Discussion re Petition

thingamaBob

Search is not now repeating the same page of results but the results are still being presented in random order and it is not finding part of a url (i.e. a site name) as it used to. So still not really usable.

sbirks23

Seems it's time to finally make the move over to a new comping site. I've waited and hoped and the functionality just isn't there like it used to be Wishing everyone best of luck for their continued comping... I'll miss it here.

Rahven

thingamaBob said:

Search is not now repeating the same page of results but the results are still being presented in random order and it is not finding part of a url (i.e. a site name) as it used to. So still not really usable.

I've had an email from the Forum team saying they believe the issue is now fixed, but I'm still getting the same behaviour you describe. Plus subcategories appears to be stuck on again (archive results as well as live ones). 

I have responded to the email with the detail above and linked this thread.

Didoow

For ending today, I’m getting 300+ pages! It’s got worse, it wasn’t like that the past few days

MSE_Ben_H

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to address some of the problems you are having with search.

The (hopefully) good news, is that we are working hard on introducing a new search that allows much more specific searches to be made and will allow you to order your results by date. The not-quite-as-good news is that this is quite a big undertaking so it's going to take us a little while longer.

At the moment, our search is based on relevance and we know this is the best route for members who are looking for answers to their questions or to share their experiences find the right discussions and communities. I appreciate this is a different case to finding the most recent Competitions, where relevance-based results are not always the most useful.

While we continue to work on introducing the 'order by date' feature, all I can recommend is using the date filters at the bottom of the current 'Advanced Search' form. If  you select '1 week' or '2 weeks' in the 'Date within' field, and write the word 'today' in the 'of' field, the results you see should be more useful for you.

You can also narrow the search to just 'Competitions Time' boards.

If you follow this link: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/search?adv=1&search=&title=&author=&cat=72&tags=&discussion_discussion=1&comment_comment=1&discussion_poll=1&within=1+week&date=today, the search I have described above is set up and you should just have to add any keywords you wish to search for and hit 'Search'.

I do appreciate this is not the best experience for you and we are working on it. I also know there are plenty of other issues that you have all surfaced to us regarding search, which we hope will be made better by what we are currently working on.

Also, just to say, I understand it is frustrating not to hear from us on these threads but hope you appreciate there is a lot going on and we prioritise our time trying to solve issues across the whole Forum so, although we might appear to be quiet, we are putting our efforts into making the Forum better. And, as ever, the best way to get in touch with the team is via email.

Thanks,
Ben

thingamaBob

@MSE_Ben_H You say "You can also narrow the search to just 'Competitions Time' boards.".
Before the present problems arose, we could search the Competitions Time board only, i.e. without any sub-boards being included. Now, Search Subcategories is automatically included. Even when it is deselected it is automatically put back. When posting a competition, we only need to see results for current competitions on Competitions Time and being able to deselect Subcategories would reduce the number of results and make finding something somewhat easier.
Posting duplicated competitions can lead to entering the same one twice and that can lead to disqualification.
What is the point of having options if you can't opt whether or not to use them?

Previously, the results of search WERE being presented in the order of threads with most recent posts. Now it just a random jumble. Why did this change? Surely all boards would want to see threads with recent posts at the top rather than years old posts at the top.

The biggest problem that has suddenly arisen, is that Search no longer seems to be including url's in it's searching.
Being able to just put a site name in the search box and the results include all posts where the url included that name, was the best search possible. (I gave an example in my post in this thread on 16th April: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/78252779/#Comment_78252779). Now this can't be done.

These are not things that have always been wrong but have gone wrong recently. Something must have been done/happened around 15th April to make a workable Search unusable. Can't that, whatever it was, just be reversed.

It is good to hear that a newer and hopefully better search is being worked on but why was a reasonable version suddenly made so appalling?

PS. Restricting a search to just 1 week or 2 weeks isn't long enough when posting competitions. It needs to be at least 1 Month and frequently 2 months but the longer the period the more results there are and the more jumbled date results there are to look through manually.

Didoow

Hi @MSE_Ben_H I’m a bit confused, are these things happening recently due to works trying to change the system? Only I do only select Competition Times and type in “today” (I do use 1 year though as the next choice, 6 months, isn’t really long enough) - today I got nearly 400 pages of results whereas normally it would be about 10.
When the site first changed, we could do things such as a date in one of the top boxes and something else, eg a time, a company, a prize, in the other which was much better

pate-ci0

I've been in IT for 30 odd years and one of the first jobs I had was programming queries in C on an Ingres database. Searching and ordering results on database fields has been around ever since relational databases were invented and I really can't see what is causing such a mess unless MSE is using some really weird system. If the End Date field was made mandatory when posting a competition, it would be REALLY easy to order by end date; combining that with a text search on title and content you could then find any post that had any characters you were looking for. Add in other fields such as newest post, most posts and you can order in any way you like. What is meant by "Relevance" I am not sure but the date and text search options must be the place you start from. If that works, and subsequent additions break that working, you have done something wrong and immediately revert to the previous version of the program. You do NOT do any of this on the live system, you practice on an offline version until it does everything you want and nothing you don't want. I'm open to any reasonable offer over £1000/day to fix this for MSE........

grannybiker

This site has become impossible to post on due to a totally inadequate search system.
It's no use using links, you have to go over the whole pages from when it may have been pasted (Yea, have tried excluding all the threads, closes comps etc. Does't work ) No wonder less and less folk are posting comps  

cornishpasty1

grannybiker said:

This site has become impossible to post on due to a totally inadequate search system.
It's no use using links, you have to go over the whole pages from when it may have been pasted (Yea, have tried excluding all the threads, closes comps etc. Does't work ) No wonder less and less folk are posting comps  

and still nothing is getting done