| LaserDisc Database https://forum.lddb.com/ |
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| Search ability https://forum.lddb.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=4799 |
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| Author: | gumbyandpals [ 30 Dec 2014, 16:17 ] |
| Post subject: | Search ability |
Since most people aren't used to the classic boolean type search that's (I'm assuming) is used for searches on the site and forum, is there a way to make it more "google-like"? I tend to have issues searching for anything with a : or - in it. Many titles have : in them and if I leave it out they don't show up and if I put it in I get no results even with "" around the title. A recent example: I went to search the forums for LD-S2 which I know is in many posts and got no results with "ld-s2" or ld-s2. If I type lds2 I get results but only where it's spelled lds2, nothing where someone spelled it ld-s2 shows up. I'm sure I'm searching incorrectly for the type of search that's implemented here, but if I'm doing it wrong I'm sure others who've known nothing but google are doing it wrong too and getting frustrated. |
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| Author: | hippiedalek [ 06 Jan 2015, 18:37 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Search ability |
I have the same problems in the main site search. For titles with colons or dashes or any other less than common character I tend to just use google and append "laserdisc" to the end of what I'm searching for and the lddb entry I'm looking for usually comes up. A recent example I found problematic was searching for Star Wars: Classic Creatures: Return of the Jedi (1983) [PILF-2081] I couldn't remember what the title was so I tried "return of the jedi creatures" which returns no results. In fact searching for " star wars return of the jedi classic creatures" returns no results despite the search term including all of the words of the laserdisc title except for the colons. Oddly searching for "classic creatures" returns it right away. |
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| Author: | rein-o [ 06 Jan 2015, 19:28 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Search ability |
agree, there are too many issues with the search once you start dealing with the above, colons, semi colons etc. these issues are very annoying when searching for things like star trek, star wars or others where there are too many in the database. ________________________________ the rein-o official signature: 
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| Author: | rein-o [ 13 Jan 2015, 20:58 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Search ability |
OK just found an issue. when searching for ben hur nothing comes up, but when you search for ben-hur you get all the listings. one should be able to find with both searches not just one, this will also cut down on insertions by new or old members who don't know about this issue. ________________________________ the rein-o official signature:
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| Author: | signofzeta [ 13 Jan 2015, 21:21 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Search ability |
I've never been a member of a forum where the search wasn't total garbage. This one is no exception. It would be nice to have a decent search, but I honestly stopped using the search field on any forum probably a decade ago. This is not a negative statement aimed at this forum in particular, this forum is fantastic, but asking a forum search engine to not suck is like complaining that the "As Seen On TV" section at Target isn't delivering. I assume the search code is built into the forum software package and is not fixed easily. More than once I've typed in the EXACT TEXT that was used as the title of the post and not had it turn up. When it's that bad I don't know what the fix is. I just go to Google and put the name of the forum in the search. That usually does a pretty good job, a better job anyway. |
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| Author: | rein-o [ 13 Jan 2015, 21:53 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Search ability |
uh oh, I think I totally miss posted under this topic. I was talking about just searching for LDs under the database. Searching under the topics is another story entirely, very hard and it takes time. again I was talking about regular disc searches. ________________________________ the rein-o official signature:
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| Author: | gumbyandpals [ 22 Jan 2015, 21:04 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Search ability |
rein-o wrote: uh oh, I think I totally miss posted under this topic. I was talking about just searching for LDs under the database. Searching under the topics is another story entirely, very hard and it takes time. again I was talking about regular disc searches. I think you're OK. I addressed both forum searches and database searches in my original post because the same sorts of searches cause problems in both. I should have made it more clear that I had an issue with BOTH the LDDB title search and the forum search. |
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| Author: | admin [ 17 Aug 2015, 11:28 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Search ability |
rein-o wrote: when searching for ben hur nothing comes up, but when you search for Ben-hur you get all the listings. I fixed the Ben-Hur/Ben Hur one by adding more punctuation and symbols to the transparent list (on LDDb.com). For the forum, I'm using the default phpBB3 engine and it's not working great with dashes. Try: "HLD-X9" ! -> No posts were found because the word hld-x9 is not contained in any post. The work-around is to use . (dot) instead of - (dash), I found that on a phpBB3 forum somewhere. I read someone that I can try to switch from phpBB to MySQL search engine for slightly better performances. Will try that after the current mysql/PHP/Debian migration is successful. For LDDb, I wrote the best search function I could but I'm no search engine engineer and it remains very static with no fuzzy logic or Boolean capability. When looking for a title I usually try a specific work ("creatures" for the Jedi example) or simply type the reference number in the search box. Ideally "jedi creatures" should try *jedi*creatures* and *creatures*jedi* but I need to write a better search engine for that. Julien |
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| Author: | admin [ 25 Aug 2015, 06:42 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Search ability  |
admin wrote: For LDDb, I wrote the best search function I could but I'm no search engine engineer and it remains very static with no fuzzy logic or Boolean capability. When looking for a title I usually try a specific work ("creatures" for the Jedi example) or simply type the reference number in the search box. Ideally "jedi creatures" should try *jedi*creatures* and *creatures*jedi* but I need to write a better search engine for that. I'm really stupid... The code for fuzzy search (MATCH AGAINST in MySQL) was already written... but never triggered because the search field was over-filtered!  I cleaned up some of the search code and probably broke stuff along the way but I will need you to try and play with it. This is how it works:
Initially -day didn't work, I had to change the minimum word length for words from 4 to 3 letters (below 3 will be discarded) and rebuild the index for Titles. Could you all play with it a little and tell me how it looks? Julien |
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| Author: | admin [ 25 Aug 2015, 06:49 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Search ability |
hippiedalek wrote: I tried "return of the jedi creatures" which returns no results. In fact searching for " star wars return of the jedi classic creatures" returns no results despite the search term including all of the words of the laserdisc title except for the colons. => Starting from today, this will work! http://www.lddb.com/search.php?search=return+of+the+jedi+creatures&sort=title Julien |
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| Author: | hippiedalek [ 25 Aug 2015, 17:31 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Search ability |
The above searches now work! Thanks for the fixes, Julien, great work as always 
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| Author: | admin [ 12 Jan 2018, 06:15 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Search ability |
rein-o wrote: I was talking about just searching for LDs under the database. Fair point. I'm trying to address this here: Playing a little with quick search auto-complete with ajax Julien |
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