search - very common, too short word not including in search
 

error msg, blocked search when I was trying to find where I have previously referenced Douglas Self's work


long standing probelm - also tla, units, abreviations other short words that aren't really that common in electronic discussion get blocked - note the above is a proper name - leading capital letter

why can't I have an option to make it just do the search anyway - I am often searching with other qualifiers, user name, or within a thread which would keep the returns down to usable numbers

With all due respect, the search engine here really is bad.
Try using google. Add "site:diyaudio.com" (no quotes) to you search, this will restrict the search to diyaudio.com only.

It's not that bad if you use the advanced search function.

that was from a advanced search, qualified by "find posts by user name" - why I could state that the number of returns would be reasonable was because I know I don't use "self" very often in diy audio posts - except when citing Doug

with the forum Google seach I get returns from people quoting my posts - any good way to make the google search qualify by post's user name only


I still think perhaps a warning msg and a "just do it" button would work


also how about a search within a search result list - very helpful when the boolean qualifiers didn't work as well as you hoped in the 1st pass

(do boolean qualifiers work at all in forum search?)

I think the vBulletin engine is very good, and the 'advanced' mode is well tailored to forums, offering some very useful options.

Unfortunately, they are over-zealous in the efforts to avoid "junk words"*, a real problem on technical fora where acronyms and model numbers are frequently used. "too short" is just a cheezy shortcut, IMO. They should use a lookup table, rather than a mere letter count.

I realise, once upon a time, searches were a server strain. But has anyone done any profiling recently? Are forum readers really waiting for pages to load because of searches?



* Yes, that's the real technical term used by search engine designers. A, the, of, and, it.... you really don't want to pull up the results of every occurrence. (By quirk, two of my code mentors had degrees in Library Science.)