The phantom page problem is unrelated to search. What happens is that VB stores the thread lengths rather than recalculate them every time they are needed. That means the stored length needs to get updated every time a post is added or removed from a thread. For reasons that aren't entirely clear to me the stored length can get out of sync with the actual length of the thread*. Paging goes off the stored length, so if that is larger than the actual length then there will be a page on the picklist that isn't really there. At least that's the usual cause of things.
Kevin

*There are lots of ways to add, deleted, and or move posts -- probably one of them doesn't correctly update the length.

Totally agree with the above. Well said flyinhawaiian.

Cheers.

Fully agree ^

The new search engine is virtually useless. Let me give you a quick example. I was trying to point another FlyerTalker to the recent thread in the NZ forum regarding the discontinuation of service between LAX and NAN. The title of the thread is "Air NZ terminates NAN-LAX." It was started on January 23, 2008. When I used the IB search and search the NZ forum where it is housed and query "NAN" and "LAX" as a title search, this is what I get:
The thread I want is nowhere in the results even though the search query should nail it and it is the most recent thread that should be responsive to that query. :confused:

Searching "NAN" in the title, limiting the search to the NZ forum, and asking the results to be sorted by date is no better. The search engine seems to think that the most recent hit is a thread from August 30, 2007, entitled "NAN/RAR route." :confused:

Without a useful and credible search engine, maximizing the vast knowledge accumulated and stored in FlyerTalk is a virtual impossibility. It is the equivalent of having an unabridged dictionary with entries that are ordered randomly rather than alphabetically. :td:

This is the kind of feedback that is most useful to us. In this particular case, we are still rebuilding the index from the problems yesterday and there are roughly 500k posts left to index. I'll follow up when that's complete and see if that was the problem.
Thanks,
Kevin


Edit: Indexing is complete and the thread you mentioned is now showing up for a search on "NAN LAX"

I wasn't involved in that particular discussion, so I can't answer the question directly. The general approach was to display all of the information available for a given result set. Its obviously caused a lot of confusion, but I'm not sure that looking into its removal is at the top of anybody's priority list.
Kevin

Did you follow cheepneezy's advice to jpdx, or is that not working for some reason?

BTW, the default for this search should be changed to display the posts on this, as soon as they can get to it.

Thanks for clearing up the reasons for the phantom page phenomenon.

We weren't speculating that the cause of it had anything to do with search, rather that the cause of it might also be the cause of search returning results in "My Threads" from our posts which were deleted from threads. Lin821 found the post count in "My Threads" didn't agree with that which is displayed with the user information under the user name to the left of posts in the forums.

The normal partially displayed posts that show up in "My Threads" included those that were "deleted" - each of which linked to the forum at the place where the deleted post used to be.

We were wondering why they were still showing up in "My Threads" and why they were included in the total post count in "My Threads" - also, even more importantly, if these "deleted" posts were visible to anyone using the search for all threads by that user.

The two issues are likely unrelated. I'm not 100% where the "My Threads" features you are referring to is located. The IB search shares almost no logic with the core VB application so it isn't likely to be affected by VB bugs.

However, we did have a problem with deleted posts showing up in the search. That should, at this point be fixed (note that moderators and others who can see deleted posts will see them in search as well). If people are still seeing deleted posts please let me know.
Kevin

Now that I can certainly understand. :)

According to www.big-boards.com, FT is only 57th biggest VBulletin board listed, with the largest more than 10 times FT's size. How does search work on those much larger boards?

Sorry, my mistake (although basically the same place), that should have been My Posts: Quick Links>My Posts.

I checked two of the top three just now. The top board has search restricted to paid members. The third has only google search enabled. I didn't feel like handing my email to SomethingAwful...

Do you actually know of a large VB board that uses the internal VB search?
Kevin

As far as I can tell, it's still not fixed. I am still seeing at least two deleted posts that would take me to the phantom thread page when I click on the links within each individual post (Quick Links/My Posts).

As I was saying I was not sure the problems were part of the current search feature. Search problem or not, they need to be fixed (eventually, I guess.). If the problems I am experiencing are not among the top priorities, I'll understand. I know you guys have a "bigger fire" to put out for the moment being. But I will appreciate the acknowledgement that your tech team will work on it. That's whole beauty of providing feedback to IT folks, isn't it? :)

ed1 and I both weren't sure whey behave the way they are. I am not a IT person myself. I can only report to your tech team so you guys can examine and fix the problems. (Problem Reports in details: here, and here, or post#128 for ed1's summary post). Our logic was it was kind of a "sorting" feature from the posts/threads, so maybe was affected by the Search feature since it's not only reflecting inconsistent total post count from an individual user, but it also allows the deleted posts visible to say user.

The "My Threads" (or "My Posts") features are located within the dropdown menu from ""Quick Links." "Quick Links" is located at the top of every page, right next to the "Logout", the same place you see MyFlyerTalk, FAQ, Calendars..etc.

EDIT: Okay, I found more deleted posts from other users that show up in search (but not in the thread) #9038636 and #9034040. This obviously isn't fixed yet.

EDIT 2: Searching for dallas airport westin give me 10 deleted posts, 7 in pg. 1 and 3 in pg. 2.

Here's a case of a duplicate post I asked to be deleted and the original post, both of which show up in succession on Quick Links>My Posts:


Both the duplicate (deleted from the thread) and the original (still in the thread) show up in the list, and both links take me to the same place in that thread.

I don't know if anyone else can see my deleted posts in the list of my posts or if, by design, the user only can see their deleted posts in this fashion, but this should be checked out.

There is an OMNI thread with the title: Is A Daily Show cancelled?

I entered a search of "Daily Show cancelled" (without the quotes) and did not find that thread, all I get is one old thread that is not related. However, if I search for "Daily" or "Daily Show" or "A Daily Show" (without the quotes) I do find the thread.

Is the question mark in the thread title a problem? The search works just so long as I don't use the word in the title that has a question mark attached to it ("cancelled?"). Adding a question mark to the search doesn't help.

Are you sure you also spelled canceled wrong? If you did spell it wrong (the way the OP did), then the search must be intermittent:

The new search is problematic for me in a couple of ways.

For instance, I would like to read the reviews for the DFW Westin.

1. The basic search return for "Westin Dallas" is:

100% Q1 2008 SPG Promo is Up
BlondeBomber 02/10/2008 14:45:52 Forum: Starwood Preferred Guest
18% 2007 : Your Travel Year in Review
uclabruin82 12/28/2007 19:47:13 Forum: Trip Reports
16% Report Your Platinum Upgrade Successes
OkieFlyer 12/27/2007 09:29:30 Forum: Starwood Preferred Guest

The "Advanced Search" return for the "Dallas Westin", focused on the SPG fourm, is:

100% Q1 2008 SPG Promo is Up
BlondeBomber 02/10/2008 14:45:52 Forum: Starwood Preferred Guest
50% The SPG Forum FAQ & Primary Resource Thread
AZ Travels the World 06/02/2007 12:51:11 Forum: Starwood Preferred Guest
47% Westin Galleria Dallas: Disappointing
ILUVCITIBANK 03/12/2007 03:27:34 Forum: Starwood Preferred Guest

Neither of these is the thread I really want to read, which after scrolling through several pages of the SPG forum, is:

dallas/ft.worth airport Westin or Sheraton?
Anglo Large Clawed Otter 12/18/2007 12:41:39 Forum: Starwood Preferred Guest

2. The drop-down for refining the search results includes "Relevance", "posts", etc. However, the actual results appear to be off considerably. For instance, if I search on my own username by "posts", it provides me a list of threads that I have posted in recently, but it does not include all of them. Furthermore, it sorts the threads by when I posted in them, not by the most recent post date.

Hope this helps.

2. Should give you several pages of results (I get all my posts back to 2002 in 56 pages of results) When I change the sorting (not for refining) to date it sorts all 56 pages by date (most recent on top of page 1).

For your posts I get 32 pages with a total of 784 posts, which would include 7 deleted posts, if the math is working correctly. Your most recent post shows as this one and your first shows as 04/22/2004. Are you sure you selected "Search all open forums," had nothing in keyword, and "* Forever" in the Find items posted within the past:?

The easiest way to see your posts is just to use Quick Links> My Posts.

I didn't mean to brush the problem off. Its just that as a developer I have a tendency to like to but bugs in their proper category :)

I'll try to look into it when I have the time -- which isn't likely to be immediately.
Kevin

This is definitely a problem. I'll log it for the search team.

Can you provide an example of a post that you made that doesn't show in the search results?
Kevin

Kevin, please see my answer to Wilbur about his searching for his posts, I found all 784 of his in 32 pages of results.

BTW, did you see my edit 2 I just added to my last reply to you?

Most frustrating to me has been the Search > Advanced Search > Search by User Name.
That's how I keep up with threads where I've had input (where I posted). The current search feature does NOT allow me to see those posts, organized by most recent post date (as the old search feature did).

This limits the usefulness of FT to me at the moment, which is a shame... :(

The new search doesn't have the capability to sort by most recent post date. It turns out that this is not going to be easy to implement in the new model. It something we definitely want to do.
Kevin

While it's only a work-around, and it only works if you use the default auto-subscribe to all threads to which you post, Quick Links>Subscribed Threads will be ordered by the thread with the most recent post to it on top (the same way the threads list in the forums do). This is what I've been using for years to track both the threads where I've posted and those where I've subscribed (even though I haven't posted in them).

Thanks Kevin...still it's a bit sad because for many it deletes half the benefits of the usage of FT...we hope it can be fixed soon. Thanks for your hard work on it.

In the meantime, I selected no email notification in my subscribed threads section on my profile because I dont want to be emailed everytime someone posts but I do want to see a list of my posts and choose what I want to read. It is showing no subscribed threads for me now, does it only show threads I respond to post changing my preference? or will my previous posts show up at some point?

No. FT is the only large board I visit. Thanks for checking though.

BTW when I searched just now for posts by you and sort by date it picks up nothing more recent than your reply quoted above. Is the indexing not being updated continuously?

It looks like the indexer got hit with a large number of posts to index. I'm not sure why exactly ... I haven't done any reindexing since the last time the index queue cleared. It could be that the mods did some house cleaning on some large threads or something that would require reindexing a lot of old posts at once. When the indexer gets hit like that, it can take a while for it to catch up.

I pushed up the index rate a little, so hopefully it will catch up.
Kevin

No, I just tried again, and the return is now everything I remember posting in the past week. Thank you for the fix.

I don't mind the current search, for one reason: FT is now faster than it's been in a long time.

I love a good working search, but I'd trade it for a working site anytime.

Drop-down on My Threads not working in IE or Ff !
 

Drop-down on My Threads not working in IE or Ff:

Quick Links>My Threads: I can't get the "select all" drop-down to work in Firefox or IE7.

I don't think it will retroactively subscribe you to those treads, but you could go to Quick Links>My Threads and check all the threads (I can't get the "select all" drop-down to work in Firefox or IE7) to get started.

I think this may be the issue ed1 is having, but how do you actually subscribe to threads in order to get the work-around to work?

Yes, I'm sure I spelled it the same way the OP did. I did notice and remember the two l's in "cancelled".

My theory about the question mark is wrong. I tried a different thread with a question mark and it worked fine. So there must be some other reason why it doesn't find the Daily Show thread with "cancelled" as part of the search.

I tried it and my results were similar to yours. You can find the thread if you search for "Daily Show", but a search for "Daily Show cancelled" yields this:

Nothing found to match your search request

Reason: Your search terms were not found

Possible Cause: You may have searched for something our search engine has never seen before. Try using a simpler form of the word, for example if you searched for the word "fishes", try revising your search with the simplistic form "fish" instead.

Possible Cause: You may have searched for something that was missed by the indexer. In this case, if you know for certain your search should have found results, notify us and we will rebuild the appropriate portion of the index.

Please try revising your search terms and try again. If you believe your search terms should be returning results, please create a post in the user support forum, detailing exactly what you were searching for and an idea of what you feel it should be returning for results.

It must be intermittent or an indexing problem, because it worked fine for me just before I posted that reply with my search results using cancelled, show, daily.

I just ran the same search and it worked okay for me again:

Weird. I just ran it again a got nothing when "Daily Show cancelled" was in quotes and only one hit when I removed the quotes.

Search: Key Word(s): cancelled, daily, show
Discuss: MTV (and its properties) Is Vile
sunvolume 08/30/2005 11:55:19

Unlike most search engines, I haven't had much luck using quotes on FT. But I don't have any idea why we're getting such different results otherwise.

Really? The only way I can get certain searches to work is to use the quotes.