Space Warps Talk

Suggest a search feature for key words to avoid frustration

  • lodilady by lodilady

    I'd love to see a search feature in the Talk section of this site. If I have a question about something, I have the choice of laboriously scrolling through all the posts, looking for key words, trying to do my own research. (The posts often lack key words, and aren't divided into coherent sections.) Alternatively, I could start a new thread, taking the risk of loading up the board with a redundant question, which might never be responded to.
    I'm usually reluctant to start a new thread, so I go back to classifying, without my question answered, and my ignorance intact.Thoughts? Is this an issue that's on anyone else's mind?

    Posted

  • anupreeta by anupreeta scientist, admin

    There's a search button at the top. Did you try using that? It may not be very efficient but might solve part of the difficulty you have. I understand your worries and I too hope that Talk could be made more user friendly at some point. If the search feature is not helpful, please don't hesitate to post a question that needs clarification. cheers!

    Posted

  • ascil by ascil

    Is this topic settled?


    Just as I am having similar problems as lodilady.
    Actually, my questions are only partly related to the initial topic,
    which focuses on the tags.
    Hopefully, these specific questions help a bit about the searching problems.


    Here is what I did, using firefox 22 on windows XP:


    Aim: I am trying to search for images being tagged with '#lens'. I would like not to restrict to a topic.

    1. Enter the search screen in the talk section. Note: the list including some tags to search for is not filled.
    2. I enter #lens / '#lens' / "#lens" in the search field and press the button. Result: 2624 items. However, the items do not seem to contain '#lens' but rather 'lens' in any form. Just the first item ASW0004ad7 is not tagged as '#lens'. Is there a way to include the '#'? Some quoting did not work when I tried. Is there an escape character I can use to mask the '#'?
    3. Searching for the tag 'lens' is possible only after pre-selecting and searching for something. This is a bit confusing as I would have expected the search to be possible right away (as it works for normal words, see above). Additionally, the list of tags displayed is not complete, so it currently seems not possible to look for the tags around, or to search for some unusual tags.
    And here is the part that does not fit to the heading, but may be related. Aim: search for posts including a specific picture (here: ASW0000dk1)
    1. In the search screen, tick the item 'objects'. This results in 5801 items found.
    2. Now I try to get a subset of the pictures and enter 'ASW' in the 'search for' field and press button 'search'.
    As the results displayed in step 1 already contain 10 items including 'ASW', I would expect a lot of entries (the ones somehow containing 'ASW' in the headline or in the text).
    To my surprise, I only get one result: ASW00008a6. I copied the discussion entries in my text editor and searched for 'asw' (case insensitive): no match found. So I am a bit confused what makes the result contain just this one picture, which apparently does not contain 'ASW' in the main text, and not many many more.
    As a test, I searched for 'Does anyone think this could be a lens' in double quotes, ticking 'type=discussions' only and get the expected result. So it seems that the headlines are indeed included in the searching process?

    Posted

  • anupreeta by anupreeta scientist, admin

    if you simply click on the link "lens" under "Popular hashtags" to the left of this page, doesn't this solve your problem?

    Posted