Search Forums

So as I was sitting here trying to find that mythical 90% compatible kecleon from a breeding pair shop.. I find out there is no search button for it and I think that is odd. Reasons this would be a good addition is if someone is looking for like a summon item shop, this would make them be able to enter keyword summon and boom. Another benifit would be to cut peoples search time in half since they don't have to scroll through each individual page. Finally it would bump growth in shops because people could find what they want quicker. On this stance I see no negative side but I am not stuck up and saying there is no bad side to it.

Already rejected and has been multiple times. Explanation from Niet why it's not possible.

no support. its been suggested and rejected every time, it wont be of any use tbh.

Unfortunately this will not be accepted for the reasons stated, yes... I believe it can even be found in the summary of rejected suggestions. But otherwise I would fully support it, and I actually disagree with the reasons for rejection. By this logic we, uh, don't need big search engines like Google because there's no guarantee that the key words we are searching for will appear in the right context or will not be misspelled. A search function may not be able to differentiate between "buying" or "selling" beast balls but at least it dramatically reduces the number of threads we need to look through. At least we won't waste time checking out threads that have no mention of beast balls whatsoever. (Obviously beast balls are just an example here) I'm also fairly sure it is possible to make the search function look through BB code as well (in that case it can "read" icons too), but if it's not, it would be the shop owner's responsibility to make their thread search-accessible. Just a bit of adaptation for a huge benefit. The search function could also have an option to scan the first page of threads only. That way it could accommodate for shops that have their contents spread over the first few posts, and mostly ignore buyers' comments. There've been countless times when I was trying to find something in trade forums and it felt like looking for a needle in a haystack. I would much rather get a list of threads where people are selling/buying this item and filter out half of those rather than 99%

I can, though, search Google for, for example, Musket Flints, something my boss at the museum asked me to look for online, and generally find the store I'm looking for that sells flints for a flintlock musket. You could search "Beast Ball" all day and on a site like PFQ it could come up with nothing, since I rarely see someone list out their summons in the title of the thread

Thanks for proving the point, in this exemple, beast ball is rare, so instead of going in all the trade thread and shop to return empty handed, you can use the search option. "Oh, nobody is selling/buying them at the moment, thanks to the search option, it wasnt that tedious to get the info."

It doesn't work that way. You would need to make sure that people actually label their items correcty in the first place. Most don't, others prefer to use image icons for what they're selling rather than text. Search functions aren't all that easy, especially one that works properly and brings back good results. So, we're stuck with the option of making a bad 'search' option that doesn't necessarily give you what you want - and thus waste precious development time creating it. Or create a good one which would require a lot of work and forcing people to sell items in a specific way and use a specific format to get perhaps 'acceptable' results back.

Well, who says title only? :) Usually forum searches have the option to look in all posts, and also, as I suggested here: So I still think it would be nice but I know the admins have said 'no' before, and it's their decision really. Just thought I'd offer another point of view, just in case Again, isn't there a way to allow searching for BB code too? I can think of a few websites that do just that. So the icon for a beast ball () would have the code [item=Beast Ball], and thus be easily searchable as the key word is still there. If people make a typo, which doesn't happen all that often anyway, it's on them I think. And knowing that search function exists would encourage most of users to label their items correctly

We dont need to work on it in priority either, it'll just be something that can ne handy to filter some thread who don't mention at all what we want And it won't necesery force people, if the search option is able to read the bbcode, like if all the post were in nobbcode that wouldn't be needed. edit: I got snipped, but since I'm on phone rn, i'll put a more complete post later

That's the problem with it. It's on the user to do it correctly; if they don't do it now - why is a search going to make them take the initiative when right now they already have to compete to get the buyers attention? The BBcode wouldn't work; a lot of people use tables that have all summons + items listed. If it went off of the that then it's simply going to bring back everyone who had said table in their thread. Which means that only 'titles' would have to be used. This makes big perm shops will be at a disadvantage. And people can't sell items in multiple places, as per the rules - so a secondary temp thread can't be used unless they remove the item from their perm shop. It's not going to filter nearly enough to be practical. I'm not going to argue about the time and the resources that would be needed to have this be functional, I'm not Niet - but seeing as this has been discussed multiple times in the past and rejected; I think that should be the end of it.