h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You think that's impressive. I got -3 for Atled Volunteers

When I went to the Atled thread, it had said on my space (1 new post", so I went there, read the one new post by Mina, went back to my PS, and then it said -2 new posts

I've got -38 posts on one thread

I've been out of the country for a couple of weeks.
Basically what tyhe f*ck has happened!!!!!!
I'm not impressed at all.

Have a . It's a new signing on system and we have to believe it will be all right in the end .

See the threads on the <./>announcements</.> page for the details.

Nephew Who trying to search the Guide
"Did somebody mention the advanced search is not that advanced anymore?
And indeed the 'new posts' is also a bit wacky.
But it comes in handy to see if you are logged in in that instance. (Never occured to us before to wonder if browser instances are logged in!)"

Traveller in Time on his head
"How about the confusing message 'hello researcher, i am not researcher' It is creating a creepy feeling. I do not know if I will expose my children to such ideas."

Signor OnOff
"101010 == 42 (checked!) join the campaign to log off again at < A1355618 >"

The advanced search looks the same to me.

In brunel, the advanced search form starts with none of the radio buttons on instead of a default one of search the guide (which would have meant the checkboxes were not greyed/disabled). As soon as you click any radio button it starts behaving as normal (always exactly one button on at a time, forcing the previous one off and changing the disable on the article type checkboxes).

In classic, alabaster or plain skin advanced search has separate forms for the different types of search (article, conversation, nickname) so the situation doesn't arise.

Traveller in time on his toes
"Hmm, just looked up during this post. I get the impression this whole forum is illegal in a way. Posting here draws the announcement into public attention."

Nephew Who clapping words on his console
The first article should be the last. Can they not use instead of ?"

When I looked at the advanced search when the changeover first took place, I thought it was better - one bar to fill in and then you just say where to look for it. I just checked again and it's back as before. That is not really an important point. I would like to be able to search thread titles though. When will we be able to do that?

The Advanced Search has had one field to fill in since they introduced the Brunel skin. The only change to the Advanced Search in the last week is that it no longer defaults to searching the Guide. You now have to click one of the three radio buttons. Before, the first radio button was 'pre-clicked'.

Does the 'search conversations' not search the thread titles?

Traveller in Time on his head
"Checked, search conversations _content_ most recent first. There is a future feature fantasy request to narrow the search to specific forums."

We'll be introducing searching of a specific forum shortly.

Will you be fixing the "punctuation bug" at the same time?

I think any punctuation problems are a 'feature' of the index server we use. We build the search strings, but it's up to index server to decide what constitutes a 'word'.

The problem seems to be that the process is asymmetrical; from my experimentation, it seems that the search string we enter is pre-processed to have all punctuation removed, but the comparison strings from the database aren't. There's nothing we can do about it at our end...

For example, if there was a thread containing the phrase "Jim's misplaced apostrophes' corner", entering exactly this as a search string might get a hit rating of less than 30%, with less precise matches getting a higher rating.

The solution, as I see it, would be to figure out what pre-processing has been applied to the strings in the index, and then match that exactly when pre-processing the search strings before passing them to the index server.

Entering search strings in quotes wasn't working before despite what the help page said. Is it working now?

Including the posting titles in the scope of the search was another thing most people who expressed a preference wanted.

Searching thread titles definitely doesn't work. I experimented by Searching Conversations for the word "Precise". The thread "The return of what music are you listening to at this precise moment" does not appear. (The word precise is not used in any of the posts, just in the title, and the thread title still remains after over 9000 posts!)