Forum Moderator Forum search engine deterioration

craftech wrote on 1/16/2008, 5:38 AM

The search engine on the forum used to pull up lots of useful information with little effort.

Lately, I get the following message more often than not:

"Your search was too broad, please narrow your search options and try again."

Let's take the one I just tried:

I searched the term Mike Crash.

Many of you know we have discussed his Vegas filters for years.
Searching the Vegas Video forum with the "any date" parameter using the term "Mike Crash" produced the following result:

"Your search was too broad, please narrow your search options and try again."

So then I used the search term "Mike Crash + Smart Smoother" and it produced the following result:

"The search returned no results "

So I tried the term "Smart Smoother" and it produced the following result:

"Your search was too broad, please narrow your search options and try again. "

Then I tried the term "video noise reduction" and it produced the following result:

"Your search was too broad, please narrow your search options and try again."

Then I searched the term "noise reduction filter" and narrowed it down to search only the "last 6 months". This time it produced ten results. I changed it to search "any date" and it produced the following result:

"Your search was too broad, please narrow your search options and try again. "

So it won't search beyond 6 months now?????

This problem is becoming more and more frequent and after years of depending upon the archive of posts and the forum search engine to answer MOST of my questions I find I can no longer easily find what I am looking for.

Please set up the search engine the way it used to be set up.

Comments

Coursedesign wrote on 1/16/2008, 6:40 AM

I had the same problem.

We may have to use Google site search instead.

Microsoft's Knowledge Base (MSKB) has a similar problem where the site search engine is just about unusable, but Google's site search finds anything right away.

Of course it would be more convenient if SCS installed a Google appliance blade, they're a few $K nowadays and fit in a 19" rack.

kentwolf wrote on 1/16/2008, 8:05 AM

>>...I had the same problem...

Same here.

johnmeyer wrote on 1/16/2008, 9:54 AM

I wrote to them about this five days ago. Not a word back.

The search engine is TOTALLY broken. SONY WAKE UP!!!

On most forums you get ridiculed if you don't first look for the answer to your question by using the forum's search function. As a result, having a viable search capability isn't just nice to have: it is absolutely essential. Also, back when I used to post a lot in this forum, one of the reasons I did so is so that I could go back and find out how I had solved a problem (I am old and forget these things: Now, how did I do that ... ?). Now, my past has been cut off from me. That's a real bummer.

TheHappyFriar wrote on 1/16/2008, 10:32 AM

i hate google search on sites. i find it useless. I'd rather they switched to phpbb2 & used that search instead.

Ecquillii wrote on 1/16/2008, 4:31 PM

Hey,

Thanks for starting this thread.

I thought I was alone.

It really was better in the olden days.

Always in search of something,

Tim

craftech wrote on 1/17/2008, 5:39 AM

Time to bump this back up until we get a response.

Thanks,

John

craftech wrote on 1/18/2008, 10:37 AM

I just tried this again and the invaluable forum search engine is still broken.

Please address this issue for all of us as well as yourselves. It is an essential tool for forum members in resolving already addressed issues with the software. As stated, it helps you as well as all of us.

Thanks,

John

rs170a wrote on 1/18/2008, 10:53 AM

I just did a search on a post I replied to in the past 10 minutes and, even though I entered the exact thread name and told it to search in the Subject Only, I still got the message The search returned no results
:-(

Hello SCS!! Forum members are calling you!!
PLEASE fix this very important feature.

Mike

craftech wrote on 1/20/2008, 6:03 AM

To Forum Moderator:

PLEASE LET US KNOW THAT YOU ARE AWARE OF THIS PROBLEM AND ARE WORKING ON IT.

Thanks,

John

Grazie wrote on 1/20/2008, 8:44 AM

Just had a thought: Is it possible that the Forum alert to SCS is in the same situ as our search engine? Only a thought!! - g

musicvid10 wrote on 1/20/2008, 8:57 AM

This seems to be related to the other site problems, slow loading, timeouts, not found, etc.

I thinks it's server load that they can no longer handle, not something with the search function itself, because I can type in exactly the same search words and filters at different times and get variously a quick response, slow response, no response, or any of the error messages mentioned above. Sometimes just clicking the link to the next page of search results gives a page not found error after several minutes of waiting.

I think Sony could probably afford more server capacity for its Creative Software site, I wonder how first-time presale customers react to this slow and erratic behavior.

craftech wrote on 1/20/2008, 9:12 AM

Let's look at it another way. I wonder how many people would stick with Vegas all these years if it were not for this excellent forum?

John

craftech wrote on 1/26/2008, 12:05 PM

Dear forum moderators,

I have just tried this again, and for a simple search I still get the following message:

Your search was too broad, please narrow your search options and try again. .

Please address this issue.

We Thank You.

John

Ecquillii wrote on 1/27/2008, 5:19 AM

Yes.

Please fix it.

Please.

Tim

apit34356 wrote on 1/27/2008, 7:53 PM

Strange, the search works for me, tho I search for vegas issues or sony products issues.

Jonathan Neal wrote on 1/27/2008, 10:22 PM

I have a gigabyte collection of every single post ever made in this forum which is fully searchable :P

apit34356 wrote on 1/27/2008, 10:38 PM

"I have a gigabyte collection of every single post ever made in this forum" guess we now know where the server bandwidth disappear to sometimes.................. ;-)

Jay Gladwell wrote on 1/28/2008, 5:56 AM

I'm having the same problem.

When will it be fixed?

Jonathan Neal wrote on 1/28/2008, 8:32 AM

"guess we now know where the server bandwidth disappear to sometimes"

On the contrary, my post was theoretical! :)

I wrote the software to download and parse the forum while writing my reply. Once I had tested it with a couple hundred messages and had then calculated the eventual filesize, I submitted my response. Once that is done, I'll need to write another piece of software that compares every message page for duplication (I think the way it works is that each message contains a unique ID but each thread may contain many messages. I'm still refining the process, but the parsing portion of my software rewrites each page for a filesize friendly, easily viewable archive.

riredale wrote on 1/28/2008, 9:17 AM

Okay, remember that funny ad that says, "Less talk, more action..."

Who is in charge of this stuff? Who runs the website and maintains it? Spot, since you're probably on a first-name basis with everyone in Madison, do you know?

I KNOW!! I'll hit the "Report Abuse" link and see if someone responds! After all, the broken search engine is an abuse of our fidelity to Vegas!

riredale wrote on 1/28/2008, 9:26 AM

Done. Hopefully someone will respond.

je@on wrote on 1/28/2008, 9:33 AM

And from SCS we hear... SFX: Crickets.

ForumAdmin wrote on 1/28/2008, 10:28 AM

Hi all,

Thanks for the emails to alert us to the problem, and apologies for the delays in getting back to you. The webteam is just wrapping up a big localization project and expect to be done with that in the next week. After that we'll dedicate some time into improving this situation.

One thing we have planned is to move the forums database out of our main website database. This should help with forum speed in general.

If that doesn't improve the search speed, we have a couple other ideas that could help.

1. Using the same search engine our main site uses. It's much faster, but it's not a "live" search. We'd index nightly so your search results wouldn't include messages in the last 24 hours. Also, it's a more basic search. It would take away some of the search options like searching by user name, sorting by date etc.

2. Clearing out some of the old messages in this forum, or archiving them somehow, so that searches are focusing on only the last couple years or so.

If you have thoughts on either of those last two options feel free to post them here. We'll keep an eye on this thread as we work toward a solution.

Grazie wrote on 1/28/2008, 11:20 AM

Thank you, FA! Excellent!!!

What I would make a plea for is that some of the older comments could very well assist even newer queries. Just today I was searching for the "Writing Text" commentary. That went back to 2003/4?

PLUS there is a wealth of knowledgeable stuff that does stand the test of time.

If you ARE concerned about search times, why not make/have "discreet" separate "eras" of Vegas that one CAN search against? I think I read this in your feedback?

But yes - excellent news that you are pro-actively developing a solution to this issue.

Best regards

Grazie