Please help me understand the Search function

[bricabrach]

Forum URL: https://ombdinotopia.proboards.com      -- unfortunately private due to spam.

     Hi,

     Searches don't appear to work according to my perhaps incorrect understanding.  For example, I might search for a phrase that one might expect to find in this forum.  Here I place it in the at least one box:



and the search returns 30 pages of results, about 450 in all:



     Next, I try searching for the same words in the all box:



     ... and get the exact same 30 pages of results:



     The top result contains both words Skybax and rider, thus it belongs in both sets of results so far.  Yet I would expect that this second search would be more exclusive than the first one and thus return fewer than 30 pages of results.

     Now on to the phrase box:



This returns -- guess what -- 30 pages of results as well.  And the top result, though having the words Skybax and rider, does not contain the phrase Skybax rider -- thus it should not appear:



     The way Search is working for me, it doesn't narrow down the results enough to be useful.  What am I doing wrong?

[Craig]

Hi

I'm going to label this topic for a reindex. It reindexes all the posts for searches. It will hopefully sort that issue. This will be performed later today, so if you continue having this issue past today, please let us know.

[Scott]

bricabrach - a reindex has been submitted for the forum.

[bricabrach]

     Thank you Scott & Craig!  You both went beyond the call, working on your day off!  Much appreciated.  I feel like this Brachiosaurus being relieved of bugs by the helpful bird:

the Second Code of Dinotopia — One raindrop raises the sea.

[Scott]

Oct 10, 2022 11:48:03 GMT -8 bricabrach said:

     Thank you Scott & Craig!  You both went beyond the call, working on your day off!  Much appreciated.

Others first. Self last.

[bricabrach]

Oct 10, 2022 11:59:18 GMT -8 Scott said:

Oct 10, 2022 11:48:03 GMT -8 bricabrach said:

     Thank you Scott & Craig!  You both went beyond the call, working on your day off!  Much appreciated.

Others first. Self last.

     Spoken like a true Dinotopian!

     I'd like to report that the re-index fixed the Search, yet I'm afraid the phrase still gets 30 pages of results.  With the sunstones failing, the T. rex herd is running amok in our island.  I don't know how long I can hold out here...

[Michael]

I triggered another reindex (of a different variety), hopefully that will do the trick.

I did notice while testing this that many of these posts (not all, which is the issue) do contain the phrase "Skybax rider". So while I expect the pages to decrease (I'm guessing to around 25 pages instead of thirty) I wouldn't expect a huge difference in the number of pages.

[Michael]

So I see this didn't really make a difference in the number of results, so I decided to dig further.

It looks like when doing the phrase search for "Skybax rider" it's also picking up posts that contain "skybax" without the presence of the rest of the phrase, resulting in more results than should appear. This appears to be due to how we index words for the phrase search vs other types of search. While this isn't something that I will be able to resolve myself, I will see that this is added to our internal list for search issues for consideration in the future when we next work on search.

[bricabrach]

Oct 12, 2022 15:18:27 GMT -8 Michael said:

So I see this didn't really make a difference in the number of results, so I decided to dig further.

It looks like when doing the phrase search for "Skybax rider" it's also picking up posts that contain "skybax" without the presence of the rest of the phrase, resulting in more results than should appear. This appears to be due to how we index words for the phrase search vs other types of search. While this isn't something that I will be able to resolve myself, I will see that this is added to our internal list for search issues for consideration in the future when we next work on search.

     Thanks for taking another look at this.  While you were checking it out, I experimented with searches here on the Proboards Support Forum -- which turned up the finding below:

• Single-word searches work well.  For example, a search on binary yields 34 pages of posts; decimal gives 43 pages.
• Searching for binary decimal yields the same one page of results regardless of whether from the at least one box or the all box.  The resulting posts contain both words.
• The phrase box yields the same one page of posts for binary decimal, although this phrase isn't in any of them.

     Thus, it appears that a two-word search works the same from any of the three search boxes.  In each case it finds posts with both words, whether in a phrase or individually.  And this search issue is larger than Dinotopia.

     Breathe deep, seek peace.

     bob (a.k.a. bricabrach)