Searching help

[DanaLea]

How can I do a search and limit the results to a particular part of the forums? I did a search for antiwar, looking for tips on conducting a peaceful game in Civ 6, but got pages and pages of results from the "off-topic" forum. I also saw a few results from other versions of civ. Is there a way to limit a search?

 

[Camikaze]

Yes. If you either 'search everything' or 'search threads and posts', there is an option to 'search in forums'. This allows you to select the specific forums that you wish to search.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

@Camikaze, are we still limited in the number of characters in the keywords? It was really annoying not to be able to do a proper search for all the "Ask" threads in OT. I've thought for some time that there should be a master list made of them so duplications don't happen.

 

[ainwood]

The search is.... not great. Strictly, the minimum search length is three characters in teh admin control panel, but might still be set at four in the config file. Also, the "stopwords" restrict searching, and there are quite a few of them:
https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/fulltext-stopwords.html

13. Why can't I search for words with 3 characters or less?
This is a limitation of the MySQL Full Text search function. Find more information on the MySQL site.
Note that with XenForo 1.1 and above, it is possible to set the minimum word length in the ACP -> Options -> Search Options: Search Minimum Word Length. This value must correspond with the MySQL full text minimum word length in the my.cnf configuration file. If the value in my.cnf is changed, all full text indices on the server (within MySQL) must be rebuilt, after which, the minimum word length value can be changed in the ACP.


14. Why can't I search for certain words?
The MySQL search function has what are called stopwords, which are typically common words, and are excluded from searches. Find more information on the MySQL site.
Note that the XenForo Enhanced Search add-on, which is installed here on XenForo.com, does not suffer the same constraints as default MySQL search does with regards to minimum word length and stop words. The stopwords for elasticsearch are listed here.

I might investigate the Enhanced Search Add-on (It's not free, unfortunately)

 

[Valka D'Ur]

The search is.... not great. Strictly, the minimum search length is three characters in teh admin control panel, but might still be set at four in the config file. Also, the "stopwords" restrict searching, and there are quite a few of them:
https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/fulltext-stopwords.html



I might investigate the Enhanced Search Add-on (It's not free, unfortunately)

Thank you, ainwood.

What is the reason behind some of those stopwords? It can't be that they're that common, at least not all of them are common. Not many people on this forum use the word "whereupon," for example.

 

[ainwood]

I don't know. I can only imagine it is something to do with the search algorithm - perhaps the hash code (internal calculation that the search engines use to speed searching) clashes with other words? I might research it.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I would appreciate if you could do that, please. It's an interesting problem I haven't encountered on any of my own forums.

 

[The_J]

From a quick glance on the list, I'd say that these are just some of the most common words (or slang words) in the English language, and are probably not getting searched to prevent overloading the system.
(I mean...if you search for also, anybody, anything, of, if etc. you might get half of the posts in this forum back; common search strategy, e.g. google also strips such words often)