how to search in ca

[Guest Claude]

Hi Chris, hi to all users,

I just tried to do a search on how to quit usbmuxd process. So I searched for "usbmuxd" and the search returned only one page.

I am very sure, that there was a thread about quitting this process or at least a couple of posts on that subject.

I find the search function not very useful and it hinders me from using ca as the great knowledge database it is.

Are there any hints on using search?

If not and it is a matter of the search functionality - Chris please improve the search function.

Thanks

Claudius

 

 

[goldsdad]

 

 

[goldsdad]

Google is pointing to the same thread as the CA search.

 

Follow the link, and with comment viewing options as in attached image, there's a bunch of usbmuxd stuff starting at page 3.

 

 

 

 

[PeterSt]

But it is true in my view. There is hardly a way to find back my own comments, and the main reason (I think) is that all is not sorted on date (properly). I'm not sure how this is arranged for, but however that is, it doesn't work for me.

 

Another MAJOR culrpit regarding this, is that the result will be threads instead of posts, and where (internal) Google comes up with words occurring in the thread somewhere, I'm to a loss of where that particular post (or even thread) sits. Once the thread is asked for and in front of me, there's still no way to go, because alt-F only allows for looking for exact phrases, which I don't know.

 

So even when I know the exact subject because I've written it myself, I usually can't find it, or I give up because of the time it takes (strolling through dozens of threads).

Let alone when the exact subject is not known at all, like the OP here suggests/implies.

 

I have no problems at all with this with the most forums I visit, with the example of phasure.com - my own.

 

Chris, if you have suggestions for improvement on my side please let them know. But otherwise please do something about this, because it really seems a waste otherwise.

 

Thank you very much,

Peter

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

I just implemented some new search options that appear on the left side once you search for a term or terms.

 

These options are Beta right now. I'm not sure if I'll keep some of them, all of them, or none of them.

 

 

[PeterSt]

Hi Chris - After trying a few things yesterday, and after using it for real on some subject today ... hard to judge at this moment. But I thought to mention two things I noticed so far, apart from that what's in there now sure will help (!).

 

1.

It seems *not* convenient to have in the intelligence of working out words like samplerate into sample. Or busted into bust. IOW, when I'm looking for samplerate (or "sample rate") why be bothered by posts which come up with "sample" (or "rate").

 

2.

There's still the author thing. But think about the (or my) use case;

If I search for samplerate from my own posts, I get only the handful of threads I started, being the "author". But this doesn't help me obviously. I want written texts (thus posts) from my own, or from you etc.

So, this is now two-folded : a. I don't find all the posts (or don't filter on author again) and b. I again receive that large thread where somewhere the post I'm looking for is hidden. Or *might* be hidden, because I only know it when I found it (needing ctrl-f often spread over more than one "page").

 

Another thing I just noticed :

I tried "sample rate peterst" (without the quotes) in the search field at the top, hoping my nick would do something. Well, this presents near to all the topics in the forum. Haha. But I also recognize the oddities of Google here. Anyway, the results are not true because the threads I see come by I didn't post in.

 

This is only very brief and what I noticed at first glance.

Generally it looks like great enhancements.

 

Thanks,

Peter

 

 

 

 

[PeterSt]

I thought to mention this separately ...

 

What happens here is that Google is doing the work. But Google isn't on its best these days (meaning, it has been better in the past). This is about this intelligence, and the stupidity of just coming up with links which don't comply, like : "peterst" not being in there at all, but hey, samplerate is, so here you have some (this really is so, try it).

 

But this is not the internet ... This is CA.

 

And now suddenly this means of intelligence doesn't work at all ...

a. changing my search terms;

b. presenting links which don't contain all of my search terms.

 

Notice that earlier (when things started to get worse in Google), searching for the better could be tweaked by means of using quotes appropriately (like "samplerate" wouldn't come up with sample). But this too is out these days.

 

HTH

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Peter - CA search does not use Google anything. I'm using Apache Solr with Acquia Search.

 

[PeterSt]

Well, that seems interesting by itself ! Google's behavior seems the same ...

 

In any event, it weren't negative remarks at all. Just that it works out like this.

 

Regards,

Peter

 

[goldsdad]

Enclosing samplerate in quotes does work as expected in a Google search. See image

 

 

 

Further, Google's advanced search lets you specify date ranges and results order.

Of course, there's still the problem with having to Cmd-F/Ctrl-F in the linked pages.

 

 

 

[PeterSt]

... is a bad example I see now. This is because it's explicitly recognized which you can already see by it being able to change samplerate into sample rate, while there's no link to be found with sample and rate being separated.

 

Try this one :

 

"simple way to play samplerate"

 

Now, what to do with the result ? It goes like this for maybe 6 months or so. Quite inconvenient when for example you need to search for an email address, which is about finding spammers. Chris will know. Try "[email protected]". 9000 results today, but I know none of them will be true because the email address doesn't exist. But also look at the .com part often lacking in the shown texts; I know from live examples that such a word really isn't in the text anywhere (also not hidden behind menu's).

 

They try to put intelligence in there, and it really works out counterproductive. What's worse is that this changes each few days, so it's hard to depend on the results.

 

Peter

 

[goldsdad]

Peter, here's the results I get from CA and Google searches for "simple way to play samplerate".

 

 

 

 

 

 

CA search has only found this thread. At this point in time, Google hasn't seen your last post in this thread, otherwise its search result would point here, too.

Am I misunderstanding you or did you get different results from mine for the same query.

 

 

 

[PeterSt]

I am sorry; My example was from Google itself (without the site prefixed !) just to show how odd things go these days (and that the earlier "samplerate" example won't go wrong for other reasons).

 

But I think I just found "the culprit" ... Try this one in the search box from CA :

 

"simple way to play samplerate" what to do

 

Now I'm getting an OR situation or something (and tons of results).

Not good ...

 

 

[goldsdad]

A common procedure in Web searches is to prepend a "+" (without quotes) to any term that absolutely must be in the result. That might get you what you're expecting. Here's screenshots of three CA searches:

+"simple way to play samplerate" what to do

+"simple way to play samplerate" +peter

+"simple way to play samplerate" +qwerty

 

The third one correctly does not return this thread because qwerty isn't in this thread.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[PeterSt]

The third one correctly does not return this thread because qwerty isn't in this thread.

 

Wasn't.

 

I must say that I never used the + because ... I just forgot about it. Earlier it really wasn't necessary. I must say that I only really started Internet when Google came about. Before it was AskJeeves or something. When Google was there, I never used anything else (not even one time).

 

So, the + even solves things like wanting samplerate (and not sample rate). Or the other way around.

 

Now, I just tried it with +176.4

That still isn't solved (you will get IP addresses as well). Any further hints ? Funnily enough it does solve the [email protected] thing.

 

Thanks. I learned something ...

Peter

 

 

[goldsdad]

Ha ha Hey, is this like double Dutch: "it was isn't, now it is wasn't" ?

 

OK, I tried +176.4 in a CA search.

 

Only looking at the first 8 search result pages, with 25 results per page, I saw just two results without 176.4 emboldened in the extract. One had 176.4 in the thread title, though. The other, when you follow the link, does indeed have many occurrences of 176.4.

If any of these 200 results are threads with IP addresses containing 176.4 then that’s coincidence, and they also contain 176.4 in the context of a sample rate.

 

So that search works as expected for me.

 

 

[PeterSt]

In that case we must first add something like an IP address, which right now wasn't here, and later will is.

Or something. LOL.

 

58.38.176.4

 

and they also contain 176.4 in the context of a sample rate.

 

Unbelieveable !

:-)

 

Btw, I just added a new phenomenon to Google (see title). Now we are able to find CA later, might we have forgotton the official name.

 

 

 

[PeterSt]

Yes, still, whenever I try to find something for real, I hardly succeed. Take this example :

 

+resolution +vinyl +"peter"

 

(the quotes were to some last resort)

 

Allright. I know I wrote a post some time back (could be close to two years) about the "resolution" of vinyl. I want to find that back and link to it.

Happy searching ...

 

The reasons I won't succeed :

 

1.

Initial sequence is not chronological. But, can be attacked by means of sorting on date now. Still, why.

 

2.

The search is done in complete threads. So, 5 pages of results, and no way the brief descriptions shown will lead me to anything useful. Also, the 5 pages of results *are* fake, because the combination I look for will be in one post only - if any at all.

Please notice that I consider this as an inherent "fault" of the forum tool used here, which is blog oriented or something. So, thread oriented - not post.

 

3.

Because of the latter, I can't search for "author" = PeterSt. Well, I mean that trying to solve this won't be easy. But, while other things won't let succeed my search, the search for "post author" would be really helpful.

 

4.

Since the result is 5 pages and I don't see anything anyway, I expect the whatever thread I'm looking for (!!) to be on another page. Sadly, clicking on the 2 or 3 etc. undoes the original search term from its +es. And so I now have again the whole board for the result.

 

Mind you, I am looking for something of which I know it is in there and I can not find it. This happened a 100 times before. I can't even proof whether it is in there or not.

I can not imagine by any means that someone who is looking for something in here will be able to efficiently find something, or that he/she will find anything of real relevance at all. This really is impossible with a 250 post thread where someone names vinyl somewhere, another one names resolution in a complete different context, while some PeterSt signs with Peter at mentioning the beautiful weather.

Still that one post containing it all sits somewhere ...

 

Peter

 

[goldsdad]

CA search for +resolution +vinyl +peter

First image shows top of first page of results.

Follow first link on that page.

Browser page search for peter

Second image shows first occurrence of peter in that thread - is that it?

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

 

[PeterSt]

No, that is not the one. But I just "lost" 45 minutes to scroll through the thread to see maybe it was in there anyway. Ok ok, the scrolling itself would have taken 5 minutes; reading a few things in the mean time the other 40.

 

What a thread that is ...

 

But what an effort you put into this goldsdad.

I now can also imagine that this thread is on top because it indeed contains the three elements I was looking for in one post ?

 

 

PS: I don't think we can search on our nicks. So, my intention with searching for "Peter" would be about me often signing with that.

 

"Peter"

 

[goldsdad]

"I don't think we can search on our nicks. So, my intention with searching for "Peter" would be about me often signing with that."

 

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but you can include +peterst to limit scope to threads containing your nickname.

 

 

[PeterSt]

Try it. All you get is people mentioning PeterSt in their posts (eh, threads). 3 pages.

 

So, this doesn't work how Google works (execute pages and render them). It's just from the database ...

 

But now we take Google, completely depening on that rendering :

 

Search key is :

+peterst +"CA Academy" +vinyl +resolution

Number of results : 9. Aha ...

 

Now it takes me 30 seconds all together to find and judge this one : Analogue is not so analogue

 

and see that indeed it is the one I was after.

 

My kind of psychological problem is that I'm fairly good at memorizing what to look for, especially when I wrote it myself. And as I said earlier (maybe in another thread) I never fail in e.g. my own forum. Here in CA ? it plainly never works. How could it (looking at how it works). So I'm getting mad of this. But besides : it is a complete waste (thinking about knowledge base stuff).

 

I hope the (real life) example is clear enough now to do something about it. I guess my own problem is solved because I won't be needing CA search.

 

Thanks,

Peter

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi Peter - You're probably the toughest person to please on CA :~)

 

I've been testing out the new search capabilities in terms of filtering etc. and I'm not thrilled with them. I've used Google Custom search and its variants in the past and wasn't completely satisfied with that either. I'm going to look at the Google integrated search products once again. They change the name and offer a few different options that make it hard to figure out the best solution for a site. I guess I have some work to do.

 

P.S. No I'm not moving to SMF or VBulletin :~)

 

 

 

[PeterSt]

LOL on SMF etc. ... !

 

Thanks for the recognition Chris.

 

I've been working on Google's Search "API" myself ever (maybe 7 years) back, and wasn't satiesfied either. I forgot why, but I never implemented it.

 

All the best,

Peter

 

[goldsdad]

"All you get is people mentioning PeterSt in their posts (eh, threads). 3 pages."

 

Not here. I get the expected result. Threads with PeterSt as submitter and threads with only a mention of PeterSt.

 

For example, try +dutch +peterst

That gave me 7 results (now there'll be 8 including this thread, I guess). The first was http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/Dutch-MAC-users-strange-call-you

It contains PeterSt as a submitter only.