GUIDE - How To Search for Fun and Profit

Alright, so we've been posting a lot, like a LOT. A lot of things have come up, and we've had some giant threads, and it can be intimidating as someone new to the forum to look at the bottom and see that there is almost 2000 threads with almost 40,000 posts!

So here's how to search.

Step 1 - WHERES THE SEARCH BUTTON?!?

Answer, RIGHT HERE


It was hidding in plain sight all along! If you still can't see it, just click the pic above, I casted an auto-magical spell to take you right to it!

Step 2 - CLICK IT GOOD!

Okay, now we gotta figure out what all these things are!



That's a lot of options! It can be overwhelming so lets break it down.

Step 3 - PICK YOUR KEYWORD(S)



This is probably the most important step, you gotta pick the right keyword(s) as no fancy option will find Cat related threads if you put 'Muffin' as a keyword, so choose wisely and change them up for different synonyms if you don't get good results.

Step 4 - WHAT WAS HIS NAME AGAIN???



This option is kinda hit and miss, if you know who the author is(post or thread) you can filter the results to help cut out the chaff, just make sure you spell the name right!

Step 5 - ZE GOOGLEZ, ZEY DO NUTHING!!!!



These options are effectively useless, fiddle around with them if you want but I don't bother.

Step 6 - PICK AND CHOOSE!



Okay, these options are pretty important, and can make things a lot easier to sift through, I only figured these ones out a few weeks ago and they'll take some explaining.

The top option(also the default option) is to search the Topic Title and all posts for your keywords, this can be fine if you have a distinctive keyword.

Second option is to search only the Posts, not altogether useful when the default does that and thread titles but hey, the MORE YOU KNOW and such right?

Third options is to search only the thread titles, this works pretty well if you have a broader keyword and should turn up every post with that in it.

Fourth Option is actually pretty useful, it searches only in the First post(or Opening Post or OP) and you know that means if your keyword is used in the right context in the OP, chances are you'll find more stuff you'll want to read throughout the rest of the thread.

Step 7 - APPLES AND ORANGES!



Last one, first/default Option will show every post your keyword(s) show up in, as opposed to the second option with will use the rest of the criteria to find posts and threads, but will only show the thread they're in, so you end up with all the posts from a 20 page thread because you have "unit" as a keyword for example.

Step 8 - CLICK SEARCH!

Click it and it'll take you to the search results, try to be patient as there is a built in limit to how often you can "search", this includes seeing the different pages of results, but just wait it out, they aren't going anywhere!

Step 9 -????????????????

??????????????????????????

Step 10 - PROFIT!

PROFIT OFF ALL THE SWAG YOU'LL GET BY SEARCHING OLD TOPICS INSTEAD OF MAKING THE 15TH THREAD ABOUT FORMATIONS OR SUMTHING!

Mike

2 weeks from now, a new thread is made: "How do I search the forums?"

Fixed.

Fixed.

I feel like it's not because people don't know how to search.

They just don't want to.

I can't find your TL;DR section. I would search, but I don't know how.

Mike

This message

whenever I do searches in rapid succession (understandable), but also when flipping a page of the search results (that's odd).



Also, the lack of full-text search: you cannot search for an exact phrase even though it says "Search for all terms or use query as entered". It probably refers to the operators you can put in front of the terms, but it's misleading.

Covered that;

Mike

Ah yes. I skipped that part.

Nevertheless, that timeout could be a good reason why people disregard the Search function on this forum.

Was it intentionally configured to behave this way? There are a lot of topics on the phpBB forum about that timeout. See: Google results. It may be a phpBB bug.

I'm hardly the one to talk to that about.....

Mike

This needs to be stickied bad.

It does, the issue is that most people probably wouldn’t read it even if it were.

It is getting to be a bad state of affairs when I am beginning to see all the same threads I saw when I first joined up, I am beginning to feel like a vet of the forum or something.

I don't want to be that bitter guy who stomps on the new posters, I want this to be an inclusive community so I try to inform where I can and point out existing threads where many of the points have already been discussed.

That said it is getting a bit tiresome when some of the new threads have put little effort into seeking existing discussions and are swamping the forum with redundant threads.

As much as we all try our hardest (i can tell because we read this thread), isn't the problem people take a look at the first three subjects and post their thread because they didn't see it there? Standard forum problem, just bigger here because we are invited to share our ideas.

This is true. There are even threads on the front page covering ideas which have been suggested/confirmed/denied and we still a proliferation of redundant threads.

One thing I noticed on the forums for Elite Dangerous (on all sub forums) was some pretty vigorous thread merging on the part of mods to keep the thread count down as much as possible (General = 25 pages, Backers = 6 pages, Gameplay and features = 17 pages). I have to say it does make it a bit easier to work through existing discussion when you aren’t swamped in threads.

There again that would be quite a bit of work to ask of the mods and they have approximately half the backers based on their respective kickstarter pages. Perhaps that wouldn’t work so well here.

It would be quite a lot of work now......but that's only because nothing has been done so far.

I'm not really a fan of Uber's "Hands-off" policy, I admire the idea behind it, letting people discuss ideas and such freely, but this is ridiculous. Now I'd say at least 80% of the threads in the Backer Lounge never had any reason to be there, so now we have threads about engineer swarms, Commander related "Sudden Death" that have already been covered to great depth already. They can talk about it as much as they want, but doing it across 5 threads is confusing for the current userbase, the guys at Uber and future users as well!

Mike

Hey! Why is this only posted in the PA section? This is all great info for the whole boards. Nevertheless, like much of the amazing info provided, this will get over looked by many.

A forum-wide sticky for this would just be SUPERB!

At least it's easier to just type it once then link to it than it is to explain it every time! xD

Mike

Very, very true! :lol:

I agree with that notion. The biggest issue for me is not that people shouldn't be allowed to post that stuff on the backers forum, but more that it excludes people from discussing topics which are suitable for the general public to contribute in. That and there are a lot of double up threads between the backers forums and the general forums now.

It would be nice to see a good many of these duplicate threads merged.