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.