i wish i could search for "gay" in the forums without being told that "One or all of your search keywords were below 4 characters"

Is there any way to get past this or request that this be changed?

i tried to see if there was already a topic on this subject, but when i searched for the term 'gay' i got that message.

Search engines, here or anywhere else, suffer from a basic flaw: They aren't human. They can't know "what you mean". They just match letters, words, etc. and show the matches. Too small sample size (3 letters) and you get pretty much every thread ever written. The sorting process gets more accurate with larger letter count.

Personally, I agree with your frustration. Let's see: Pig, man, sow, guy, ewe, dog, hog, cow, ram,
uh, OK...... ;)

Just try different wording; if you can't use "gay", try "male with male dog" or "male donkeys", or search for "stallion" in the "Men with Animals" section. If at first you don't succeed..........
:D

In addition, if your search words are too small, the search can hash too many results and can cause a lot of strain on the server, slowing the site down because you're basically fetching too many results. You're basically making a couple thousand, a couple million, or "way to fucking many" results if it's too vague.

If you searched on the word "the" you'd probably never get it to come back unless the search function had a maximum number of results, kinda like Google.

That's because "th" is the most common two-letter combination in the English language and "the" is the next most common three-letter language in the English langues. I think there was something about a study on Shakespere's writings that confirmed this.

Although I understand that this could be a little bit more complicated than the current searching algorithm, but i am wondering, can Beast Forum create a list of "searchable words" that are 3 letters (such as cow, sow, etc.) that the algorithm can search for? Alternatively, if it would be easier, is it possible for Beast Forum create some "blocked words" which would be a list of words that are too common to waste the server power for, therefor allowing us to search for not-as-common three letter words like the ones listed above?

Interesting--- That would be useful.

Remains for the technical among us to say if it would be practical. (I am SO not a software person).
I suspect the software for running a site is a package, and not written line-by-line by a resident code wizard. If so, changing or adding code could be way more complicated than it looks to us on the outside; the fine folks at Megasoft can certainly attest to how one little change can ball up the whole system....... ;)

Knowing a bit of programming myself, I know for a fact that's not feasible.

Unless you want to build a database for Beaker of every M-M thread on the swap shops and then maintan that database for him. I'm sure he'd be happy for someone to compile a full list for him! :lol:

*deep breath*... Okaaay, software guy to the rescue. *cracks knuckles*

Forum search engines really, really, really suck. Horrifyingly badly. There are a lot of key search principles and algorithms that go completely ignored by the creators of forum search engines (and please note: that does NOT include the BF admins, since they just selected a forum software package and dropped it in here). Things like full query analysis (seeing what you actually mean or matching ALL keywords), title matching (checking to see if what you searched for is in the title), backlink referencing (did someone link to a post using the words you're looking for?). All of those things - and much more - are used in all Web search engines, but all of them are totally missing in forum search engines.

What does that mean for you? You can't search for "gay", "dog", "pig", etc., because the search engine is incorrectly applying its knowledge of the words "the" and "and" to your other (legitimate) 3-letter queries. While there would be no downside to having the engine process that query, it still refuses to process it because it believes the only 3-letter words people would search for would be things like "the" and "and" - which are extremely common terms (of course). Searching for any of those other 3-letter words would likely result in finding exactly what you're looking for. Ironically, "that" is a 4-letter word that would likely be searchable.

A few changes need to be made to make the search engine more efficient. First, ensure that all the searchable database columns are indexed, and not too long - for example, index the post data but not the hundreds of gigs of attachments (attachment filenames would be OK, though). Second, make sure the default matching mode on search queries is "AND", not "OR"! That is, if you search for "falcon porn" (;)) you don't get a million results containing only the word "porn" - you only get ones matching both words. The proper way to do this is to first search for one word, then (as it's qualifying results), search that first match against the second word and throw it out if it doesn't match. The third thing would be to allow all search queries based on a word match (that is, if you search for "dog", don't go looking for "*dog*" and finding "speedogear") - then apply a search term blacklist for common words like "the", "and", "it", etc. A statistical analysis of the word occurance in the post data would greatly help build such a list.

Just my $0.02 ;)

OK, Thank you for that, Noclaf-- "10" for the first 2 paragraphs that even a non software guy can understand and appreciate.

Caught maybe one word in 5 of the last paragraph,....... :lol:

Still don't know if a drop-in software package can be significantly modified, tho'.....
:thinking:

I agree. It seems that we are stuck. I wish I could give you a 10 Noclaf, but i need to get to 100 posts!

Thanks! :)

Actually, there are a lot of mods for IPB. PHP software packages are easily modified since they're pretty much distributed (and ran) as editable source code. I haven't run my own forum in a while so I don't know exactly what mod would need to be installed (but perhaps we could... *cough*... start with a theme?), but since it's such a major issue for everyone using IPB (and others), I'm sure there's something out there ;)

try http://www.bestialitysearch.com/ - it indexes all the best beast sites :-)

:unsure: Considering how many people place the term "Bestiality" right next to "Pedophilia" (laws, notices, rules, etc...), I rather wonder what genius thought of naming that particular domain... I'm kinda worried if I click it that 50 FBI guys would come breaking down my door. :blink:

Never assume---- :ph34r:

*Pulls lead foil hat down over face to block X-ray glasses*

:whistling: