Search Meltdown
 

I think the search meltdown happened during the past weekend. At least last week I didn't see any ancient dates under "My Posts."

I just PMed Mikel about this "new" development. Hopefully we'll get some updates and REAL fixes very soon.

"1) dated in the year 1970 (waaay before our FT time "

I'm seeing 1969-68... for a 2-week member... ;)

'Sort by Relevance' returns correct dates, fwiw.
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search on member's posts returns 1970 dates

search the posts the same member made (eg by phrase or new posts) returns the correct dates - for the same posts

Using "search" in a specific forum results in finds from all forums. Not useful at all. :(

I e-mailed them about a "database error" this morning ~noon as FT.com was not resolving... now I'm getting this error too...

A quick and, unfortunately, incomplete update:

The Search team implemented a patch that was intended to fix the database errors members were seeing when they tried to search. Obviously, it appears now that patch might be causing other unintended consequences :(

The team is working on it at this very moment. Hope to have it corrected very soon.

I really didn't think it could (or would) get much worse but really, did they test it? I've been patient but I just searched within a FORUM and got results from the ENTIRE board ... this is really useless. :td:

+1.

Never thought it's even possible to have a patch that would kill the beta search. ;)

A fix to the "fix" is scheduled for this afternoon. If all goes well, this fix will correct the "Search by Forum" issue and the 1970s dates.

Just wanted to say that its not fair you're getting dumped on for what seems like ongoing IB mistakes here ... thanks for providing the updates.

Seems perfectly fair to me to dump on any and all of us when things like this happen, we're all in this together. I certainly take no offense, and am actually glad that FTers care enough to tell us you're upset, rather than just walk away :)

Thanks for the updates.

What about the status 500 club ;)? Is that part of the scheduled fix this afternoon?

it appears a partial fix has been implemented.

The good news: the newer posts show up first and you can again search a forum.

the bad: Threads show up more than once. A search for "credit card" in the American forum brings a listing of the same thread multiple times.

That was an existing problem with the IB Beta search (from before the latest patch).

It looks like it. The Flyertalk Search Updates Announcement hasn't been updated though.

I just did a couple of test searches. It seems:

1. No more ancient/future dates;
2. No more status 500 error;
3. "Search this Forum" is back from "global" to "local" forum;
4. Key word searches would work on both thread title and body. This one I am not positively sure. I didn't have many data points in mind to run my tests. Maybe some of our mods can test it more vigorously and see if this reported problem has been fixed.

I am guessing the default behavior is still thread-based, instead of post-based (i.e. the classic search). That would explain why the same thread pops up multiple time. Meaning if the search term matches X number of posts in one particular thread, the search result will pull up that thread X times (being thread-based).