Okay, I give up. I keep trying to use the Search feature, but just can't get anything useful out of it. For instance, I tried looking for the previous discussions on the video of the Baltimore police using questionable training techniques on a K9. I selected the Police K-9 forums, put "Baltimore police video" in the search terms, checked "in subject and body", selected "older than 1 month", and got pages and pages of results back. I have no idea on which page I could have found the posts I wanted, because I got tired of going through them all. Even when I restricted to "in subject", there were 8 pages to wade through.

The thing is, many of the results are from the same thread, just different posts within that thread. Is there some way to collapse the results into threads, rather than showing each post individually? Then you click to expand the list of posts within a particular thread? To help narrow down what might be of interest?


Can someone tell me how to use Search more effectively? I can't find a "How to use Search effectively" anywhere. I'm trying to be a good newbie and use Search, but I feel like a dufus not being able to figure it out.

Thanks

Anita is this the one your are looking for?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H_iGRgGr0E
It's under "police Force" lots of discussion on that video,
but look uner the k9 training under forum list , you'll find it , easy.

 Quote: angelique cadogan

Anita is this the one your are looking for?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H_iGRgGr0E
It's under "police Force" lots of discussion on that video,
but look uner the k9 training under forum list , you'll find it , easy.

I found the thread with "search" also.

"Older than one month" means years and years of posts. I would narrow the time a lot more.

I used "newer than two years."

I used the word "slamming" because I knew it would not return a million threads (which the word "police" or the word "video" would, unless there were quotes around the whole phrase, and then I doubt that the phrase would return anything unless I knew that exact phrase had been used).

I could have looked under posts for a person who mentioned the old thread, assuming they had posted to it (and they had).

A good date range helps; a search term that won't lead to a million threads but will lead to the one you want is good; a poster's name helps even more.

Here's an example.

Suppose I wanted to find your post, Anita (the post above).

In "search," I'd elect to search ALL forums because I don't know ehere it was posted. I'd put "Baltimore" in the search terms box, and I'd put AnitaGard (must be spelled the way you spelled it) in the optional box to search for a certain poster.

I clicked on "newer than 1 month" and got this thread.

Oh, THAT's the trick (date range). It wasn't obvious (at least to me) just what to put in there to get the best search. Will experiment with that, thanks.

But I still think it would help to maybe have the posts grouped by thread. Or maybe some "How to use Search effectively" instructions. Sniff.

 Quote: AnitaGard

I'm trying to be a good newbie and use Search

That was funny
Love your posts Anita, you have such a sense of humour and your comments always make me laugh (in a good way, I don't mean laughing at you... ok maybe just a little at the chocolate comments hehe)!!

Yeah, the search tends to throw a lot at you. Maybe that's why this board sucks up too much of my time...

Is this is the thread you want?
http://www.leerburg.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/90137/page/0/fpart/1

Yep, that's the thread. Thanks.

I think another thing that's causing me grief with the Search is that it seems to select any post with ANY of the search words in it, and then ordering all the posts it finds by when posted. I think I'm spoiled by other search engines that rank (and/or you can specify) by relevance, e.g. how many of the search words (in any order) are in the post. That really helps the user focus on which results to look at. For instance if I enter 'Baltimore police video' (no quotes), I'd like to see at the top of the results the posts that had all three of those words, then the ones that had only two of the words, etc.

There's so much great info on this site - would be great to make it easier to find