Forum Search - A Few Things That Might Help , Maybe

lilolme

Forum Search - A Few Things That Might Help , Maybe

First I am not trying to change anyones preference for searching for Forum junk (example some have stated they like using their preferred web search engine). But have read many comments on the Forum search inadequacies and thought I would throw out some of the things I have found about it. I am not saying this makes it a good search 'engine' but may help on some occasions. Anyone have any other 'tricks', then please post them.

I am doing this from a laptop and don't know how much it might change on a phone.
Hope this make some sense as it was more difficult to type up than I thought it would be.

The first step is to get to the 'second' page of the Forum search because the search at the top of the US forum does not offer any options. So do an initial search. I often just hit the search with it blank and it goes to the 'second' page and gives a blank or no results found.

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Then open up the search options by clicking the down arrow.

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So I will start with the Author. Can select an Author by typing in their 'Name' and clicking on it in the selections below. In this case I used Ricko because he has a lot of comments. I left everything else blank. I have also put the letter 'a' in the search line and it appears to do a similar thing.

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This search yielded 86,218 results (lines). However, some lines have multiple results. Looking at Ricko comments it is listed at 98,491. It appears this 86,218 result lines plus the extra results for some lines is grabbing most of the Ricko comments and discussions (233). This appears to be one way to search an Author (including those set to private) for most of everything from them. They also appear to be in order from newest to oldest from my limited experience (but could certainly vary maybe).

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Next, taking the Author out or blank (but one can use the following with an Author to narrow the search on that Author) and putting the letter 'a' in the search field with all the others blank it returns 769,689 result lines (and they appear to be in order from newest to oldest - the 'a' and blank appear to usually do this). This just shows how many potential search results are out there.

To narrow this down a lot to make it workable for demonstration I selected the 3 days and typed 'today' into the Date Within and Time field. Leaving the Search field blank will return 249 result lines (mixed Discussions and Comments). Typing in the letter 'a' into the Search field also results in 249 result lines but the order here is Discussion first and followed by Comments. Note: these numbers are changing as people comment and post discussions so it won't be the same when done at a different time but should be similar. Again using the blank or 'a' the results appear to be in order from newest to oldest.

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You can change the Date Within and Time to something to search a particular time. Example: 6 months and 6/30/2022 will yield results for the year 2022 (or fairly close) since it is a plus or minus 6 months from the Time date. This with 17,284 result lines. Of course can narrow the timeframe by selecting a shorter Date Within (or with the Author or some of the following items).

So back to 3 days and 'today' - Can select from the Category by clicking the down arrow and selecting a line. Coins and Currency has 207 result lines (down from the 249 above) and US Coin Forum 107. Again appearing to be in order from newest to oldest.

Next looking at the Title field and the What To Search - Discussions, Comments.
Starting by using 'PC' in the Search field yields 52 result lines but they are not in order from newest to oldest. I think once something is typed in the search field that it does some sort of best matching or something and therefore results in a random time order (don't know a way around this).

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Typing 'PC' into the Title field yields 20 result lines. These appear to be the Discussions in the last 3 days with 'PC" in the title and the discussions with 'PC' in the Title that have had a comment in the last 3 days. Listed as Discussion first (9) or Comment (11) next.

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On the line What To Search if you un-check Discussion, then it will show only the results for Comments (11). And similarly un-check the Comments and it will show the results only for Discussions (9). I have not noticed anything for the Ideas, Questions, Answers, Polls but they may work for those types of threads (don't know about Ideas at all).

Going back to 'PC' in the Search field and un-check Comments in the What To Search field yields 20 results. The difference between this and the Title field with the Comments un-checked is that it appears to not only search the thread title for PC but it also searches the OP write up for PC. Again this is with the 3 days timeframe.

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Un-check Discussions and Check Comments, on the above, in the What To Search field yields 41 results as it is now looking for Comments (in the last 3 days) with PC or in a thread with PC in the Title.

At this point i took a screenshot of part of the result lines but to show that some result lines may have more than one result, this is shown as 2 results or 6 results.... Clicking on that link will show all the results for that result line.

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Clicking the 6 results above yields the following. Notice the thread title near the top under Discussions. I have found some applicable comments I was looking for hiding inside the more results (page) but this is a little tedious.
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I have never messed with the Tags or check marks under the Category.