Your feedback on the Community Search page

[Marjo]

Hi guys, I hope you're having a good day today!

As you may know, we've been doing some work in the background to improve the community forum and continue doing that in 2018. One of the areas we will be looking at is the Search page of the community. 

Since you guys as community members are using the search the most, we'd like to ask what you think of the current forum Search, and if there's anything that you would improve?

We're especially looking for your opinions on how to improve the search results page.

Looking forward to your thoughts.

 

[Cleoriff]

Even though the Community Search Page was supposed to be improved, I still use Google.

(Unless I know of a thread which was posted in the last two weeks  and can vaguely remember the title, then I will try the search page)

Not really any good for a new member coming here searching for answers. 

This is why we have so many posting on 6 year old threads

[pgn]

You're right, @Cleoriff - not easy enough to search for something cold.

For example: I want to search for a Spotlight post about a particular member.

If I just search for the term 'Spotlight', the returned results don't tell me *who* the Spotlight is about as the clip of text from the post is just not long enough to show that info. Using the "author" field won't help either, as the posts in this category are not posted by the person the Spotlight is on...:

If I add 'Spotlight' and 'userid' to the search, well, that helps little as there is a good chance userid has added a response to the thread, also resulting in a false positive, as well as the irrelevant first match:

In this case, I am helped a little, because the post author MarinaP has used a common format in the Topic title, including the name of the member who's in the spotlight (but presumably Cleoriff has responded to each of these, so I still have not found the Spotlight for Cleoriff (as an example).

Sometimes, the searchbar just goes off on one, returning weird results - note the highlighted "message" in the first result, no mention of either search term!  And the ones in the green box, no mention of "pgn" in those, I know because I have never commented on a Spotlght post here yet, that I can remember!

In short, the Lithium forum search tool is a minefield, like shooting a sparrow with a bazooka instead of a .22 rifle...

I rest my case - stick with Google, using something like:

Or a definite "Nope", like:

You decide! 

[Glory1]

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@Cleoriff wrote:

Even though the Community Search Page was supposed to be improved, I still use Google.

(Unless I know of a thread which was posted in the last two weeks  and can vaguely remember the title, then I will try the search page)

Not really any good for a new member coming here searching for answers. 

This is why we have so many posting on 6 year old threads

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Not to mention asking questions that have been answered 10 times over, often as recent as 1/2 weeks previously!

[Cleoriff]

@pgnThat's a very comprehensive overview of the Community Search engine

So with the Spotlight feature, I tried it a different way (putting my name first)...and guess what? I actually found it!! Blimey it's nearly 5 years ago....

[Glory1]

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@Cleoriff wrote:

@pgnThat's a very comprehensive overview of the Community Search engine

So with the Spotlight feature, I tried it a different way (putting my name first)...and guess what? I actually found it!! Blimey it's nearly 5 years ago....

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Just tried a search for my Spotlight putting my name first as you did, and I also found mine done over over a year ago.

Good to know there is a way to search on the forum that is quick and works. Though I'll stick to Google for more complex searches 

[jonsie]

Whatever happened to the spotlight.....

[Glory1]

Yeah, good question @jonsie. Can you remember the last one, because I can't. I mean it surely wasn't mine last year was it?

[jonsie]

You know, i have no idea. We have so many new members now so maybe it's now due a revsit...

[Glory1]

Great idea @jonsie. I may drop @Martin-O2 a PM on the subject. After all it was a great way to get to know a new member.

Of course, some like me you couldn't get rid of 😁

[jonsie]

Hopefully we will find out just a clue about t'others