search facility is stupid?

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Andrew
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search facility is stupid?

Post by Andrew » August 3rd, 2009, 8:01 pm

I tried to search for all posts containing "golly" but it refused to do it saying the word is "too common"! Then I tried a wildcard search "goll*" but that found no matches. Is there a sneaky way to do the search I want or is this just some fundamental limitation/stupidity in phpBB?
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H. V. McIntosh
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Re: search facility is stupid?

Post by H. V. McIntosh » August 3rd, 2009, 8:51 pm

Andrew wrote:Is there a sneaky way to do the search I want or is this just some fundamental limitation/stupidity in phpBB?
I'd vote for stupidity, but I got "*oll*" to turn up lots of "Golly"s as well as plenty of other things. I don't know whose search routine this PHPBB is using, but it isn't case sensitive and lacks a case-sensitive option. The *common* denunciation is almost instantaneous; there must be a list but the administrator probably cannot edit it. Google and Dogpile seem to be able to pick up Golly so PHPBB isn't piggybacking on their search engines.
-hvm

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Nathaniel
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Re: search facility is stupid?

Post by Nathaniel » August 3rd, 2009, 9:30 pm

H. V. McIntosh wrote:The *common* denunciation is almost instantaneous; there must be a list but the administrator probably cannot edit it. Google and Dogpile seem to be able to pick up Golly so PHPBB isn't piggybacking on their search engines.
It considers a word "common" by default if it appears in over 5% of posts. I just now removed that feature but now it seems as though search isn't working at all. I'll keep you updated on its getting fixed status.

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Re: search facility is stupid?

Post by Nathaniel » August 3rd, 2009, 10:19 pm

Search is now fixed, and words only appear in the "common" list if they appear in more than 25% of posts now; hopefully it will only catch words like "the" and "will" and other random common non-Life-related words now.

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Re: search facility is stupid?

Post by Andrew » August 3rd, 2009, 10:49 pm

Thanks Nathaniel! Searching for "golly" now works.
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Macbi
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Re: search facility is stupid?

Post by Macbi » August 4th, 2009, 3:59 am

Google allows searching of specific sites, using the syntax:

golly site:http://www.conwaylife.com/forums/

I find that using Google in this way is better in all respects to the phpBB search.

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Andrew
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Re: search facility is stupid?

Post by Andrew » August 4th, 2009, 6:46 am

Macbi wrote:golly site:http://www.conwaylife.com/forums/
That Google search doesn't seem to find anywhere near the same number of posts as a phpBB search. For some reason Google doesn't find any of the numerous posts mentioning Golly in the "Golly scripts" topic in Game of Life > Scripts. Nor does Google find very recent posts.
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Re: search facility is stupid?

Post by bprentice » February 24th, 2014, 8:04 am

The highlighting on the following page:

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1027&p=7429&hilit= ... Cell#p7426

was the result of a search. How can it be removed?

Brian Prentice

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Re: search facility is stupid?

Post by dvgrn » February 24th, 2014, 9:03 am

bprentice wrote:The highlighting on the following page:

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1027&p=7429&hilit= ... Cell#p7426

was the result of a search. How can it be removed?
Just take the "&hilit=Hexagonal+Cell" out of the URL:

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1027&p=7429#p7426

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