Disable Search again?

[Hbgplayer]

I know I might be in the minority when I say this, but I think that it's a good idea to disable the search again.
While the search option was disabled, I didn't experience a single 500/503 error; but when the seach was re-enabled, it seems the forums go down every ten minutes!
It might be conveniant to have a search option located here on the website, but I find Google to be just as effective seaching this site as the search does.

[Mutant Sheep]

I know I might be in the minority when I say this, but I think that it's a good idea to disable the search again.
While the search option was disabled, I experience a single 500/503 error; but when the seach was re-enabled, it seems the forums go down every ten minutes!
It might be conveniant to have a search option located here on the website, but I find Google to be just as effective seaching this site as the search does.

I agree, search being disabled seemed to get rid of almost every error message. And that was during the post storm of ponyday.:smallamused:

[Grinner]

I really don't mind the errors, and I personally find that Google can be ineffective for searching the site.

[Hbgplayer]

I really don't mind the errors

Really? :confused:
You aren't annoyed with the constant wait time??? Case in point...

[Alaris]

Really? :confused:
You aren't annoyed with the constant wait time??? Case in point...

What constant wait time?

[Hbgplayer]

Ok, well it's not technically constant, but it seems that the number of times the website has problems is increasing at an exponential rate, especially since the search was reinstated, where it seems it goes down every hour for minutes at a time!

[Icewalker]

Well...I hit a traffic shutdown page on the way from the forum home to this thread. :smallsigh:

So...yeah, maybe keeping it down is a good idea...

[qbit]

I wouldn't mind not having the search function.

if it's there I'll use it. But if it's not I don't miss it.

[Sneaky Weasel]

Search is a useful tool, but not really necessary. If I could trade it for less error messages, I would be more than happy to do so.

[Gullara]

Personally, Google has entirely replaced using the forum's search function for me. Just as long as I can come up with the thread name and a few key words I can find what I need 99% of the time. I certainly would trade the forum search for less error messages any day.

[Arbitrarity]

Replace forum search with hotlink to google search prefixed with "site:giantitp.com"? Would remove the server load of searches, and probably be about as effective.

[Strawberries]

Well, yes, Google is more effective when looking for a specific thread.

But what it can't do (or at least what I don't know how to do with it) is bring up a playgrounder's posting history (or my own posting history, for that matter).

Personally, that's a feature I use a lot, and I would miss it if it should be disabled permanently.

But that may just bethe creepy stalker in me talking. :smalltongue:

[SiuiS]

Well, yes, Google is more effective when looking for a specific thread.

But what it can't do (or at least what I don't know how to do with it) is bring up a playgrounder's posting history (or my own posting history, for that matter).

Personally, that's a feature I use a lot, and I would miss it if it should be disabled permanently.

But that may just bethe creepy stalker in me talking. :smalltongue:

This here.
Searching my own recent posts is how I find threads I posted in but haven't saved anywhere. It's also how I find something someone refers to casually - fellow posters are more likely to say "I already said something about that" than they are to link to to it. Linking is also considered more presumptuous though I don't agree that it is.

[dehro]

I don't mean to complain and can definitely live with it, but it is getting to the point where editing and posting simply doesn't happen anymore without the website either giving me a 503 error page, telling me the server is too busy or it actually telling me to come back in 30 minutes.

[Yora]

I know I might be in the minority when I say this, but I think that it's a good idea to disable the search again.
While the search option was disabled, I didn't experience a single 500/503 error; but when the seach was re-enabled, it seems the forums go down every ten minutes!
I am not sure if the errors I experienced where error 500 errors, but the overall amount of errors I had wasn't really affected at all. I didn't even think the deactivation was meant to reduce errors, as errorscontinued to happen just as always.

[happyturtle]

Rawhide, I just want to say thank you for all your hard work in keeping the forum limping along as well as it does under its heavy load. :smallsmile:

http://i431.photobucket.com/albums/qq40/happyturtle-avs/funny-dog-pictures-dog-thanks-ceili.jpg

[John Cribati]

But what it can't do (or at least what I don't know how to do with it) is bring up a playgrounder's posting history (or my own posting history, for that matter).

"[Playgrounder's Name]" site:giantitp.com. It also brings up when other people call a user by their name, but for the most part, it works.

[Nimrod's Son]

"[Playgrounder's Name]" site:giantitp.com. It also brings up when other people call a user by their name, but for the most part, it works.
It's not so useful when the poster in question is called "The Giant", though. :smallwink:

[Serpentine]

It also doesn't work so well when you want to, say, find a very specific post by someone wherein they use a fairly common word - and it's made even harder when their name is also a fairly common word; use Google to find a specific post where I, Serpentine, talk about neutrality? Forgedaboudit.

[The Succubus]

It also doesn't work so well when you want to, say, find a very specific post by someone wherein they use a fairly common word - and it's made even harder when their name is also a fairly common word; use Google to find a specific post where I, Serpentine, talk about neutrality? Forgedaboudit.

*points upwards*

Found it.

[Serpentine]

A specific post, I said!

[Story Time]

...how much of the topic of the thread is really our business?

The search functions were established as part of a system. That presumes that those who run the site want those functions to remain. Searching members' names, posts, and post histories makes Moderator and Administrator life much easier.

If members think to use another search engine to save band-width for the site, then let them. The rest is math related to computer hard-ware and processing power. Chatting about whether the search function should be disabled again is not a member prerogative.

"This (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/) is not a democracy," in other words.

[Trixie]

Yes, there are 3-4 less known functionalities of search function that can't be replaced by google search at all. I'd be fine with even removing typical quick search as long as these stay, using GitP without them recently was far more annoying than any of the wait times or 50X errors.

[achinca]

over the past couple of days, the site instability has been terrible and getting worse.

If it is caused by the search function, I would vote to disable it.

[Zeb The Troll]

It also doesn't work so well when you want to, say, find a very specific post by someone wherein they use a fairly common word - and it's made even harder when their name is also a fairly common word; use Google to find a specific post where I, Serpentine, talk about neutrality? Forgedaboudit.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9225452&postcount=38

serpentine neutrality -avatar -archive site:giantitp.com

[Anarion]

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9225452&postcount=38

serpentine neutrality -avatar -archive site:giantitp.com

Maybe disable search again and post a stickied guide on "how to stalk people on google" but with a less creepy name?

[Hbgplayer]

Rawhide, I just want to say thank you for all your hard work in keeping the forum limping along as well as it does under its heavy load. :smallsmile:


Seconded here! I don't mean to come across as citicising the work that you do, I just wanted to post my two copper peices.

[Grinner]

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9225452&postcount=38

serpentine neutrality -avatar -archive site:giantitp.com

Hey Zeb, how did you know to add the archive and avatar arguments?

[Emperor Ing]

As someone who has probably only used the search function a dozen times at the maximum...I wouldn't mind that thingie being removed again if it gets rid of the error messages...which at times prevent me from posting for almost a half an hour.

[Lycan 01]

Search being removed was barely an inconvenience for me. There was like 1 time when I wanted to check somebody's previous posts, but other than that, it made no real difference. Other than, y'know, enhanced server survivability. :smalltongue:

So count me amongst the number of Playgrounders who would be okay with sacrificing Search for the greater good of the forum/server/site.

[Zeb The Troll]

Hey Zeb, how did you know to add the archive and avatar arguments?I had to run the search three times. First time I noticed that the majority were posts in the archive. The second time I scanned and saw that many references were "avatar by Serpentine". The third time came back with only two hits. One actually used the word "serpentine" in it and the other was the post I linked.

If I had been thinking ahead, though, I would have recalled that Serpy is a prolific and admired avatarist and should have thought to include that from the start.

[Grinner]

I had to run the search three times. First time I noticed that the majority were posts in the archive. The second time I scanned and saw that many references were "avatar by Serpentine". The third time came back with only two hits. One actually used the word "serpentine" in it and the other was the post I linked.

If I had been thinking ahead, though, I would have recalled that Serpy is a prolific and admired avatarist and should have thought to include that from the start.

So they have no special meaning to Google and are just search terms?

[Siosilvar]

So they have no special meaning to Google and are just search terms?

The "-" in front removes all search results that match those terms from the results you get. So in all, "Serpentine neutrality -avatar -archive site:giantitp.com" does a Google search on the site giantitp.com for things that contain "Serpentine" and "neutrality" but don't contain "avatar" or "archive".

[Zeb The Troll]

So they have no special meaning to Google and are just search terms?Oh, sorry. Misunderstood your question.

What he said. V


The "-" in front removes all search results that match those terms from the results you get. So in all, "Serpentine neutrality -avatar -archive site:giantitp.com" does a Google search on the site giantitp.com for things that contain "Serpentine" and "neutrality" but don't contain "avatar" or "archive".

[Vintrastorm]

My vote would go for keeping the search. I haven't really tried googles search, so I don't know how good it is but I use search almost everytime I'm doing something RPGy.

[Icewalker]

I mean, I love the GitP search function. It's super handy, right there, and works great. But if I had to choose between not having search, or regularly getting error messages on the site, I'd have to go with losing the search function. Both would be best obviously! But the server can only take so much sometimes.

[Sith_Happens]

Frankly I'm surprised at how Google-able threads on the site are. As in, a GiantITP thread is usually one of the top 3-4 results for anything even marginally gaming-related that I search for.

[Murska]

Well, I haven't noticed the Search function being disabled or enabled affecting the amount of errors significantly. I've been getting a lot of errors for a long time now, both during the time there was no Search, before it and after it.

[Yuki Akuma]

Frankly I'm surprised at how Google-able threads on the site are. As in, a GiantITP thread is usually one of the top 3-4 results for anything even marginally gaming-related that I search for.

Google generally ranks things by the amount of links that point to it - generally. There are exceptions.

Forums are, by necessity, filled with links that go all over the place. There also aren't that many popular tabletop gaming forums - I can think of two other than this place.

[happyturtle]

I once had a ten minute old post show up in a Google search.

G@.@gle knows all. I, for one, welcome our G@.@gly overlords...

[fred dref]

Google generally ranks things by the amount of links that point to it - generally. There are exceptions.

Forums are, by necessity, filled with links that go all over the place. There also aren't that many popular tabletop gaming forums - I can think of two other than this place.

BG and WotC boards come to mind for me, but there are a few others such as Enworld.

[JonRG]

Search is a useful tool, but not really necessary. If I could trade it for less error messages, I would be more than happy to do so.

Quoted for truth.

[Snowbody]

BG and WotC boards come to mind for me, but there are a few others such as Enworld.

Penny Arcade, Somethingawful, Obsidianportal

[Yora]

For the last couple of days, the forum seems to take up to an hour after server downtime for backups, until you can get to the thread-list of a sub-forum and open a thread. Now I only had this the last three or four days, but it clearly wasn't anything like that before Search was temporarily disabled.
Something is seriously wrong with this server. Other forums can handle vBulletin with much more trafic without having any of the issues that trouble this one.

[Hbgplayer]

I think you'll probably be very surprised by the traffic this site sees. Just look at the KickStarter deal as an example. Almost 15,000 people donated money, and I have seen several articles saying that roughly one in ten people donate to things like that, which implies that there are more than 150,000 people visiting this sit on a daily basis. That is quite a lot, and frankly I'm surprised that it runs as well as it does.

[Zeb The Troll]

According to the Project Wonderful analysis (visible by clicking on the "Your ad could be here, right now" link under either ad), the site averages 120K unique hits per day. Total hits is regularly over 200K.

As I understand it, the big issue with this site versus others is that it hosts the comic and the forums on the same server. These other sites with more traffic are a) probably corporate and have funding for beefier hardware and/or b) don't host anything but the forum on said server.

[Mercenary Pen]

Google generally ranks things by the amount of links that point to it - generally. There are exceptions.

Forums are, by necessity, filled with links that go all over the place. There also aren't that many popular tabletop gaming forums - I can think of two other than this place.

I believe google also tailors its search results based on the parts of the net you already go to... So you're more likely to get posts from a forum you're already part of at the top rather than links to some tiny webpage in Andorra (for example) that uses each of your search keywords only once...

[Starwulf]

I think I'd like to throw out my two pence on the subject, and say I'd like to see the search disabled again, at least until the servers get upgraded or whatever is going to happen. While it was disabled, the site was running perfectly, no error messages, and threads were updating just fine. Once it was enabled again, all of my game threads refuse to update, nearly killing off both of them because no-one knows when they've updated. Even manually looking at them often doesn't show anything unless you hit "post reply" and not everyone knows that little trick to see if someone has posted.

[Roland St. Jude]

...how much of the topic of the thread is really our business?I wouldn't say it's not your business so much as it's not really helpful. Rawhide has an eye on the issue, as evidenced by his removing the function when needed.


The search functions were established as part of a system. That presumes that those who run the site want those functions to remain. Searching members' names, posts, and post histories makes Moderator and Administrator life much easier.Indeed, I really want them to remain for exactly the reasons you state. But I trust Rawhide to enable the function when it's possible and disable it when it's necessary.


If members think to use another search engine to save band-width for the site, then let them. The rest is math related to computer hard-ware and processing power. Chatting about whether the search function should be disabled again is not a member prerogative.

"This (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/) is not a democracy," in other words.This is quite true. I certainly appreciate that people have opinions about whether search is worth some 500/503 errors, how many it might be worth enduring for them personally, etc., but it doesn't really factor into what Rawhide needs to do to keep the balance of functionality where we need it.

I'm reluctant to lock this just because there's a useful tangent of search tips running through it, but I think I'll lock it anyway and let Zeb or someone else compile a list of search tips in another thread, perhaps in Friendly Banter.