If you'd done a search you'd see lots of similar threads to this one...oh,...wait 🤣
STW is no different from lots of other 'string and laggy bands' sites when it comes to this. The easy step is just to Google and enter the search with 'singletrack' after it and job jobbed. My employer's website (a university) is just the same - the supposed Google-powered search is crap, so I just end up stepping out to Google as above. That's not really an answer to the OP's question, but the solution renders the question irrelevant.
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@moimoifan say you've not read the thread without saying you've not read the thread 😂
say you’ve not read the thread without saying you’ve not read the thread
Sort of. But not really.
I have quite a good memory so if I'm looking for a specific thread I often remember key words from the title or the OP or recognise the thread from a list of four or five.
If I'm looking more generally to see if a similar question has been asked before (usually maintenance or bike parts), I'm happy to look through a couple.
Stepping outside of STW to Google works just fine for me.
Sorry to disappoint you and your LMAO emoji. Maybe if I want to refer back to this thread in a couple of months time, I could conduct an experiment and type in "Sarcastic numpty trying to point-score singletrackworld" and see if it finds your post?
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Maybe the forum/s could be on a different server. Then a good thorough search wouldn’t slow the rest of the site. As per the mood of this thread, I t’s rather frustrating like it is.
Kudos to Mark for explaining though.
Also the member notifications. No one really needs a list of every post in a thread - just one that the thread has been updated. It seems that’s how other forums do it.
Ps “notify me of follow up replies doesn’t work, nor do messages get notified. (Is service that supposed to generate an email?)
Good luck Mark.
I’m happy to look through a couple
Me too but since singletrack towers cocked the timestamp up I’m likely to have to search through significantly more. Or give up.
Moimoifan in this instance squirrelking is completely right.
Surely there is some way of getting Google to play nice, it's hardly a unique website situation to have a dated article with some always updating bits surrounding it. If it can be solved there, it benefits people googling generally and people specifically searching the site.
Search is generally a solved problem, not something I'd expect a bike website to be having to invest in bespoke "build a new forum search system" and running it.
@moimoifan I've Google searched for threads I absolutely know exist and....
Nothing.
Cougar seems to concur and he's got a lot better IT skills than I do.
Mark seems to think so too and he runs the place.
Christ, I couldn't find the bloody Tamiya thread the other week, something is very wrong with how Google is cataloguing this site. Regardless of where the failure lies it's a problem nonetheless.
STW is no different from lots of other ‘string and laggy bands’ sites when it comes to this.
Laggy bands? Laccy, probably. Derived from 'elastic.'
I remember as a small child, innocently owning a game of Eye Spy with "LB," no-one worked out lastic band.
I don't think you're in any position to L your A O about other folks' posts.
Laggy bands? Laccy, probably. Derived from ‘elastic.’
'Laggy' around here - just like 'plaggy' for plastic - same slang etymology, same result.
That's a bit like trying to score points based on the fact that I'd call a bread roll a 'cob' and someone else call it a 'batch' or a 'barm'.
We're wandering well off-topic, obvs, but if you're going to try to point-score at least do it with solid ground under your metaphorical feet, eh?
Still.
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Oh, and incidentally, look what 'real' Google produces when I enter "Christmas tamiya singletrackworld".
Must be magic, I guess.
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Oh, and incidentally, look what ‘real’ Google produces when I enter “Christmas tamiya singletrackworld”.
Er, that just illustrates the issue doesn't it? You can search but the dates are all wrong (first entry is actually from 5 years ago) so you can't tell which are recent threads and which are ancient. 🤷♂️
@Mark have you tried embedding dates other than as (or in addition to) structured data? Obviously, structured data is the done way but if it's currently broken it may be worth going belt & braces until Google fixes their end.
@moimoifan I’d hope the comments are not aimed at you directly, more in relation to the thread.
If you need to search for a specific thread then fair enough Google may offer what you need but, on the whole people search for generic advice around a subject. This is when the randomness of results from a date perspective crops up - pretty much every time - on the site directly or through Google.
And that is what this thread is about, so pushing a point that Google ‘works’ is not entirely relevant or accurate as a statement in the context of this said thread.
‘Laggy’ around here – just like ‘plaggy’ for plastic – same slang etymology, same result.
That’s a bit like trying to score points based on the fact that I’d call a bread roll a ‘cob’ and someone else call it a ‘batch’ or a ‘barm’.
We’re wandering well off-topic, obvs, but if you’re going to try to point-score at least do it with solid ground under your metaphorical feet, eh?
People say stupid shit all the time. Doesn't make them any more right.
You're quite gobby for someone who only joined in April. What was your last banned username, I wonder.
But it’s not easy when a system has 10 million database entries to search through while remaining functional to the users.
It really isn't. My job used to be designing and building enterprise IT systems, and in the early days building a system that didn't freeze up when the CEO asked for a report was really difficult. If it was a single timezone system you could restrict reporting to overnight runs, after the backups, not an option for global systems. In the end, the pattern adopted by most large systems was to pull all the data out into separate reporting databases, accepting all the additional complexity and costs of hardware, licences, staffing etc that that incurred. This is essentially what @Mark wants to do with Elastic Search, but despite it being open source and the basic product free to use, implementing it will be neither trivial nor necessarily cheap.
despite it being open source and the basic product free to use
They changed the licensing a few months back. The free version is quite old now.
That all just smacks a bit of “being more precise with search terms increases the likelihood of finding what you are looking for shocker”.
Whatever, it didn't work when I searched for it. Same terms and everything, it was throwing up similar threads but not what I was looking for. Don't you think that's an issue of itself, that it's not consistent?
And sometimes it's not possible to be that precise, sometimes all you remember is a couple of keywords and just have to hope they're either unique or recent enough that you're not going to be trawling through 12 years of results.
@Mark have you tried embedding dates other than as (or in addition to) structured data?
I'd ask Google what the problem was. But if they won't say then I'd guess that Google wants to see the date from the structured data displayed on the page. The 'Posted 5 days ago' under forum posts could say 'Posted 5 days ago - 25 July 2023'.
