Search Results Missing?

quote:

Originally posted by Chuck Melton:

... For example, my tag line (Number of posts, location, registered date) reports since 10/16/2000 I have made 943 posts, yet if I search for all of them, only 248 show up ....

Chuck ....

I was trying to figure out were you got the 248 number. I used "advanced search". I typed in "Chuck Melton" for the author name. I got 854 results, not 248. So I clicked on your member name, and in the drop down menu I clicked on "view recent posts by Chuck Melton" and got 905 results from that one!

You are not the first person to have trouble finding old threads. I and many others have had this problem too. But I don't believe there are mass quantities of missing threads, they're in there but they're difficult to find with the search function.

The number of forums, the names of forums, the content of forums changed over the years. It took a while to figure out what the priorities were, what the best format was to achieve those priorities. We simplified things, reduced the number of forums, but that didn't work. People don't like a bunch of forums to search through for new content every day, but people don't like searching through threads about engine rebuilding when they are looking for information about insurance either. So eventually I went the other way, and made it easier to manually search the forums for the specific content a person may be looking for; and I endeavored to create a logical place for each "topic".

Threads were shuffled back and forth between forums as forums were combined or as new forums were created. As far as I know no threads have ever been disposed of. At least not on my watch. I do not remember being notified by Infopop/Groupee/Social Strata of forum content being archived either.

My thoughts:

(1) I have a theory that each time the content of forums was shuffled links to threads were confused or broken. I believe this because various members had saved links that no longer worked when they later tried using them.

(2) The originator of a thread always has the power to delete the entire thread by deleting his first post. Every once in a while this "quietly" happens. A couple of years ago I set the software so that any thread that hasn't been active in 1 year is automatically locked up. This helps prevent deletions like this. I can always unlock a thread, all anyone has to do is contact me and request it.

(3) The forums search engine is notoriously poor at finding things.



If you want to manually search for content, these are the forums were you'll find the oldest content:
________________

The news forum existed under a different name, the pub was created a few years later, but became a "catch all" forum where people posted stuff that had no other logical place to go.

Community News - 81 pages dating back to 2000
Alejandro's neighborhood pub - 317 pages dating back to 2003
________________

The classifieds have always existed in close to their current format

Panteras for sale - 58 pages dating back to 2000
parts for sale - 81 pages dating back to 2001
collectables for sale - 15 pages dating back to 2000
cars/parts wanted forum - 73 pages dating back to 2000
_________________

There were originally 2 technical forums. The coach forum was originally just the all-in-one technical help forum. It is the forum from which the content for all the other technical forums were gleaned, except for the ZF forum.:

The coach forum - 285 pages dating back to 2000
the ZF forum - 57 pages dating back to 2000
_________________

There was originally one Mangusta Forum that was later broken up into 3 forums:

MLD Buying & Selling forum - 5 pages datng back to 2000
MLD ownership issues forum - 10 pages dating back to 2001
Mangusta tech forum - 14 pages dating back to 2000

Is that enough light?

-G

quote:

... My limited testing reveals that a LOT of posts may be gone...

Perhaps those posts have fallen into the Abyss

I have found this to be a common problem on this forum. I've bookmarked numerous threads containing valuable information I've wanted to save for future use. When I return to the bookmarked thread 1-2 years later, the thread cannot be found. I can only suppose that the URL link changes or becomes invalid when threads are moved to different areas in the forum. However I have also found instances where I've copied text from such threads and saved it in a separate doc so I wouldn't lose the information, and searches of specific text strings have yielded no results for the missing thread. It's possible that the original poster deleted the post, although I don't know why so many people would intentionally delete valuable information.

Garth

you're one of the folks I was thinking of when I wrote "I have a theory that each time the content of forums was shuffled links to threads were confused or broken" because we've written privately several times about missing threads. I never saved links to threads like you have, but I have the same problem finding threads with the search engine, even when I type in specific words I know are in the thread, the authors name, the forum, etc. Yet if I do a manual search I can find the thread.

I truly believe the threads are still there, but our search engine stinks when searching for "content" which makes finding the threads more difficult than it should be.

There is one trick I have used successfully so I'll share that with you. The member name located above the avatar to the left of anybody's post is a link to a drop down menu, one of the choices in that drop down menu is "View Recent Posts By [member name]". If you click on that selection, it doesn't just display "recent" posts, it seems to display pretty much every post by that member.

Some members post more frequently than others. I have over 5600 posts! But the Reaper has only 38 posts. If you can remember somebody who posted in the thread you are looking for, who doesn't post very frequently, a quick manual search through their "recent posts" should allow you to find their post in that particular thread you wish to find.

In other words, the one search our search engine seems to do very well is to search for posts by a certain member.

-G