The Search Tool

[McG]

How effective have people found the search tool to be?

I've found myself disappointed with it on a few occasions.  Some times it will not find threads that I know exist and other times it will return lists with rediculous finds.

One improvment would be for it to only recognize full words (unless you put a * on one end of a search term).  I did a search for UN.  Here are some of the words that the search tool found:

ammunition
Funny
Unit
Until
Punishment
Run
Runway
Communicator
Newfoundland

With bandwidth being a concern, I think getting usefull results from a search tool (the first time) would be a step in the right direction.

 

[Mike Bobbitt]

Good feedback on the whole word search. You can fine tune your results by using the advanced search:

http://army.ca/forums/index.php?action=search;advanced

Here you can use a drop down list to show most relevant, newest, longest etc first... I'll put in a feature request for whole word searching.


Thanks
Mike

 

[Spartan]

Is there a way in searches to not find single instances of a letter?
I entered writing a memo and encountered numerous a's ?
----
Suggestion: For font options to have a popup box that would allow certain text to be formatted in addition to the Select & Click method?
I borrowed this screen shot from another forum I attend.

http://www.geocities.com/esymchyshyn/example.bmp

 

[old medic]

Just leave the "a" out of your search.
just using the two words "writing" and "memo" will narrow your search to documents containing those two words.

 

[Michael OLeary]

Search options:

writing a memo - 3 pages of results, including instances of "a"

writing memo - still 3 pages of results

"writing a memo" - searching on phrase placed in quotation marks limits search parameters to messages only including that specific phrase - 6 results

 

[Ex-Dragoon]

Seeing how a lot of people ask the same questions over and over I am curious to see how often the FAQ and search functions are used.

 

[Mike Bobbitt]

Interesting idea. Changed the poll to allow multiple selections...

 

[hockeysgal]

I usually try to browse for the info or look on the DND website before posting questions. besides when browsing I sometimes come up with new questions or answers to questions I didn't know I had.

 

[camochick]

I'm on here quite often since i get to use computers everyday at school and I have one at home(ok so i have no life >), so if i havent seen something on a topic in the last few weeks I thinks it's fairly safe. But alot of people ask the same stuff all the time, even if the answer is on the recent topic list.

 

[kincanucks]

Get my Information?

I don't know that I actually get any information here.  Usually some pretty good laughs.

 

[lostmuskrat]

If I'm looking for something, I'll go to the relevant board and read through the subjects of all the posts until I find what I want.  I like to wade through everything, you always turn up something interesting that way that you might miss using a search engine.

 

[McG]

Is there a way in searches to not find single instances of a letter?
I entered writing a memo and encountered numerous a's ?

This goes back to the origional request that the search only look for whole words unless a "*" has been used at the start or end of a search term.