Fix the search option on Ideastorm

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2530

Fix the search option on Ideastorm

2530 points posted to IdeaStorm by rutkowk 02/23/07

I tried to use the search feature on the top right hand side of the page. It didn't work. You'll get a lot more duplicate ideas with that feature broken.

phyriphiry 02/23/07	Even better: fix the load on this site. Every now and then I get an error 500 on this site...
hjwasson 04/26/07	There are a lot of different posts on this subject - but of course you can't search within IdeaStorm to see that! LOL.... lindahewitt suggested a very good workaround until Dell fixes it: Use Google Advanced Search. ___ Using Google's advanced search feature works very well (I tried it - thanks for the excellent suggestion, lindahewitt!), but really you should be able to search from within IdeaStorm itself. The built in Search (upper-right corner) is nearly useless. If you put in "small charger" in Google advanced search, with www.ideastorm.com in the domain to search, the result I was looking for (Small External Battery Charger) comes right up, along with people who posted comments. If I do it in IdeaStorm's search, I get unrelated results! It's no better if I search for "external charger."
coolest 08/14/07	Merged Idea originally posted 02/24/07 Fix the ideastorm search for a start
lindahewitt 08/14/07	Merged Idea originally posted 02/26/07 Suggestions for Dell Idea Storm Right now the only way that someone can promote issues that were posted yesterday or earlier is to select "recent ideas" and start going backward webpage by webpage. I have tried doing a Google search on this site by using a poster's name or by subject and this doesn't work either. Due to the hundreds of posts, many good ideas get buried, plus it also leads to many ideas being duplicated over and over. This really needs to be fixed ASAP.
fyrefly 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 02/26/07 Exactly, its providing distorted results because the most popular or posted today ideas are the only ones people can find. People see the most popular list and think, hey yeah that sounds alright and throw some votes their way, but there might be some even better ideas buried that nobody will find.
lindahewitt 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 03/04/07 Update: I can now do a Google search now on lindahewitt and get a separate link for articles, comments and votes. This is a great improvement and is probably the result of Google finally indexing all of these pages.
lindahewitt 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 03/05/07 This has now been fixed. You will still need to do a Google search, which will provide links to your articles, comments, and votes Also included in the link is an item labeled "DashBoard". Be sure and click on Dashboard, because this provides an overview of how many articles, comments you have posted, and how many votes you have cast. It will also tell you how many people have posted comments on your articles and how many people have promoted your articles. Thanks Dell and Google. Whoever did this, did a very good job. Suggestion: Provide a link on the homepage to the webpage, where a poster can enter a poster's name; assuming that this is feasible.
hjwasson 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 04/26/07 Thanks again, lindahewitt, for your suggestion to use Google Advanced Search. I'm still using it, as in my opinion Dell's IdeaStorm search is still broken. I still can't get decent results using the IdeaStorm search, even when searching for topics that I know http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en
guardianxps 08/14/07	Merged Idea originally posted 03/03/07 Place Search Engine in Ideastorm Lets place a search engine in Ideastorm This will allow folks to search for similar ideas they have and not resubmit an idea already set forward. I see so many restatemtents of the same request, including some of mine.
barius 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 03/03/07 Did you look at the top-right of the page?
amonymous 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 03/03/07 It'd be good if there's an option to display/sort the results by views, comments, date etc.
guardianxps 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 03/06/07 I did actually and it isnt finding everything very well. I was thinking maybe a more refined search would be better.
hjwasson 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 04/26/07 barius, the built-in search is truly atrocious, and really needs to be fixed by Dell. Try it yourself and you will see. There are similar posts to this one, and a user suggested using Google Advanced Search. It works very well: ___ Using Google's advanced search feature works very well (I tried it - thanks for the excellent suggestion, lindahewitt!), but really you should be able to search from within IdeaStorm itself. The built in Search (upper-right corner) is nearly useless. If you put in "small charger" in Google advanced search, with www.ideastorm.com in the domain to search, the result I was looking for (Small External Battery Charger) comes right up, along with people who posted comments. If I do it in IdeaStorm's search, I get unrelated results! It's no better if I search for "external charger." ___ I think it would be great if IdeaStorm would compare a post you are submitting with existing posts, and prompt you: "The topic you are posting appears similar to these existing posts - would you like to make your a post a comment on one of these instead? Y/N" It would of course have to allow you to read the other posts to see if they really are about the same thing - and the search function would have to be greatly improved!
shooters 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 05/10/07 If you are interested in helping clear the clutter from IdeaStorm, visit this idea: 67110: An open community solution to categorization.
howardnyc 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 missing feature: no obvious way to search IDEASTORM
lindahewitt 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 Do a Google search on your user ID but click the option "Search Only on this Website". You will then see many links such as dashboard, articles you have posted, comments that you have posted and articles that you have voted for. Although I have NOT done it, you could also search for a specific term but you would again need to select "Search Only on this Website" option.
hjwasson 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 Using Google's advanced search feature works very well (I tried it - thanks for the excellent suggestion, lindahewitt!), but really you should be able to search from within IdeaStorm itself. The built in Search (upper-right corner) is nearly useless. If you put in "small charger" in Google advanced search, with www.ideastorm.com in the domain to search, the result I was looking for (Small External Battery Charger) comes right up, along with people who posted comments. If I do it in IdeaStorm's search, I get unrelated results! It's no better if I search for "external charger." http://www.ideastorm.com/article/show/66117/Small_External_Battery_Charger
shooters 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 If you are interested in helping clear the clutter from IdeaStorm, visit this idea: 67110: An open community solution to categorization.
wware 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 It would be good if there were a search facility on this website. It would be nice to permit searches of just the postings, just the comments, or both. Until that's in place, one way to search is to use Google's "site" option, like this search I used to find out about printer ink cartridges. site:dellideastorm.com printer
reg 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 The search facility was removed after using searches on Known Topic Title returned ZERO results - Not because the documents were missing - I can only guess because Dell didn't want you to find them! THOUGHT CENSORSHIP
lindahewitt 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 Some of this information is already available. Do a Google search on your user ID and click "Search Only on www.dellideastorm.com" if you have the Google toolbar installed. Then click on one of the first couple of links and you will have 4 options on the new webpage. For an overview of your postings, click on "Dashboard". To see all of the articles that you have posted, click on articles. There are also options for your comments and your votes. I haven't tried to find a topic but if you know the headline, then you can probably find the topic. If you voted for the topic or posted a comment, then it will be accessible in the applicable listings.
hjwasson 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 Using Google's advanced search feature works very well (I tried it - thanks for the excellent suggestion, lindahewitt!), but really you should be able to search from within IdeaStorm itself. The built in Search (upper-right corner) is nearly useless. If you put in "small charger" in Google advanced search, with www.ideastorm.com in the domain to search, the result I was looking for (Small External Battery Charger) comes right up, along with people who posted comments. If I do it in IdeaStorm's search, I get unrelated results! It's no better if I search for "external http://www.ideastorm.com/article/show/66117/Small_External_Battery_Charger
chanux 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 Why not make a functionnal search engine in IdealStorm ? For Example, I tried to search for "contest" and did not find my article whose title is "design and computer contest" All what I found is 3 articles wihtout "contest" in the title. 1 contains "contest" in the body and 2 in the comments. I think a good search engine would make it simpler to find an article and vote for it, would concentrate votes on a smaller number of articles and would get down the number of double posts.
hjwasson 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 You will see many similar posts regarding how broken IdeaStorm's search is, if you hunt around. The best workaround I've seen so far is to use Google Advanced Search, and limit the domain you are searching to www.ideastorm.com. http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en
moreideaz 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 It's April 2. Why wouldn't a search for "hardware virtualization" retrieve an idea posted on March 27 which contains the search term in BOTH title and text?
claudio_ch 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 Make it possible to sort the search result by votes - so if several similar ideas were entered you can find the one which has already most votes - and number of comments. This could make it easier to have less similar contributions.
claudio_ch 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 Not exactly because there I see ALL popular ideas and not just those, which refer to my interest. I cannot - or at least I haven't seen how - filter to see only those which are similar to my idea. So currently on one side I can search to narrow down the results to my interest, e.g.all referring to WUXGA screens, but cannot sort them by points and/or number of comments and on the other hand I can get a list sorted by popularity which I cannot filter down to only those referring to WUXGA screens.
jorge 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 Yea, davmcn, they get paid to be here yet they expect us to tell them as if we were paid for it, the nerve.
ptcase 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 Please add some kind of search engine so that anyone can easily see if an idea has already been posted or not.
markvs624 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 i have seen this one suggested many times in many posts... maybe the admins will at least acknowledge it eventually.
cosh 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 .
benjesuit 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 The dupers would dupe anyway even with a better search engine. As if they want to search first before posting. Ever participated in a forum? How many times have threads been duped by the noobs?
premcv 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 @benjesuit: Countless, and yet over, and over and over again! Maybe someday!
benjesuit 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 Yeah, a realtime bot that checks for dupes the moment you submit. It would be polite enough to list the ideas/treads already similiar to yours and give you the choice of adding your submission as a comment to one of them. All the while disallowing you from starting a new thread. Now that's progress!
premcv 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 Yep! Put that in as an Idea, benje! You will get my first vote, and countless others, we have all been, at some point in time, asking for something like that. :)
benjesuit 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 LOL. Ok so I did. Thanks for the kudos and your vote.
premcv 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 Good luck, benje! :) I did cast my vote!
dell_admin1 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 @ptcase - are you aware of the search button on the top right of the page?
jervis961 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 Is that what that thing is supposed to do?
cosh 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 Ha ha ha!
jervis961 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 Have some fun type pig and hit the search button. You will only get 2 ideas: I’ll Pay for It - Price Packages by Service Level by dell_admin1 and BOYCOTT VISTA! by reg. NOW THAT"S FUNNY!!!
ptcase 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 @Dell Admin: A real search engine that will actually work as it is supposed to. If it did work then people posting on ideastorm would be used to the idea of adding comments to already existing posts instead of posting multiple multiples of the same idea over and over again. I think most of us know what a search box does in theory, however, reality bites. Reiterating jervis961 about the Boycott Vista comment, how come the search engine finds topics not even on the same topic as was typed in the search box.
jervis961 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 It seems that the search is looking in the comments also. I searched the word sex and it came back with one idea that the only place i could find the word was in a comment I made about sex predators. They need to change it to anly searching the titles and it might help.
cosh 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 Ha ha ha! That pig one is hilarious. Yeah searching the comments needs to be an option otherwise you can't filter out all sorts of obscure mentions of a word.
benjesuit 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 I typed in "best freakin' ideas, like ever." Strangely enough, all but 1 of my ideas came up. I think the search engine only updates once a day since it missed my submittal for today. Yeah. It's gotta be that.
jorge 08/14/07	Time warp! -------------------------------------------- jervis961 -46 secs ago Merged Comment originally posted 4:00pm LOL, they are still there. -------------------------------------------- I snuck in before the merged idea, look at my excerpt above here.
pancere 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 *** Maybe what is needed is meta tags on the post. It migt be easier to filter instead of doing a full body text search. Also, when posting ideas, make people write in keywords so that already existing simlar post can be seen. Kind of like how some shopping websites tell you that there are "similar products" that you may like when you are browsing.
premcv 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 That is good for the ideas that will be submitted henceforth, but what about the ideas already present? The idea indicates having a search engine that is refined and better than the current one to help visitors search for ideas available already before submitting their own.
cosh 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 Gosh. There are now 3 plugs for my idea in the comments for this one. :\|
premcv 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/07/07 very interesting!
jervis961 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/13/07 Why is this still here? There is a search engine already, it just doesn't work properly.
jervis961 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/13/07 Since they are adding ideas to fix the search engine that this idea claims isn'teven on the site here are some more duplicates including ones posted before this http://www.dellideastorm.com/article/show/63392/Fix_the_search_option_on_Idea... http://www.dellideastorm.com/article/show/62330/IDEA_STORM_failure_of_search_... http://www.dellideastorm.com/article/show/63671/Fix_the_ideastorm_search_for_... http://www.dellideastorm.com/article/show/63900/Suggestions_for_Dell_Idea_Storm http://www.ideastorm.com/article/show/72286/Find_dups_easier
dell_admin1 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/13/07 Thanks jervis - we'll get to merging these later today.
jervis961 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/13/07 Speaking of merges that don't make sense, have you looked into those yet?
jervis961 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/13/07 Yehaw
jervis961 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/13/07 Woo hoo
jervis961 08/14/07	Merged Comment originally posted 08/14/07 Yeah!!
jervis961 08/14/07	Wow that was weird.
dell_admin1 08/14/07	you edited your comments... that was what was weird?
dell_admin1 08/14/07	or the jorge time warp... I just found that... THAT is weird!
cosh 08/14/07	What has happened to this? It's a mess of merges and submerges? Or isn't it?
cosh 08/14/07	I mean look at ptcase's "comment" - that WAS AN IDEA, original title: "DELL Admins please add a search engine so people on ideastorm do not keep on posting that same idea over and over again.". But this double merging has trashed it completely.
cosh 08/14/07	And the same for the idea by howardnyc, and the one by chanux, and moreideaz, and claudio_ch, and .chris. What an indecipherably unreadable trail of stunted ideas this now is. Oh and of course, the "originally posted" dates have been permanently trashed. Don't double merge anything ever again please.
jervis961 08/14/07	The jorge time warp, I took out the pictures because they no longer applied. Can't joke about time anymore.
benjesuit 08/14/07	Merge bot: "You will be assimilated. Resistance if futile."
dell_admin1 08/14/07	folks - this is how merging works - you've asked us to do it. When an idea is duplicated, and we merge it, the title of the duplicate idea becomes a comment, and all the comments associated with it follow below it. When other ideas are merged in, the comments are all kept together under the duplicate idea. I have a feeling that if we had everything be chronological, that wouldn't make a lot of sense either. Remember, the purpose of merging is to focus on the one, original idea. Everything else is there to enhance it or explain it or improve it. Different from the forums and blogs you're used to yes, but IdeaStorm has a specific purpose... it's all about ideas... and the merge function is intended to support that. Thanks.
davmcn 08/14/07	Gotcha! Thanks.
cosh 08/14/07	I'm just saying, it's lost the titles is all, which it makes more confusing to follow.
jorge 08/14/07	I added a comment at the bottom of the merge and it shot up above the merge, commenting on the time of negative 46 seconds of you post jervis961, then re-edited to note that. Basically IdeaStorm does not sync in time very well, somebody update ntptime to update more often, that should keep it so we don't get negative time, we're on Fedora so contact the sysadmin ASAP!
davmcn 08/14/07	i know eh i get neagative time also.
cosh 12/30/07	You know what's funny? When you're searching for a completely different idea, and this one inexplicably turns up.
jorge Jan 30	I don't think its inexplicable. Where's my Google search replacement Idea!

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