Search is impossible... and more

[JayJhabrix]

Search was never really a strong point of the earlier WebX forums... but at least, it was streets ahead of the unpardonable excreta they have now.

1/ Initial search:

a/ In the old days started with the forum you were in. Logical.Subsequently, you could widen (forums) your search. Logical

b/ Today, starts forums-wide! Does that make any sense to anyone? Subsequently you have to narrow through and extremely unfriendly, drop-down box.

2/ Advanced search:

a/ In the old days you could enter key words or phrases and home in.

b/ Only one text option...

One can go on and on... but to what purpose? It's all just getting so frustrating amd idiotic. The points and correct answers, etc., they're all meaningless glitz on what was once a sound – if limping – forum. Lack of NNTP support... etc., etc., etc.

On the NNTP vs Web, i can definitely comment with experience in both.

Web: I used to access the Illustrator (Windows) thru web. Why? Their turnover was not too high and it was okay. Maybe broke the monotony??

NNTP: DW (and earlier, PS for Win) entirely through NNTP. High traffic, much easier to keep track, see new threads, follow or ignore, etc. Ocassionally would visit through web – particularly if i was already on, needed to check if an answer had come thru, etc. But much preferred the NNTP.

Today, i hardly go to the DW forums, ignore the PS. I find, a lot of the old posters have gone. In DW, it seems to be a mechanical action from a few people to answer questions. The long discussions have vanished. I am sure the same problem is facing all the other threads.

Anyway, forget it... it's just sad.. very sad... that what was once a great repertoire and source of knowledge for Adobe products has been debased.

JJ

[Guest]

I just have to emphasize that Jive Clearspace = unpardonable excreta needs to be emphasized.

There is a forum out there for a gaming company where they actually disabled search entirely due to supposed performance issues. Rather than fix it, they just said "use google" to search the forums (which oddly enough, works about as well as the search forums box above here).  Well I can guarantee that as a consequence they've shrunk their community participation (and userbase as a consequence), especially in the technical forums where modders and such need to do lots of searches to find information quickly, without posting a new thread for a question that may have been asked 5 times.  Well, this isn't quite that bad, but it's so cumbersome finding what you want sometimes that it's borderline to not even having a forum search, at all.

[Mark_A__Boyd]

Ansury wrote:

Rather than fix it, they just said "use google" to search the forums (which oddly enough, works about as well as the search forums box above here).

Not all that odd when you notice the very last line on these forum pages.

I tend to use google.com about as often than the built-in interface to Google. But then, the NNTP archives at dejanews.com (redirects to groups.google.com) are still a viable resource since the Jive implementation is still young, so I'm practically there already.

[Guest]

Mark A. Boyd wrote:

Ansury wrote:

Rather than fix it, they just said "use google" to search the forums (which oddly enough, works about as well as the search forums box above here).

Not all that odd when you notice the very last line on these forum pages.

I tend to use google.com about as often than the built-in interface to Google. But then, the NNTP archives at dejanews.com (redirects to groups.google.com) are still a viable resource since the Jive implementation is still young, so I'm practically there already.

I hadn't noticed that Google reference below.  Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.  I was referring to the other forums (not Adobe) where the company said to use a "custom google search engine page" thing that somebody made (all it did was limit results to their website I think).  Nice idea but the problem is it just never works well, and it doesn't let you search by forum at all.  But that's a different situation...the only problem that forum has is the lack of search.  This one has quite a bit more wrong with it and the search kinda works.

[Jochem van Dieten]

JayJhabrix wrote on 2009-06-06 20:04:

Search was never really a strong point of the earlier WebX forums... but at least, it was streets ahead of the unpardonable excreta they have now.

One can go on and on... but to what purpose?

There have been repeated requests to cover only one topic per thread,

and one thread per topic. Could you please stick to that so others can

follow discussions more easily?

Jochem

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Jochem van Dieten

http://jochem.vandieten.net/