New facility in Advance Search requested

[bigal]

Is it possible to add a new facility in the Mint forum 'Advance search' option. One that gives the searcher the ability to search for the “Exact term”.

So many time I search for some piece of information in our forum only to come up with hundreds of answers that are more or less irrelevant because each word in my search is listed individually. An “Exact term” option would prevent this.

[catweazel]

Is it possible to add a new facility in the Mint forum 'Advance search' option. One that gives the searcher the ability to search for the “Exact term”.

"exact term" site:forums.linuxmint.com

Go-ogle.

[jimallyn]

I have used the method catweazel recommends with several different browsers and several different search engines. Seems to work OK with all of them. I put the search term after the site:whatever, just because that's the way I first learned it, but apparently either way works.

[bigal]

Than you catweazel and jimallyn. As an experiment I tried a search for "rebooting problems" site:forums:linuxmint.com using google.co.uk. Not one of the results on the first page was a link to the Mint forums.

I was thinking more of having it as an additional selectable option in the advance search.

[Moem]

As an experiment I tried a search for "rebooting problems" site:forums:linuxmint.com using google.co.uk.

The syntax should have been site:forums.linuxmint.com
Can you try that?

I understand that you are asking for a feature in the search on this forum, but I'm thinking that if the search could be easily improved, it already would have been. So maybe an alternate solution is the best obtainable result here.

[bigal]

I have tried

"rebooting problem" site:forums.linuxmint.com

.
That returned two sites:

Asus EEE PC 1001HA: display problems - Linux Mint Forums

and

Linux Mint 8 Xfce RC1 Bug Thread - Linux Mint Forums

.

Without the quotation marks I got at least 10 pages of results, the first of which retuned all Mint forum posts but not one of them had the exact search term in the subject.

[catweazel]

Without the quotation marks I got at least 10 pages of results, the first of which retuned all Mint forum posts but not one of them had the exact search term in the subject.

Fixing this requires a knowledge of search engines.

https://support.google.com/websearch/an ... 4479?hl=en
https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433

You searched for an exact term and that's what the search engine gave you.

[bigal]

I was merely asking for an additional facility in the forum “Advance search” section.

[Moem]

Just to confirm, you mean what this forum calls 'Advanced Search', right? I'm assuming that you do, but your consistent use of the term 'Advance Search' has me confused... and I want to make sure that we're talking about the same thing.

[bigal]

At the top right of the board is the “Search” bar. To the right of that are two icons. The first is a magnifying glass, the text of which when you hover over it is “Search”. The second is a star. The text for that one is “Advanced search”. Clicking on that icon opens a page with many additional features. It is this page that I am referring too.

[Moem]

Loud and clear, thank you! As a non-native speaker of English, things like the difference between 'advance' and 'advanced' can trip me up sometimes.

[Hoser Rob]

Without the quotation marks I got at least 10 pages of results, the first of which retuned all Mint forum posts but not one of them had the exact search term in the subject.

Fixing this requires a knowledge of search engines.

https://support.google.com/websearch/an ... 4479?hl=en
https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433

You searched for an exact term and that's what the search engine gave you.

Frankly it amazes me how many people think that know all about technology and they can't even use a search engine properly. I live in a small college town where half the population is students, believe me, I know.

[bigal]

Moem, I apologise for the confusion. I shall try to be more precise in future. I wrote with my sloppy mispronunciation of my own language. Hang my head in shame!

[bigal]

Hi Moem. A classic case of why I was asking for an extension to the Advanced search facility is the heading of my other current thread the heading of which is “Why dual boot”. As the forum search engine stands at present anyone looking for that specific question will have the first word disregarded. Their search then would become “+dual +post” and would return posts ‘about’ dual booting rather than the question, “why”.

[Moem]

Oh, if your point is that the search feature is lacking in usefulness, then we can only agree. It's about as much good as a chocolate teapot. Alas, not as tasty...

[bigal]

I was tempted to try a chocolate teapot once. Then I thought about it but could not decide which would be the worse of the possible outcomes. The tea tasting of chocolate, the chocolate tasting of tea, or the teapot melting. I decided to abandon the idea of the experiment.

Do you know who I contact to ask if the search facility could be changed? There does not seem to be a page (if that is the correct term) for forum management.

[Moem]

There is a link 'the team' at the bottom of every page. You could ask one of the admins. But I tend to believe they realize very well how limited the Search feature is, and for that reason I do think (as stated above) that if there were a way to improve it, it would have been done already.

[bigal]

I am obviousy blind as well as old and stupid. I missed the link. Thank you for pointing it out.

bigal