Question How Can I Search for "IG-88"?

[Skaught]

Is there any way to fix the search feature to allow for searching for shorter and special character names? As things are now, the system won't let one search for "IG-88" or "CZ-3", either due to the hyphen or length.

Scott

 

[Art Andrews]

Scott, that is an excellent question... and I don't have an answer right off the top of my head, but we will definitely look into it. I know the vB search engine is VERY limited and a lot of sites actually integrate Google search into their site to perform more thorough searches.

 

[exoray]

It's not just vBulletin it's an SQL thing, the SQL search database is generally set to 4 characters and only indexes words of 4 characters or more in length, IG-88 is two 2 character word as far as SQL is concerned and isn't even indexed in the search database... You can lower SQL indexing to 2 or 3 but it will adversely effect other searches and sever loads as it will exponentially increase the database size, not to mention you need full access to SQL to do it, and then you need to rebuild and repair the databases etc... In short it's detrimental to the sever in almost every respect and is a lot of work... As much as a frustration as it is, sadly there isn't much that can be done on the forum end with out causing detrimental side effects to the forum...

 

[Art Andrews]

We changed from 4 to 3 a while back because there are so many three letter acronyms and abbreviations. However, to go down to 2 characters... I have agree with exoray, the adverse affect on load times and dB size just isn't worth the gain.

 

[Skaught]

No way to treat the hypen as part of the word? I know in some systems the hyphen is used to exclude something from a search, but only if there's a space in front of it. For example, you could find "IG-88" just fine, but "IG -88" would exlude the "88" from search results.

Scott

 

[LordFett]

Is it possible to add something that would allow users to tag threads? So if we're posting about IG-88 we could tag it as IG88?

The idea of including the hyphen in the search query is a good idea. As are periods if followed directly by another letter, such as M.A.S.K.

 

[Art Andrews]

Is it possible to add something that would allow users to tag threads? So if we're posting about IG-88 we could tag it as IG88?

The idea of including the hyphen in the search query is a good idea. As are periods if followed directly by another letter, such as M.A.S.K.

Great idea. We are already looking into both a tagging and prefix system for some of these (and other issues).

 

[exoray]

No way to treat the hypen as part of the word?

Not when using the full text search function built into SQL by design it's a 'word based search engine' thus it treats punctuation as a word break... This is built into SQL, not the forum itself but the back end OS system on the server...

There is a VERY sloppy and somewhat 'complicated' work around that could be done, but it would literally double the size of the forum database, thus drastically adversely effecting the whole forum in several ways...

Basically what you would do is write a script that reads EVERY post on the forum and dynamically strips all '-' characters and then creates a mirrored database of those post, then IG-88 would become IG88 in that database and would be searchable... But it's a horribly sloppy workaround and it would effect just about every function of the forum, slowing the whole forum down as a whole, as well as putting additional strain on the sever all the time, a whole lot of negative for a small gain...

 

[clonesix]

WHAT?! This is a serious subject? Oh Crap!

...and here I was going to say:


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Wait for it...
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Wait for it...
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You could hire a bounty hunter


*rim shot*



Oh, C'mon, you were thinking it!

 

[propologist]

very funny...

 

[stormtrooperguy]

google search doesn't seem like a terrible idea.

 

[Skaught]

Of course I do that. But it doesn't find stuff that's posted here, apparently. And what better source than the RPF?!

Scott

 

[stormtrooperguy]

Of course I do that. But it doesn't find stuff that's posted here, apparently. And what better source than the RPF?!

Scott

no no... i mean integrating google search here

you can apply the google engine to your own site. we could use google here for searching rpf specific content.

 

[LordFett]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...ster&resnum=1&ct=more-results&ved=0CAsQrQIwAA

Try that Scott.