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That forum search...

Posted: Fri Feb 28, 2014 9:13 am
by SuperWingedYoshi
For many things I enter in the mask, the search engine keeps telling me:
The following words in your search query were ignored because they are too common words...
This doesn't only apply to words like 'and', 'for' or 'why', for which this feature is intended, but also to words like 'character', 'sprite' or 'Yoshi', which can be important words in a search query. It almost feels as if the search engine ignores every word that has been used at least once.
At the moment, this isn't too much of a problem because there aren't so many topics in this forum, but new topics are continuously opened. How am I then supposed to find anything here if the search engine excludes almost every search term?

Re: That forum search...

Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2014 2:40 am
by Julia Pseudo
It's possible that you can't use these words not because they are specifically set up as unusable words, but simply because the forum detects that these words appear too many times in posts overall, forum-wide. I can't actually confirm this, but it'd make a lot of sense. Unfortunate, though.

Re: That forum search...

Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2014 8:34 am
by SuperWingedYoshi
Pseudo-dino wrote:It's possible that you can't use these words not because they are specifically set up as unusable words, but simply because the forum detects that these words appear too many times in posts overall, forum-wide. I can't actually confirm this, but it'd make a lot of sense. Unfortunate, though.
I never said it was intended like that. I mean, why would the admins decide to exclude these words?
I actually think the same way as you. Words like the three examples are indeed quite common, and there's probably a feature in phpBB that searches for common words and ignores them in search queries. But important words, as common as they might be, shouldn't be excluded from a search query because then the forum search would make no sense anymore. Words like "and", "or", "to", "for" or "who" - these are words that should be ignored. But not words that are usually relevant for a search query.

Re: That forum search...

Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2014 9:05 am
by Shadow Yoshi
I'll take a look into this, but I think what Pseudo-dino said is right. In that case, I won't be able to do much about it.

EDIT: I found the way to change it - phpBB, by default, takes the top 5% most common words and disallows searching for them. I changed that to 2%, so hopefully this helps.

Re: That forum search...

Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2014 10:45 am
by SuperWingedYoshi
Joey wrote:EDIT: I found the way to change it - phpBB, by default, takes the top 5% most common words and disallows searching for them. I changed that to 2%, so hopefully this helps.
Didn't really help. I did a test with some search terms that spontaneously came into my mind. Of all these search terms, only "paradise" and "autoscroll" weren't ignored and additionally gave me results (terms like "Rotodisc" or "Blooper" weren't ignored as well, but these apparently weren't used in this forum so far). All others, including the three examples from the first post ("Yoshi", "character" and "sprite"), but also queries like "Thwomp", "issues", "Toad house", "adventure", "fortress", etc. were excluded. Guess I can only wait until there are more posts in this forum and the problem fixes itself. :(

Re: That forum search...

Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2014 10:53 am
by Shadow Yoshi
Actually, for the percentage change to work I had to recreate the search index. I just did that now, and it looks like some of the terms you mentioned work now.

Re: That forum search...

Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2014 11:06 am
by SuperWingedYoshi
Ah, I see. I guess I was too fast, sorry. Yup, it's much better now. "Goomba", "Thwomp", "Koopa", "fortress", "character", "sprite", "issues", "problems", "image", "trouble", "fortress", even "Peach", "Zelda" and "house", are only a few examples of the terms that now work. However, words like "Yoshi", "Mario", "Luigi", "Toad", "Link", "adventure" or "castle" are still excluded. But I guess I can live with that. Thanks a lot. :)

The topic is useless now, I assume...

Re: That forum search...

Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2014 12:02 pm
by Firespike33
Not really. I searched for "Shadow" in the SSB Roster topic and it was too common. -_-

Re: That forum search...

Posted: Mon May 19, 2014 12:07 pm
by SuperWingedYoshi
Gonna bump this topic since the problem still exists. I just tried searching for "LunaDLL" and it was too common...

Re: That forum search...

Posted: Mon May 19, 2014 12:18 pm
by sleepy
there's a way around this:
  • Go to Google
    Type this in the box:

    Code: Select all

    site:www.smbxgame.com <search terms>
It should get results from only this site. It's way better than using phpBB's shit search engine, but that's just my opinion.

example search

Re: That forum search...

Posted: Mon May 19, 2014 12:33 pm
by SuperWingedYoshi
That method is actually quite similar to the phpBB forum search. It just doesn't ignore too common words like "the", "or" or "because", which can be quite an issue in my opinion... But I guess it's a decent workaround for the time being. Thanks for the hint!