Advance Search Broken

[ani-me]

Short Version:

The advance search (and probably normal search too) doesn't work as it is expected to.

As far as I have observed, using advance options such as "Search the exact Phrase" and "Search all of my search terms" break the search. There could be more such issues.

 

 

 

Long version/Story Time:

I was searching for "Beyond the Boundary".

First, I went to https://kametsu.com/search/

Then types "Beyond the Boundary" and hit enter

Got 1,337 results

Link: https://kametsu.com/search/?&q=Beyond the Boundary&search_and_or=or

 

 

Next, added a few filters

• Content Type: Topics
• Find results in...: Content titles only

40 Results

Link: https://kametsu.com/search/?&q=Beyond the Boundary&type=forums_topic&search_and_or=or&search_in=titles

 

 

Further refinements; Trial 1

Clicked "The phrase "Beyond the Boundary""

 

0 results

 

Link: https://kametsu.com/search/?q="Beyond the Boundary"&type=forums_topic&sortby=relevancy&search_and_or=or&search_in=titles

 

 

 

 

Trial 2:

Went back and clicked "Beyond AND the AND Boundary"

Again, 0 results

Link: https://kametsu.com/search/?q=Beyond the Boundary&type=forums_topic&sortby=relevancy&search_and_or=and&search_in=titles

 

 

 

 

Now, something interesting, some experiments

I knew there is this post "[MULTI] [SHIRΣ] BEYOND THE BOUNDARY + OVA [BD-1080P/720P] [HI10] [DUAL-AUDIO]" by Shirσ

 

 

So I tried the following searches

 

Exact phrase "the Boundary"

4 results

Link: https://kametsu.com/search/?&q="the Boundary"&type=forums_topic&search_and_or=or&search_in=titles&sortby=relevancy

 

 

Tried "the AND Boundary"

0 results

Link: https://kametsu.com/search/?&q=the Boundary&type=forums_topic&search_and_or=and&search_in=titles&sortby=relevancy

 

 

Tried "Beyond AND Boundary"

4 results

Link: https://kametsu.com/search/?&q=Beyond Boundary&type=forums_topic&search_and_or=and&search_in=titles&sortby=relevancy

 

 

If you look at the last three results, they don't really make much sense.

 

FYI, I looked to confirm if this could be the issues, but there is a space between the "]" and "B" in the title "[MULTI] [SHIRΣ] BEYOND THE BOUNDARY + OVA [BD-1080P/720P] [HI10] [DUAL-AUDIO]"

 

 

 

 

Also, may I request a feature as well?

How about an option for regex based search?

[ani-me]

Somewhat related:

 

[Koby]

I don't know why the phrase options and "and" options don't work as intended, but this is something that is really out of my hands and more something IPS has to fix as they refine their search engine.

 

I've never had a problem finding what I was looking for just searching the name of it and selecting to only search thread titles, not content.

 

Of course it pulls up a lot of stuff I'm not looking for since it's catching each individual word, but cutting out common words like "the" narrows it down some, and when you get results of 50 or less, you're only having to look through one or two pages of results, with all the most recent stuff being listed first.

 

Example: Beyond Boundary in content titles only

 

But if you narrow it down to only topics, it'll cut out status updates, etc... and if you narrow it down to a specific board such as Kametsu Projects, or Dual-Audio, it'll narrow it down to what you want.

 

Example: https://kametsu.com/search/?&q=Beyond Boundary&type=forums_topic&nodes=57&search_and_or=or&search_in=titles&sortby=relevancy

 

^ This is searching Beyond Boundary narrowed down to content titles, narrowed down to threads only, narrowed down to the dual-audio board only... And it pulls up 5 results. 4 of which is the series in question. Thus good enough in my book.

[ani-me]

On 10/1/2018 at 2:20 PM, Koby said:

I don't know why the phrase options and "and" options don't work as intended, but this is something that is really out of my hands and more something IPS has to fix as they refine their search engine.

That's a shame. Is it not possible to replace the IPS search with some her 3rd party/custom one?

 

Quote

I've never had a problem finding what I was looking for just searching the name of it and selecting to only search thread titles, not content.

 

Of course it pulls up a lot of stuff I'm not looking for since it's catching each individual word, but cutting out common words like "the" narrows it down some, and when you get results of 50 or less, you're only having to look through one or two pages of results, with all the most recent stuff being listed first.

 

Example: Beyond Boundary in content titles only

 

But if you narrow it down to only topics, it'll cut out status updates, etc... and if you narrow it down to a specific board such as Kametsu Projects, or Dual-Audio, it'll narrow it down to what you want.

 

Example: https://kametsu.com/search/?&q=Beyond Boundary&type=forums_topic&nodes=57&search_and_or=or&search_in=titles&sortby=relevancy

 

^ This is searching Beyond Boundary narrowed down to content titles, narrowed down to threads only, narrowed down to the dual-audio board only... And it pulls up 5 results. 4 of which is the series in question. Thus good enough in my book.

Thanks... I have been doing that...

I know might seem like nitpicking, but it is still a hassle, specially in case the name is more generic.... let's say "My Love Story!!" Here all three words are too common to rely on any of the, or their combinations..

 

Too bad it is not under our control.....

[Solaufein]

This is definitely something that has gotten worse over time. Search used to work fine, but it's been broken for at least a few months. Are the forum updates granular at all? Could you revert an update for just search? 

 

I first noticed the search issue at the same time as another one that's been annoying me: the input field for the simple search in the upper-right corner of the page needs autocomplete="off" set on it. Without that, the search history drop-down (in Chrome at least) covers up the search options and I have to escape out of it every time. Do we have the ability to modify the html for that field? 

Edited October 3, 2018 by Solaufein

[Koby]

9 minutes ago, Solaufein said:

Are the forum updates granular at all? Could you revert an update for just search? 

 

I first noticed the search issue at the same time as another one that's been annoying me: the input field for the simple search in the upper-right corner of the page needs autocomplete="off" set on it. Without that, the search history drop-down (in Chrome at least) covers up the search options and I have to escape out of it every time. Do we have the ability to modify the html for that field? 

No, it's all or nothing, and there is no way to safely revert any update.

 

If you click the search box, the auto-fill option dialogue goes away so you can see the search options.

[ani-me]

On 10/3/2018 at 6:12 PM, Solaufein said:

I first noticed the search issue at the same time as another one that's been annoying me: the input field for the simple search in the upper-right corner of the page needs autocomplete="off" set on it. Without that, the search history drop-down (in Chrome at least) covers up the search options and I have to escape out of it every time. Do we have the ability to modify the html for that field? 

Oh, yes, this too....

This is so annoying, I have stopped using it all together. Instead, whenever I want to search, I head straight to https://kametsu.com/search/ naturally now..

 

 

On 10/3/2018 at 6:24 PM, Koby said:

If you click the search box, the auto-fill option dialogue goes away so you can see the search options.

No, it does't at least not for me. Tried many times.

Instead, there are two other things that work for me:

1. Press Esc
2. Type 1 character, and then press backspace.

Even though these workarounds work, it is still a bug.

 

 

And this reminds me of another annoying thing in that search bar. If you click/select of the options in it, it disappears, which means we have to click the bar again to select a second option/change them.

This I believe is even more annoying than the auto-complete, and the reason why I switched to go directly to https://kametsu.com/search/

[Koby]

8 minutes ago, ani-me said:

No, it does't at least not for me. Tried many times.

Then it's an issue with the browser being used. Works fine in FireFox.

 

In any case, I like the auto-fill, and even if I didn't, I wouldn't be modifying each and every skin every time an update is applied, in order to disable it once again. Already have to freshly re-install themes and all their customizations with every update.

 

As for any other search issues brought up (phrase searching not working, options menu disappearing when an option is clicked), the only thing I can do about it is bring it up with IPS and see what they say about whether they deem it a problem worth looking into fixing on a future update. Else I could possibly test out one of their other search options like ElastiSearch, whatever it is, when I get a chance to look more into it.

[ani-me]

5 minutes ago, Koby said:

Then it's an issue with the browser being used. Works fine in FireFox.

I am using latest Chrome on Windows 10.

5 minutes ago, Koby said:

In any case, I like the auto-fill so I won't be modifying each and every skin every time an update is applied, in order to disable it.

Yeah, ofc, I am not expecting that, besides this is not that major a issue, simply a feedback as far as I am concerned.

 

5 minutes ago, Koby said:

As for any other search issues brought up (phrase searching not working, options menu disappearing when an option is clicked), the only thing I can do about it is bring it up with IPS and see what they say about whether they deem it a problem worth looking into fixing on a future update. Else I could possibly test out one of their other search options like ElastiSearch, whatever it is, when I get a chance to look more into it.

Yeah, please do raise it, and/or switch to another search, may be just for the time being

 

On 10/1/2018 at 12:22 PM, ani-me said:

Also, may I request a feature as well?

How about an option for regex based search?

Any comments?

(I guess this is too selfish a request?)

[Koby]

2 minutes ago, ani-me said:

How about an option for regex based search?

I've never had an actual use for regex based searching on any site. I've toyed with it just to see how it would work, sure, but I've never had a problem finding results I wanted for things outside of say actual search engines like Google.

 

In any case, this too is something we can't develop ourselves; as we don't have a developer on the staff that would go into that much work, nor do we really want to modify the IPS software that much because it breaks things with regular updates or has to be maintained and constantly updated, which just leads to even more maintenance in a long list of things requiring constant upkeep. So feature requests outside of possible "plugins/addons/applications" that exist in the IPS marketplace, aren't really something that is going to happen around here, unless it's more of a cosmetic nature or something that doesn't involve a lot of dev-modding the backend software the community is running. However that isn't to say things won't change in the future. Who knows what IPS has planned, or whether a developer would join the Kametsu staff tomorrow for example. I also haven't checked the IPS Marketplace in a long time so something may exist there, but almost everything comes at a cost: an upfront cost and then a subscription cost for maintaining updates of it, etc. So added expenses which make the site more costly to maintain, which typically isn't a good idea; especially since we're maintained solely on donations and we'd like to cutdown on costs.

[ani-me]

23 hours ago, Koby said:

I've never had an actual use for regex based searching on any site. I've toyed with it just to see how it would work, sure, but I've never had a problem finding results I wanted for things outside of say actual search engines like Google.

 

In any case, this too is something we can't develop ourselves; as we don't have a developer on the staff that would go into that much work, nor do we really want to modify the IPS software that much because it breaks things with regular updates or has to be maintained and constantly updated, which just leads to even more maintenance in a long list of things requiring constant upkeep. So feature requests outside of possible "plugins/addons/applications" that exist in the IPS marketplace, aren't really something that is going to happen around here, unless it's more of a cosmetic nature or something that doesn't involve a lot of dev-modding the backend software the community is running. However that isn't to say things won't change in the future. Who knows what IPS has planned, or whether a developer would join the Kametsu staff tomorrow for example. I also haven't checked the IPS Marketplace in a long time so something may exist there, but almost everything comes at a cost: an upfront cost and then a subscription cost for maintaining updates of it, etc. So added expenses which make the site more costly to maintain, which typically isn't a good idea; especially since we're maintained solely on donations and we'd like to cutdown on costs.

Yeah, ofc, I understand it. That's why I said it's is a selfish request. Though it is surprising that there aren't any decent search plugins available for free.

What is the backend in? How much of dev support do you need on regular basis? I could make some time every now and then, if needed. No promises though.

[Koby]

For the record, this is about all the control I have over the IPS search system (aside from usergroup-based search flood control):

 

 

IPS seems to recommend using Elasticsearch for bigger communities, so I've thought about but it seems like it would be kind of hectic to initially setup.

 

You can read up more about it here: https://www.elastic.co/products/elasticsearch (which is where the "learn more" link goes.)

[mcmxcixmm]

@Koby Thanks for posting that image - it's rare to get to see the admin panel and judge it for yourself!

 

I would strongly recommend switching to Elasticsearch for this reason alone:

Quote

Unlike with MySQL, there is no minimum query length and a very small list of stop words.

https://invisioncommunity.com/news/product-updates/43-scaleable-search-and-interface-improvements-r1062/

[ani-me]

On 10/25/2018 at 5:24 PM, Koby said:

For the record, this is about all the control I have over the IPS search system (aside from usergroup-based search flood control):

 

 

IPS seems to recommend using Elasticsearch for bigger communities, so I've thought about but it seems like it would be kind of hectic to initially setup.

 

You can read up more about it here: https://www.elastic.co/products/elasticsearch (which is where the "learn more" link goes.)

Oh man...!!! That's sad..

I have never used IPS, so I don;t know how it works... But is this is the only control they are providing, and their tools are broken, then that seems unacceptable.

Thanks for still looking into it.

 

Oh, btw, I have come up with another method that improves the accuracy a bit, though only in special cases, if someone is interested..

If the anime title is made up of several words, and there is some uncommon word in the title, I usually search using only that word. I prefer using the same search terms on AniDB for re-assurance.

This eliminates most of the noise...

 

 

Koby, another thing, is there any sitemap if any kind of index of all the threads? We can use that as the alternative and use the browsers' search. (I couldn't find one at the bottom)