Missing Search

November 9, 2005 2:01 PM

Hey Matt, where did the search function go? Now all that is left is a Google search, but that doesn't pick up recent posts. I know you are working on some new search features, but could we have the old one back in the meantime, please?
posted by caddis to Feature Requests at 2:01 PM (12 comments total)

*searches for something to say*
posted by cortex at 3:48 PM on November 9, 2005

bad command or filename

posted by blue_beetle at 3:53 PM on November 9, 2005

I guess this is what happens when people complain enough about something.

Happy now, whiners?
posted by timeistight at 4:06 PM on November 9, 2005

I was missing this too. I much preferred AskMe's own search to Google or Yahoo!.
posted by Evstar at 4:15 PM on November 9, 2005

I never (I think) complained about the MeFi search function. Sure it was limited to strings, but it seemed to work well, at least recently. I had precious few doubles using that search and over the past year I kind of gave up on Google as Google stopped indexing deeply enough and never was timely. Using the MeFi search I always feel less likely to be embarrassed by a link I am posting today that was posted yesterday, especially one that might not have been posted in an obvious fashion, such as in a comment to another thread.
posted by caddis at 5:31 PM on November 9, 2005

The uptime was terrible the past couple days, and in an effort to try some quick fixes, taking down the crappy grinds-the-database-to-a-halt brute-force sql search function was one thing to test. I've been flying across the country all day and I don't think we've had a server failure (knock, knock) since the search function came down yesterday.

It's not a long term solution, but next week I'll look into maybe bringing it back in a limited manner, and see if some functionality can come back without bringing the box to its knees.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:05 PM on November 9, 2005

Thank you
posted by caddis at 6:07 PM on November 9, 2005

oh, btw, you can still search for duplicate URLs by entering stuff into the URL field of the post page.

Just put in whatever.com and a page title and description and it'll do a link search for you.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:50 PM on November 9, 2005

The only thing I found the non-google search more useful for was user searches. I know it the search must slow the site, but can a user's only search be returned?
posted by terrapin at 5:33 AM on November 10, 2005

terrapin - In the meantime, you can search for users this way
posted by grateful at 6:22 AM on November 10, 2005

thanks grateful.
posted by terrapin at 9:04 AM on November 10, 2005

Flying across the country? What? I thought you were doing this full time! Get back to work!
*evil laugh*
posted by graventy at 12:53 PM on November 10, 2005