Forum search is excrement

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Hailinel

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I mean, yeah, I can technically search the forums, but the search is, well...

No Caption Provided

...Yeah.

Is there a reason why I can't just do a simple search for a forum thread by title? The way it's set up now, all the results that are returned are individual posts in threads that, as you can see, make absolutely no sense.

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Mento

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#2  Edited By Mento  Moderator

Well, the sarcastic answer would be "just wait another five minutes, and there'll probably be a new one"

Non-sarcastic answer was going to be suggesting you stick "tropes vs women" in quotes, since that's my usual solution to search engine skulduggery, but then you get sent back a whole mess of entirely different yet still completely unrelated threads instead. Including this one, which seems a bit surreal since the only text on the subject is buried inside an image where a text search function wouldn't be able to find it.

I'll go back to my sarcastic answer then. Probably more helpful, given the circumstances.

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Video_Game_King

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I've definitely had this problem, too. Even putting things in direct quotes doesn't help; it just picks out whatever the hell it thinks is most relevant (even if it isn't even tangentially so).

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audioBusting

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This has been a problem since the relaunch.. just use Google with "site:giantbomb.com/forums/"

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chaser324

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#5 chaser324  Moderator

This has been a problem since the relaunch.. just use Google with "site:giantbomb.com/forums/"

The forum search has actually always been pretty busted, since well before the relaunch, but I do endorse your Google suggestion. It has worked well for me.

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audioBusting

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TheHT

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#7  Edited By TheHT

It's always been such shit. I just search for threads on google.

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TruthTellah

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If it allowed for quotation marks for multiple words, it would actually be decent. At the moment, though, it's just a mess that you kind of have to get around by using things like google.

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ArbitraryWater

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It's always been garbage, which is why it's funny when mods close down a repeating thread and tell the offending party to use the forum search before posting.

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TruthTellah

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It's always been garbage, which is why it's funny when mods close down a repeating thread and tell the offending party to use the forum search before posting.

I always found that a bit odd, as well. I mean, even mods seem rather open about how frustrating the forum search is.

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joshwent

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Maybe the "Never owned an HD TV, Where to I Start?" thread devolved into screaming about sexism, too?

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super2j

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Preach brotha!!! I mean I have never encountered a more broken search in my life. Considering how great and or passably functional the rest of the site was, my first encounter with that search legit left me confused. I try to avoid it... Its weird how the wiki search works fine, I would think its essentially the same thing?

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BeachThunder

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Yep. If Giant Bomb reviewed websites, Giant Bomb would probably give Giant Bomb a 2.

BTW, I actually found the search gave coherent results before the redesign (maybe I was just super lucky?). Since the redesign though, I feel that I would get better results if I used a script that links to random pages.

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Humanity

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#14  Edited By Humanity

I honestly don't even know how to use it and I've yet to get results at all. It's like a search bar designed by engineers for engineers - I'm sure it makes plenty of sense to those that built it but not user friendly at all.

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BisonHero

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@joshwent said:

Maybe the "Never owned an HD TV, Where to I Start?" thread devolved into screaming about sexism, too?

Haha, I wish. As far as I can tell, the forum search ALWAYS does an OR search. Hailinel's search returned any thread that used the word Tropes OR vs OR Women. Someone in the post says "LCD vs Plasma", which counts as a match.

No amount of addition signs or quotation marks will force the forum search to take the phrase as a whole. It ALWAYS does an OR search. Which makes it functionally useless, unless the topic you're looking for has a unique keyword that almost no other thread is likely to have.

But yeah, forum search has been broken for like, the entire lifespan of GB, so just use Google. They should honestly just remove the feature.

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jimmyfenix

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#16  Edited By jimmyfenix

@joshwent said:

Maybe the "Never owned an HD TV, Where to I Start?" thread devolved into screaming about sexism, too?

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rorie

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Thanks for the notes. I'll pass this along to an engineer and see what we can do.

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zeforgotten

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#19  Edited By zeforgotten

It's less of a search and more of an excited A.I trying to solve anagrams

Edit: Why on earth did my phone write Algorithms when I wanted Anagrams originally?
Good grief

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AlexanderSheen

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Maybe the site is trying to tell you something.

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TheManWithNoPlan

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Good to know it's not just been me. For a while, I thought I just wasn't getting something.

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nightriff

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#22  Edited By nightriff

Yup, not worth searching for anything because you can't find what you are looking for

EDIT: Just tried to find an old thread I made a year ago for fun and it actually brought up a post I just made and had none of the words I searched for. And I did have quotes as well

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SharkEthic

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#24  Edited By SharkEthic

Yeah, don't wanna rub it in, but it's definitely one of the worst search features I've ever encountered, and as a software developer it's pretty painful to watch.

But I must say, the speed in which it finds topics and threads - albeit totally unrelated to what I'm searching for - is impressive. Was trying to find the Official Giant Bomb Photoshop thread, and it presented me with over 100.000 useless results like POW, SON!!

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Benny

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@rorie said:

Thanks for the notes. I'll pass this along to an engineer and see what we can do.

Thanks duder, though I'd be worried if they weren't aware of its current state, it's been this way for months.