I search, but all I find is other searchers

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PhilHibbs
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I search, but all I find is other searchers

Post by PhilHibbs »

Someone wrote:Search!
This question has been answered in detail before.
I'd like to propose a new forum "rule". If someone posts a question and gets directed to the Search feature, and they then find a helpful post in their search, they should reply in their new thread with a link to what they found that helped them. That way, as the search results get increasingly polluted with "How do I do X": "USE THE SEARCH!" threads, someone searching for X will actually find a useful answer.

I've found that this is a real problem. I do a search for something, and the first 20 results that I look at are all people being told to use the search.

"If you follow me, you will not find what I found". Lets prove that wrong!
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Post by chulett »

I've had the exact same problem. Searching for something I know is out there somewhere can get drowned out by posts that just say to search for it. I usually try to give examples of what to search for and/or post an example of what I found.
-craig

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PhilHibbs
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Post by PhilHibbs »

Perhaps some mechanism to exclude a thread from the search results would be helpful.
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Post by ray.wurlod »

Well there IS a filter to search only for resolved topics.
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Post by PhilHibbs »

If I asked a question and was told "Use the search", and I used the search and found an answer, I'd mark it as "resolved".
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Post by BI-RMA »

If You do that and post the link to the answer that solved Your question, then everybody else will be able to find the solution, too.
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There are the grateful those are happy." Francis Bacon
PhilHibbs
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Post by PhilHibbs »

What a brilliant idea! Someone should suggest that in the Site/Forum... oh wait, that's exactly what this thread is about. Yes. People should do that. That's my suggestion.
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Post by DSguru2B »

You crack me up PhilHibbs.
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Post by PhilHibbs »

Ok, here's a classic example. A colleague came to me for advice on a warning, "inserted sort does not fulfill the sort requirements of the downstream operator", so I searched here for that phrase and a variety of subsets of it, and in every single result, all I could see was "Use the forum search functon" answers. Absolutely no useful suggestions at all. Specifically, this post:

viewtopic.php?t=114516&highlight=insert ... m+operator

Search for that phrase, and there is exactly one result - that same post.

Is there another post that used to be returned by a search for that phrase, but no longer is?
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Post by chulett »

Make sure you do an exact search and don't include too much text... there is a bug (feature?) in the other searches in that they only go back in time a small number of days, no clue why. The exact search searches everything. I got 57 matches on "does not fulfill the sort requirements", for whatever that is worth. Hmmm... sounds like that's what you did.

And yes, I feel your pain. I'm as guilty of making those posts as anyone and when I've actually tried to find a useful link for someone, there have been times when all I've found are the "you are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike" messages. :wink:
-craig

"You can never have too many knives" -- Logan Nine Fingers
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