Once again, Forum Search

Suggestion Title: Forum Search Suggestion Summary: The search bar would search for text in the titles of undeleted, and in most forums, unlocked posts only. Positive points:

• Makes posts easier to find, especially in the trades forum
• Provides a strong PFQ-made search option
• Allows you to drastically cut down the number of thread titles you have to browse through.

Negative points:

• Some searches may not be accurate
• Many titles are very vague in terms of their content
• It's hard for a computer to understand the difference between looking for something and selling something (if we use trades as an example).

Reason For Consideration: This has been shot down many times in the past, although I assume all of the subsequent rejections simply referenced Niet's post. I have to assume because I can't just search the rejected sub. Regardless, Niet's biggest issue with implementing search functionality is that the divide between humans and search-engines is too wide. However, I'd argue that even in his example the divide is narrower than one might think. Even a title-only search is better than nothing, because it can drastically reduce the number of unrelated posts. EDIT 1: Removed references to searching content in most of the post. Because of summon tables and other personalizations like that, searching content would often be quite useless.

The issue I have with this is that posts are now being drawn into the situation. A problem that was brought up before was that if you're searching for something that says; 'beast balls' it's going to bring up every single post where this is mentioned. Even if it's just searching for beast balls in the trade forum, what's stopping it from bringing back the many summon tables posts? While I understand that it's now trimmed down a number of said threads, I think there's a vast understatement on the number of results trimmed to the point it seems rather - I wouldn't say worthless - but the time put into it would be better put elsewhere? I mention the summon tables, as they're commonly used in many shops - even if they don't have that summon in place. How would you combat that? I do indeed worry about the situation regarding Sally; as a moderator, I have tools that allow for a narrowing down of a search to look through details. There is sometimes a noticeable lag when I do this, and that's only me searching for let's say 'places a user has posted in' or 'trade history'. Edit: As an add on; I wouldn't object to this if the situation regarding the server (Sally) isn't negative and there is a way to combat the lag. As for the search, I can only really support a search such as this if the results it brings back are worth the time to develop it. I'm not convinced so far, but that can change. This ultimately is only something Niet can really discuss and give proper input on as he has the information.

You're really right about summon tables. They help people understand what they want from a visual standpoint, but certainly clash with any sort of systematic search. Even as a user looking through the forum for any type of summon, they drastically limit my ability to understand what a user is providing by title alone. This doesn't seem like something that can be really helped. Titles are going to be as bland as "summons uft" because users typically rely on inventory tags to track what they have in stock. (I assume you know as much, though, @Constantine). All I can think of is bbcode tags that are display:hidden when their inner value is zero. This is obviously a horrible solution to a search suggestion, and clearly a solution outside the scope of the problem. However, I think it's an indication that that part of the problem is bigger and more complicated. Conceivably a tag like that could move some of the computation to the client for viewers, but for searches the work still falls squarly on Sally. EDIT: In addition, such a tag would require wide use to even be effective. If it can't eliminate the problem entirely, it's probably not worth adding. All considered, only searching titles seems far more feasible and still provides a considerable improvement over the current options. Presumably a title-only search could be client-side as well.

no support for reasons stated before. if this could be implimented without people falsely advertising things or the system being a bit weird about it then i would support but so far its still looking like it wont be a thing tbh.

The sad truth is that for this to work it means that users need to forgo personality in favour of uniform. I think the boat sailed when we allowed people to make trade threads and didn't simply go for a market board system for single sell use. A tag system would be nice, but it's not something we can rely on. People will more than likely not tag their items properly; considering they can't even label their shops correctly or their single-use trade threads, of course, this would mean some sort of rework as well. A search like this would work on the single-use trade threads, but not the shops as people tend to give their shops names, personality etc. But still, people who use single-use trade threads tend to be just be selling more than just one thing and the title will reflect that. In short; if we wanted a proper systematic search then we would probably need a re-work, and this is just talking about trades. It's a bit messy.

I realize that this post is asking for a search function to view the contents of threads. Which I don't particularly support because of how often Tables are used. However, if Titles can be searched, I'd be happy. Full support. Do I want a Melan? I'll search up Titles with "Melan" in the name, and see what threads appear. Is there a clan for Animal Crossing? I'll search through clans forum looking for Animal Crossing in the title. What if I wanted a sprite of my Nidorina character? Type "Sprite" into the art forum, and I can browse through each shop at my own leisure. A secondary option could be added to avoid "Locked Threads". Other criteria could be included, as well. "New to oldest", etc. But I'm sure all this has been said or suggested in the past.

I 100% support this And, a rebuttal to the argument of getting results that's don't quite apply to what you're searching for... Such is the nature of all search engines. If this logic was used for a reason not to have any search, google and bing and all the other big search engines wouldn't work because it can't read your mind and bring up exactly what you want. Human error [and in this case, machine error?] isn't a good reason why something cannot work. Obviously it wouldn't be perfect, nothing is, but the users could very greatly benefit from having a forum search function, even if they would still have to wade through the results to find what they really want. That's what you do on google anyway, you click through results until you find something that actually answers what you were looking for. The important thing is that it narrows the pool, instead of having the whole trade forum to look through you have this specific set of posts that mention "melan". Also another rebuttal to the idea that we would have to turn into a uniform network instead of having personality in threads: plenty of other sites have search functions for their forums and are still full of personality? Same with hundreds of websites that show up on google when you search terms? I'm sorry to be blunt, but this course of thinking makes absolutely no sense and is easily proven to be untrue by spending time on any other even vaguely similar sim site with a forum and a search function.

Regular search: I search for Jade Orb. I now get every single trade thread with the summon table. I search for "selling Jade Orb" well same problem, only now I also get every thread with "selling" in it. Tag system: Tagging for summon item(s) without having any, tagging for shinies/albinos and forgetting to remove the tag or not having any... just a lot of incorrect tagging in general. Not to mention: Spelling errors, breeding pairs, and hunt extras. How will a search/tag system work for spelling errors? It can't without Niet adding in every single misspelling he can think of or that he finds, and that just makes everything so much more work. Especially when it comes to pokemon names, as not everyone can spell a pokemon name correctly. And breeding pairs. We already have the issue of people, myself included, just going "breeding pairs FS". I currently have 25 pairs, most different species, available. By the time I specify every single pair I have for a tag system, I may as well not even sell them. And this is just me. There are people with even MORE different kinds of pairs than I do. A quick search in the trades, and the first shop with pairs has 66 different kind of pairs available. That would be 66 different pokemon tags just for breeding pairs. Hunt extras are in a similar boat. I've seen some people have a big collection of a few different species of shiny and albino pokemon from previous hunts. Of course all this is even if people tag, and I've seen sites with a tag system where people never bother to use it.

I didn't actually suggest a tag system, rather a new bbcode tag to remove items that were at 0 and then used that to illustrate that the summon page issue is bigger than searching. Also spelling errors are nevery going to go away and breeding pairs should come up. If all I search is "Arcanine", I expect to get arcanine pairs, specials, deltas, and even more.

Support. Has I said on another suggestion of this kind, its better than nothing. I prefer use a forum search or a tag to see 20+ shop has the Word "Beast ball" in it and manually check which one are selling it than going into all 200+ threads to search for it. By using the Google technique, I also get people speaking about Beast ball in others thread than the Trade one, like in their journal or the help forum when a Forum Search could single out only the Trade forums.