O/T?? Searching Forum Threads.

Submitted: Thursday, Feb 14, 2008 at 18:12
ThreadID: 54576 Views:2220 Replies:4 FollowUps:6
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Hi everyone,

As the post title suggests, I’m looking for feedback on whether members and visitors are happy with the Explor Oz forum search function. It would appear that there are times when the search function doesn’t quite bring home the required information, specific to the search being conducted. People then throw their hands in the air and post their question on the forum, from there it seems to go down hill as the replies of “do a search (that’s the polite reply) to get the information you seek” come from members and other site visitors.

Maybe the search function needs a little bit of tweaking, this is taking into account some of the “Guess this place” replies where the absolutely precise number of (spaces, capitals, under scores etc, etc,) did not precisely match the correct answer.
It did create more than a little angst as well.

Further to this,

In post 54571, Ross W asked about a “portaboat” which may have not returned very much useful material, it is spelt “Porta_bote” Signman, very helpfully, suggested doing a search.

In post 54567, Jred was asking about post guidelines, he received a response from Footloose on a possible addition to the site of a “maybe there should be a screen that pops up before one posts that says, "Search the %^&**#$% archives first!" Hmm, very polite!

The icing on the cake however, is post 54544 by Roachie (long time forumite) who asked about a recent post on gas fittings. It was strange that he had been through the archives and back pages and didn’t find what he was looking for. Even stranger was the fact that he didn’t receive a plethora of “”Mmmmmaaaaatttttteeeeeeeeee do a search Roachie, mate do a search, ya WOMBAT!
Not at all, he received a very simple reply from Col & Jan
Is it this one?
ThreadID: 54365
Col

Yet it’s something that we don’t seem to want to extend to our visitors when they ask.

As a precursor to this, I have contacted David to let him know what I am doing, I much prefer contacting the web person directly – when I notice …. Or think there is a problem with their website.

It was Jred’s post that started me thinking along these lines and I thank you for reading this far and I (we…. David et al) look forward to your thoughts and comments.

Regards,
Wayne.
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