Some tips on searching...

General Questions about Killington and the Killington Area

Post Reply
User avatar
spanky
Site Admin
Posts: 6370
Joined: Nov 4th, '04, 20:50
Location: 40.768N 73.982W

Some tips on searching...

Post by spanky »

Recently, there have been some inquiries about search not working properly and people have not been getting expected search results.

Let me assure you, the search is not broken. The search function in this BB software contains things called "stopwords". These are words that, if used in a search query, will deliberately cause the search to fail. These stopwords are very common words, such as "the", "how", "many", etc, that if used in a search, would eat up server resources horribly.

These stopwords are not indexed and will not yield search results. An example of this would be to try to search for CAPBOY's thread titled "How Many Days" (viewtopic.php?t=231). Unfortunately each of the 3 words in that thread title are stopwords. Searching for any/all of those words will not yield any search results.

You may ask, "What's the reason for this?" Could you imagine indexing every word in every post on this forum? That index would be huge and searching on it would be very costly (resource-wise).

This will eventually be moved to the FAQ section for safe keeping.
Never argue with idiots. They will bring you down to their level, then overwhelm you with their experience.

"I have noticed that when you post, you often say more about yourself than the topic you chose to speak about." -The Suit
RedRider
Postaholic
Posts: 2870
Joined: Nov 4th, '04, 22:16
Location: Flying under the Radar!!

Post by RedRider »

Thanks Spanky, that answers many questions, and CAPBOY you are a genius, imagine starting a thread that is unsearchable!

Talk about not leaving any traces........

I'm glad I found it though
Image
Go that way, really fast.
If something gets in your way, turn.


Shortski is the Supreme Master of the Universe!!
BigKahuna13
Site Admin
Posts: 6488
Joined: Nov 5th, '04, 09:10
Location: Under the Boardwalk
Contact:

Re: Some tips on searching...

Post by BigKahuna13 »

spanky wrote:Recently, there have been some inquiries about search not working properly and people have not been getting expected search results.

Let me assure you, the search is not broken. The search function in this BB software contains things called "stopwords". These are words that, if used in a search query, will deliberately cause the search to fail. These stopwords are very common words, such as "the", "how", "many", etc, that if used in a search, would eat up server resources horribly.

These stopwords are not indexed and will not yield search results. An example of this would be to try to search for CAPBOY's thread titled "How Many Days" (viewtopic.php?t=231). Unfortunately each of the 3 words in that thread title are stopwords. Searching for any/all of those words will not yield any search results.

You may ask, "What's the reason for this?" Could you imagine indexing every word in every post on this forum? That index would be huge and searching on it would be very costly (resource-wise).

This will eventually be moved to the FAQ section for safe keeping.
Spanky,

Clarification. Is it the case where if you use any stop words the search fails or only if you only specify stop words. I'd expect the latter. Having a search fail because one term is a stop word would be dumb.

Does the source code document the stop words? Publishing them might be useful.
What is not possible is not to choose. ~Jean-Paul Sartre


Image
User avatar
spanky
Site Admin
Posts: 6370
Joined: Nov 4th, '04, 20:50
Location: 40.768N 73.982W

Re: Some tips on searching...

Post by spanky »

BigKahuna13 wrote:
spanky wrote:Recently, there have been some inquiries about search not working properly and people have not been getting expected search results.

Let me assure you, the search is not broken. The search function in this BB software contains things called "stopwords". These are words that, if used in a search query, will deliberately cause the search to fail. These stopwords are very common words, such as "the", "how", "many", etc, that if used in a search, would eat up server resources horribly.

These stopwords are not indexed and will not yield search results. An example of this would be to try to search for CAPBOY's thread titled "How Many Days" (viewtopic.php?t=231). Unfortunately each of the 3 words in that thread title are stopwords. Searching for any/all of those words will not yield any search results.

You may ask, "What's the reason for this?" Could you imagine indexing every word in every post on this forum? That index would be huge and searching on it would be very costly (resource-wise).

This will eventually be moved to the FAQ section for safe keeping.
Spanky,

Clarification. Is it the case where if you use any stop words the search fails or only if you only specify stop words. I'd expect the latter. Having a search fail because one term is a stop word would be dumb.

Does the source code document the stop words? Publishing them might be useful.
The search stopwords are not indexed. So searching on them doesn't produce any hits. A few trial searches leads me to believe that stopwords are ignored. So, using them has no impact on the query.

Here is the list of stopwords: search_stopwords.txt
Never argue with idiots. They will bring you down to their level, then overwhelm you with their experience.

"I have noticed that when you post, you often say more about yourself than the topic you chose to speak about." -The Suit
User avatar
tyrolean_skier
Signature Poster
Posts: 22337
Joined: Nov 4th, '04, 23:28
Location: LI, NY / Killington, VT

Post by tyrolean_skier »

Definitely a candidate for the FAQ section.
Last edited by tyrolean_skier on Mar 17th, '05, 15:31, edited 1 time in total.
Image
Image
Bling Skier
Postinator
Posts: 7158
Joined: Nov 5th, '04, 09:03
Location: waaaaaay out in front of you!!!!

Post by Bling Skier »

"And At Band Camp"....
Geoff the sound a cat make as it coughs up a hairball.
Post Reply