to make a mistake too, since going back to refine the search knocks out a lot of the selections and info filled in for the last search. When that happens I like to fix it and start a new search without getting the error message. As you said, if the interval is really necessary, why not have it search automatically. It could even display a message that your search will automatically start in xx seconds, click here if not automatically redirected after xx seconds.

Unfortunately, using the Subscribed Threads in Folder: Subscriptions doesn't have the post count, but it does have the link to the most recent post, along with poster, the date and time of the last post.

Is there a solution to this problem: When I search within a thread (e.g., the RA experience thread) for a specific keyword (e.g., Seoul), the results screen brings up the same thread, but not the individual posts that include the search word.

JPDX - Click on Search This Thread, and choose Advanced Search. Enter Seoul as the keyword and then Show Results as "posts".

Another Bug or Two: Deleted Posts Still Showing Under Quick Links/My Posts
 

Back in the "good old" days, once a thread or post was deleted by the mods, it wouldn't be viewable. To the general members, at least. I guess they were still somewhere in the system/server, but not for our viewing pleasure no more.

After the new search engine was put in place, to my surprise, I now can see those deleted posts under quick links/my posts. (Yes, over the years, I did have few posts legitimately deleted by our mod team. :D). If I click on the links provided at the beginning of those deleted posts, I will be directed to the thread pages where those posts were originally holding a place but not the posts themselves (since they are deleted. Hope I am making sense.) I would think this is a bug since we are not supposed to have access to deleted posts no matter which (search) features we use.

There's another inconsistency in the post count when using the new search. If I am not mistaken, in the "old" system, once posts were deleted, the post count would be adjusted accordingly. (For example, if 5 out of my 200 posts are deleted, the post count under my username will be 195 instead of 200.) Now the new search is giving me a higher post count when I go to Quick Links/My Posts. The search result appears at the upper right corner:
Showing results 1 to 25 of #### (i.e. post count)
Search took 0.994 seconds

That #### post count is higher than the one currently showing under my profile. I have no way to understand why higher post count other than assumeing those previously deleted posts are now accounted for under the new search (therefore I can see those posts under Quick Links/My Posts). I would think deleted posts not only should be taken out from our "viewing area" but also be excluded from post count in the search result. Another bug, maybe?

I asked the same question in my earlier post as well. At least your "scores" are higher than mine. Mine were all 68% with two exception posts in 70% (1 in OMNI and the other in SPAM, not sure if it matters). I guess everybody is confused by the weight criteria on the scoring thingy. If IB had spelled it out for us, we would have known better what it meant. If the scoring system is only for the internal/programming purpose, please spare the general FT members. We don't need to see it so don't show it to us.
Same thing applies to the moderation drop-down menu. It's not functional. (Yes, I tried to see what would happen. It's not functional to the general FTers.) If it's not for the general FT members to see, don't put it there!

Are the IB hamsters less responsive than our old ones? How soon can we expect to see some results? Please don't tell me you guys are taking a break for Chinese New Year. :p

I know that I can subscribe to any thread I post to, but often enough, I don't want to. The threads in my "Subscriptions" folder are the ones I consider to be important for whatever reason, and which I want to keep monitoring even after a week or two has passed. If I subscribe to every thread I've ever posted to, this tool will get too unwieldy if I want to find something specific that hasn't seen activity in a while. I know I could always unsubscribe from a thread once I no longer want to monitor it, but that takes unnecessary time.

This is precisely why I liked the old function, because I could also keep abreast of threads that I didn't think were important enough to subscribe to, but which were interesting to follow anyway. I greatly preferred that solution to the mess we have now.

I was referring to general searches though, not the threads I subscribe to. Knowing the size of the overall thread helps in figuring out where to start reading based on the 'old' search result post count.

I'm not saying that should be considered a fix, it's just an imperfect work-around.

me too, I personally think the new search facility is nothing but disasterous...

Thank you!

It seems to have been fixed since my first post. Back then it didn't give you any option to click on the link inside the quotes. (And I do remember how the old search used to work)

The moderator drop-down is still there, though

Oh, glad to see there's already a thread on this. I found it, but no thanks to the search!!

The biggest bug for me now is searching long threads, the search result is just one hit - the thread. Thanks for nothing, I'm already on the thread you stupid search engine. Doh.

No, however I did spend some time observing the database process list. I personally watched the search queries locking the post table and backing things up. I was also relying on the fact that this is a known problem with the VB search that has impacted other boards -- including one that I'm a long time user on.
Kevin

1) There was a problem with the search indexer that has since been resolved. It should be working now. (That said, I need to do a reindex of the posts to fix some other problems -- this means that indexing of changes is going to be slow for a few hours while the index queue clears)

2) The relevance score is complicated to explain and doesn't mean much in an absolute sense. That is, a post with twice the relevance score is much more likely to be relevant, but 2% vs 1% and 50% vs 25% mean pretty much the same thing.

3) I think that's a timezone issue. The search results are going to be PST.

4) Will forward to the search team.

Thanks for the updates, please keep those coming. I think the most frustrating thing is not having any idea if what is reported is being worked on/resolved. Problems are normal, but not getting reports acknowledged, even if they've been solved or are being worked on, is not good business sense.

Problem with search this thread:

BTW, the search within a thread needs to automatically be done by posts without having to pick the advanced search and selecting that option, after all, if you're searching a thread, it's of very little use if that thread is returned.