Discussion re Petition

thingamaBob

@Blulu @Rahven
Given the special arrangements for reporting/discussing the Comps Board problems with MSE I am not sure if new problems should still be reported on site feedback or on here to be to be taken up in these special arrangements. Reporting in 2 different places could lead to much confusion so I'll start this here.

Sometime during the afternoon/evening of yesterday (15/04), the Search facility seems to have, once again, degenerated into a total mess and is virtually unusable.
I initially did a search for, lovereading, which would normally find all url's containing that search text but this time only seemed to find posts containing that specific text in the wording of the title or post and ignoring url's.

So I changed my search to, "love reading" as these are the words I use as a clicky when posting these comps. This seemed to work up to a point and found 151 pages with 1501 results specified. 
The first thing I noticed about the results was that they were no longer in any recognisable order and certainly no longer in latest post order. I then saw that the 151 pages did not actually contain 1501 results but each page just repeated the same 10 results.

I then restricted the search to the last 2 months. This produced 4 pages supposedly containing 34 results but again, the 4 pages each contained the same 10 results on each page. Without actually seeing the 34 different results displayed, I couldn't investigate what it thought it was finding although I knew that it would not only be finding Love Reading posts but also Love Reading 4 Kids posts.

There could be more problems that I haven't noticed or just can't be seen with the restricted results being obtained.

Clearly something had happened during the afternoon/evening of that day (it had worked OK in the morning) that really needs correcting urgently.

philsu

I am also having problems - I enter comps on closing date & search for eg "E: 16/04" .The search gave 10 pages but every page was identical so only given 10 competitions for 16/04.  it was working (in a fashion) earlier on 15/04. 

thingamaBob

philsu said:

I am also having problems - I enter comps on closing date & search for eg "E: 16/04" .The search gave 10 pages but every page was identical so only given 10 competitions for 16/04.  it was working (in a fashion) earlier on 15/04. 

Searching by end date is not a particularly good thing to do as a number of comps will always get missed because of people who do not format the date in the full standard format or even leave it out completely. If you must use that method, then leave the E: out of your date parameter and your results will include the ones where that part has been left out.

Certainly, at the moment, you would be better off using the Sort facility at the top of the Board. Click on Sort New then select Closing Date. Then click on All Statuses and select Open. This will put the board into Closing Date order with the longest dates first. Click to go to the last page which will take you to comps ending today and then work forward.
This also is not a perfect solution. As you work forward from page to page you will find some overlapping of pages and posts being repeated but you are more likely to find all the comps ending on any given day. (I am convinced that this also misses out a few comps but haven't been able to establish which ones are going missing)

Rahven

Argh, yeah you're right. Thanks for the heads up @thingamaBob. I'll ask MSE for some clarification on what they'd like to do re reporting this kind of thing. My feeling is that it should be reported ASAP, which probably means by whomever discovers it to avoid time wasted in waiting for us to see it. But then if we (Blu and I) could be sort of CC'd so we can add it to the list that would be good. I guess it also depends what sort of response times we're likely to get from either avenue.

I'll ask and see what the crack is.

Didoow

I thought I was not the hitting the right page number for a while yesterday! I’d initially only searched a date - 15/04 - but it brought up a significant amount of pages and comps with issue 15 ending in April plus goodness knows whatever else so I put inverted commas around the date which narrowed it down to around 8 pages, each with the same comps. 

I’d completely forgotten about the date sorting function as have got used to just searching. Hopefully that’ll work, if not it might be time to fly as it’s got progressively worse since the switchover. 

philsu

Thanks for your advice @thingamaBob 

......... (I am convinced that this also misses out a few comps but haven't been able to establish which ones are going missing)

I now go through both ways each day because there are comps missing as you say but for the last couple of days things have been DREADFUL!  I searched for 16/04 yesterday and got 1000 pages! Then tried inverted commas as Didoow said and got 10 pages - each one the same

One-Eye

The new forum is now 14 months old, but search has worked properly for just 6 weeks since the beginning of March 2021. Multiple faults that had previously been solved have returned this week.

I just can't be bothered anymore.

philsu

One-Eye  I know what you mean, I have stuck with MSE because I enjoyed using the site and the people who posted on it, and hoped that the Comps Board would be sorted out,

Now it is worse than ever and lots of the regulars seemed to have left. I now spend more time trying to find comps on here than I do entering them! 

Anyone suggest a simple to use  Competition Site?         

Rahven

All feelings above are totally valid and understandable.

I've emailed this to the forum team as per https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6177495/technical-issues-with-the-forum#latest

I've asked for responses to be posted here rather than via email to me.

If anyone else needs to add anything to this ticket, it's reference number #1007404

thingamaBob

I reported my post above via the Report button and MSE have replied saying they are aware of the issue and hope to have it resolved soon.