Your thoughts on F1T's site search?

[Tomba]

Hi,
in an attempt to provide a better search function on f1technical, could you please answer this small list of questions?

- how often do you use the search?
- what are the strengths?
- the weaknesses?
- would you use it more if it was better?
- how could we make it better?

Thank you for your time
I am going through a list of options how to improve it, so a bit of feedback would be very appreciated!

[Ciro Pabón]

I'm talking about the forum search here.

- I use it almost daily
- It works pretty well, good filters, I like the * working for incomplete words (all search engines in forums I know fail when I enter Pabón with a tilde).
- I don't know, it hasn't failed for me
- I don't think so, I use it as much as I need
- I would include the rest of the site, specially the cars database in the forum search and viceversa, if it's possible

[WhiteBlue]

its over complicated in terms of user interface. I can't find things with it.

I usually expect very few options (say 2-3) which quickly guide me to stuff I want to find on the Forum.

If I want to find things on the net I use Google anyway.

For refinement you can offer drill downs for different fora or for text vs headlines.

Usually people just want to find a thread they remember vaguely and want to refer to. make it easier for them to find it and they will not open useless double threads.

Having posted some 400 times in here I probably used search 3-5 times and never found anything I searched for.

[Carlos]

2>3 times a week.
I only use it for 1 detail. 'Search for thread'. I search the 'entire site' on the first page, then I use 'Search this site with Goggle' which brings up all the threads mentioning an item. Reading the thread titles and introduction; I usually remember which thread I want. If the search choices 'Entire website > Weblinks' included 'Threads' the search feature would be better.

[checkered]

Hi Tomba, answers

to your questions, in the order you posted them:

- The msgboard one every once in a while, more often recently.
- I find the basic functions easy
- Never been completely frustrated really, so none I guess.
- I usually have exact enough keywords in mind, so it's hard to tell.
- Of course I don't know what kinds of improvements are in the offing. I've had brief encounters with a concept called "semantic web", but that seems to demand a lot of indexing and defining relationships to get it working. The site and the messageboard discussions are pretty linear over time, even if there's a basic thematic structure to it. For sure there are limits to the intuitiveness of it all, mostly made up for by "in-head" recollection functions. Tracking down links to posted resources with search, haven't tried that. It could be kinda interesting too, if we had a tool to see which members had most similar patterns (of viewing pages, discussions, posting) to ourselves.

I think I'll leave it at that. For now.

Incredible job so far, anyway.

[Tomba]

Well, actually I was asking about the site search: the search box that you find on the right top of each page

I won't do much about the forum search, but I am looking for different possibilities as to what should happen when you use the top right site search.

Let the feedback come

[checkered]

The "general purpose"

search functions incredibly well, from what I can tell. Again, comments in order of your query.

- Haven't used it often enough, tbh. But that's just me being disorganised.
- The drop down menu complements the overall organisation of the site nicely.
- Eh ... thinking still ... well, I don't want to conjure up grievances.
- As said, I should be using it more for the search it is already.
- Well, it is already omnipresent through the site and prominently displayed. Perhaps that's why it doesn't always register with me, I'm too used of it being there. By no means I am advocating that the search should be harder to find, btw!

Perhaps a "similar or related material" option of some kind could work - you could try to fashion out an associative search. Often, when interested in an unfamiliar subject, one doesn't really have a good handle on applicable search terms. Since there are experts of various fields here, perhaps some could volunteer to group laymen's and professional's terminology so as to specifically provide a shortcut to in-depth material outside one's direct knowledge.

In effect, an "associative" search would draw up something useful beyond the search terms, often the ultimate objective of doing a search in the first place. Especially in technical matters. There are also a number of academic and professional search engines, maybe you could make use of those as well.

[Carlos]

If we had a forum thread search function I could find that thread that mentioned Read Bull Air Races and tell everyone about watching the planes practice yesterday

[Belatti]

I don´t usually use the Search function.

Regarding the Forum search function, I would reply exactly like Ciro, with only one difference, I use it with less frequency.

[modbaraban]

I use the search function often enough to come up with this idea (not sure if possible/easy to implement). It is to add several fields for keywods. Like 3 fields of different priority instead of the usual 1. So that if I search gearbox, 2008, regulations I would get topics/posts containing solely 2008 or solely regulations lower in the list of results.
Keywords of different priority would help to speed up the searching process by not having to try numerous combinations of keywords.