Did I mention the search is bad?

[equinox]

No I'm not going to complain that it wouldn't let me do two searches in 30 seconds.
I'm going to raise this:

"The following words in your search query were ignored because they are too common words: QL. You must specify at least one word to search for. Each word must consist of at least 3 characters and must not contain more than 14 characters excluding wildcards."

Erm... I understand the idea of "stop words" which are removed from a search for being unimportant (like "the" * and "with") but you can't do this by length, surely? QL? ZX? AI? LD (for assembler nerds)? Is it possible to configure the board at least to recognise the "important" ones?

As always thanks to the fine people who keep the forum afloat. Just a little feedback.

* Unless you're on a fan forum for the band "The The" -- Ed.
** But in that case searching for "the" wouldn't narrow down your search at all, would it? Eejit! -- Ed's Ed.

[Turrican]

You can use the Zx App.

[PeterJ]

@equinox,

Our customer satisfaction department have suggested that it helps if you make clear if it's the forum or the main site that your complaint relates to. They are assuming this is the forum?

Regarding two search in 30 seconds (I know this is not your complaint). This only applies if you are not logged in. It stops naughty people trying to hammer the server!

Regarding common words being ignored. Nothing I can do as far as I'm aware (I've not looked in any detail). It's part of the phpBB software. If you are interested please look on the phpBB forums. If you find a solution please let me know.

The search is set to minimum of three letters to avoid huge numbers of potential results. Yes, it causes problems with QL, but that's life I'm afraid. I can change it to two, but I think you will then complain about way to many results and not being able to find what you wanted. The only option is number of characters, there are no special exceptions.

Edit. Some while back I did suggest a QL forum be added, but there was not much interest. There are also specialist QL forums out there, so maybe that would be a better place to find answers.

[PeterJ]

You can use the Zx App.

I believe he is talking about the forum.

[1024MAK]

https://www.qlforum.co.uk/

Plus various QL web sites.

Mark

[flange]

I find that any forum using phpBB software suffers the same thing re the searches and common words problems, ( I'm a member on three others)
The common word thing is irksome as you have to pad out the search terms with extraneous words which the search function homes in on rather than what you are actually after. As for being logged in for the wait time to be ignored I spent a happy hour yesterday logged in to A.N. other phpBB site and every page I wanted to look at in the items found made me wait on average 15 seconds. I'm not saying that applies here but that's it's not beyond the realms of possibility.

No complaints on my part just observations and sadly being only a user with no IT skills I don't posses the nouse to find a solution.

[equinox]

https://www.qlforum.co.uk/

Plus various QL web sites.

Mark

lol, thanks but are you ready to post helpful links every time I do a search?

[PeterJ]

@equinox,

If you can find solutions within the phpBB documentation I would welcome your contributions.

I just tried another popular phpBB based forum and they have a minimum of four characters so consider yourself lucky

[equinox]

@equinox,
If you can find solutions within the phpBB documentation I would welcome your contributions.
I just tried another popular phpBB based forum and they have a minimum of four characters so consider yourself lucky

What if we spelled out words by hitting a single key on the keyboard, combined with Shift or Extend modifiers...
sounds crazy but I think it could work!

[flange]

I would just like to add that I'm eternally grateful to those here who have got off their backsides and provided this forum regardless of software used, you have my thanks for it's worth.

PS I find the dancing bananas more amusing than I should do!

[equinox]

General -> Search Settings, Change Common Word Threshold.


Edited by PJ - PM Sent

[PeterJ]

I've played with this in the past @equinox. It's currently set at 15% which seems to give a good balance. When the forum was small, search always gave great results, but as the number of threads grow, obviously you get wider results. I have just recreated the index (I tend to do this once or twice a year). It takes a while for the search to be re-created.

The question you asked me, was about adding exceptions to the 'stop words'. As reported earlier, this is not possible as far as I'm aware.

Words which are contained in a greater percentage of all posts will be regarded as common. Common words are ignored in search queries. Set to zero to disable. Only takes effect if there are more than 100 posts. If you want words that are currently regarded as common to be reconsidered you have to recreate the index.

[1024MAK]

lol, thanks but are you ready to post helpful links every time I do a search?

No

You can however use a search engine:

Code: Select all

site:https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/forums/ QL

Mark

[flange]

No

You can however use a search engine:

Code: Select all

site:https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/forums/ QL

Mark

Thanks for the tip, works well on other phpBB sites too I've discovered.

[PeterJ]

Very useful tip @1024MAK.

[equinox]

What if we spelled out words by hitting a single key on the keyboard, combined with Shift or Extend modifiers...
sounds crazy but I think it could work!

(This was a joke about 16/48K BASIC keyboard entry by the way. Mod PeterJ correctly deleted and PMed me when I later went crazy. But you can still laugh if you want.)