MetaTalk posts tagged with post and search

Double Double Toil and Trouble

bwg — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 01:27:05 -0800

Search seems to be failing me when I check to see if my post is a double. This has happened several times despite efforts to ensure it's not a double. Example: in my latest post, the description read: "Authorities in Awe of Drug Runners' Jungle-Built, Kevlar-Coated Supersubs". I duly checked the link, no double there. I also made sure my tags covered the bases, including 'Wired' 'Colombia' 'submarine', 'sub', 'cartel', 'drug', and so on. To be safe, I searched for "submarine" and "cartel", figuring that if anything had been posted before those keywords would definitely find the first post. Nada. Yet there had been a post on the subject, with a different link and insufficient tags, and so search did not find it. Its tags included the word 'drugs' while the description contained the plural 'submarines'. I just did a second search for 'submarine' and this post doesn't appear at all. Since many posts have tags that are often not fleshed out enough (what Jessamyn called mystery meat posts with terrible tags), I'm wondering if there is some way to: 1. expand the search to include keywords from the description area (obviously filtering out common words); 2. adjust the tag search to include plurals, i.e. if I search for the word 'drugs', posts with tags reading only 'drug' will be included, and vice versa (unless this happens already, not certain it does); 3. (if including keywords from the description area) check for single/plurals there as well. Because then search might well have caught the words 'submarine' and 'drug' (singular) from my tags, or the word 'drug' in my description. I'm not sure if this would put a heavy strain on the server; maybe there is a better way to implement this (I am not a programmer). I just hate posting doubles, especially when I've tried to do my homework beforehand.

How to search favorites for posts/comments by a certain user

LobsterMitten — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 19:07:11 -0800

Is there a way to search my favorites for comments I have favorited by a specific user? Normal text search of my favorited comments only brings up comments in which a username is mentioned in the text, not comments made by that user. (For example, if I wanted to find comments I have favorited by mathowie, is there a way to do that? Right now the search function, applied to my favorites, only brings up comments in which the word "mathowie" occurs.)

Boolean Tag Searching and Tag Redundancy

sentient — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:22:28 -0800

Pony/suggestion: What about being able to browse posts by multiple tags, but with OR as opposed to merely AND. This would mostly be to combat tag redundancy, but could also be useful in general. The thread about favorite-tagging reminded me of this. Say I'm looking for posts about games. There are tags like "game," "games," and "gaming." But I can't view all of the posts tagged "game OR games OR gaming." Only "game AND games AND gaming," so I need to first browse by one, then the other, etc. So, in conclusion, being able to browse posts by tag using combinations of AND and OR would be nice. (NOT would be interesting too.) I don't know how tough this would be to implement, but it would be cool, post-finding-wise. Here's an alternative: Avoid redundant tags by giving tag suggestions as you type the desired tag. (I've seen this on other forums.) So when I make a post, if I start to type "gam," I'd see "games" as a suggestion, but not "game," so I would just select "games" as the tag. In this framework, people would have the ability to add tags that don't yet exist (and thus wouldn't be auto-suggested), but I imagine that nobody would create a "game" tag if there were already a "games" tag, which the system suggested. Ideally, people would try a few different ways of expressing a concept before creating a new tag to express it, in order to maintain a lack of redundancy. This seems a bit messy, though, since it would involve deleting preexisting tags from the master tag list, and deciding which tags are actually redundant. I think I prefer the first idea. Anyway, thoughts?

Search Through User's Activity?

MikeHarris — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:18:01 -0800

Would it be possible to have a search box on Activity subpages -- in other words, a search function that limits itself to a single user's comments or posts? I think this'd be a useful tool because, as one example, a lot of people may remember threads by virtue of author and comments -- "oh, this thread I half-remember, that was where Joe said 'flippy'" -- and being able to comment search would be useful to allow users to themselves coax partial memories out themselves without MeTa or admin assistance. I do see how it could be abused for stalkerish purposes, but we've not let that get in the way of implementing other existing conveniences such as per-user RSS post feeds, Google Earth KMZ links in profiles, and so on.

Bleep bloop

Blazecock Pileon — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 20:52:55 -0800

Looking for a post about a programmer who worked at Atari and blogged about his work... For the life of me I can't find it. Thanks for any help.

Zen-like post from a few years ago?

jayder — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 07:49:22 -0800

There was a thread here, a couple of years ago, I think, about the Zen-like (I don't remember if he was actually aligned with that tradition) aphorisms of a wise man. Many of his insights were oddly striking, but some of them seemed kind of obvious, too. An example was something like this: "People look more attractive at night."

I have searched, but not been able to find that thread. Any idea where it is?

Searching for a thread about sad comics.

null terminated — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 20:49:18 -0800

I can't find the thread featuring sad, touching comics. Also featuring a comic where main character sends hanger to pregnant ex. Thanks!

can we find double posts in comments?

Carlos Quevedo — Sun, 27 Oct 2002 12:10:40 -0800

New member; first post; searched and searched; usual story. Then this comment, by furiousthought, pointing to the fact that my link had already been posted in a thread (albeit, in my defense, long before I joined and cryptically referenced). So I wonder whether the automatic URL search facility which exists when you preview a front page post could possibly be extended to include URLS mentioned in comments? At the very least, we could thank the first users to link to it. Nobody has the time to read all the threads or click on all the links in comments and searches, whether MetaFilter or Google, often fail to point to cryptically described links.

Forgive me if this is impossible to achieve, stupid or has been asked before, of course!

Double Posts Must Stop Or Else

swift — Mon, 28 Jan 2002 11:45:04 -0800

I'm sick of double posting. I want to stop double posting. How can I be sure, without manually searching the source codes of every month in the archives, that I'm not double posting? And is there any point in telling someone they've double posted when there's no way they can avoid it?