The curse of the marathon thread

[Gerry H]

It is the Play Pen so here goes, Nomex donned

or you could have read my project thread when i did this :whistle: ]

Which page?

22

There's a certain thread on here, by a certain person that's 50+ pages

It contains some very interesting info and very useful tech stuff BUT it's a real PITA trying to find something you know's there but is buried :x

What makes it worse is the limited page selection, you only get the choice of 1st and a few pages up to last.

Using search for item, 'manifold' author, 'you know who' brings up the thread and choice of pages 1,...55, 56, 57 :roll:

Now I know what page this info is on, i.e, smack in the middle, how can I get to it without using stepping stones? iyswim

There's a few project threads that are pogressing into the realms of tome so can something be done to make my life easier?

Ta.

[Stuart]

There's a few project threads that are pogressing into the realms of tome so can something be done to make my life easier?
Ta.

Interesting point. I love a detailed thread, particularly a decent project thread but I do see what you mean. Rattling the keys as I do, my own projects and their reports are guilty of being 'wordy'. Some of that is that the process of sharing my memoirs is theraputic; the responses give me an insight into others views and opinions, encouragement and piss taking are welcomed in equal measure. With an extensive project or when the jobs are ongoing as time applied is limited, I have been one to add small blog style updates. I suppose that these can be a royal pain in the arse for the people that visit and read the forum, and sometimes the posts are more for my benefit (so that I have a diary to look back on) If that's selfish, genuinely, I am sorry.

I do try to inject humour into the posts, openly admitting that my projects, mirroring life it seems, has ups and downs. If they have bored the life out of people...........don't read them or tell me and I will just post the abridged versions

[Gerry H]

I don't have a problem with the content and indeed, grateful that people take the time and effort to give an account of their work. It's just that when you know there's information sitting there, somewhere it gets rather frustrating trying to find it.

Is it possible to improve the search facility to something that brings up specific content rather than a general thread?

[Stuart]

Yes and it's something that 'we' are working on right now. A raft of improvements will be sorted out in the next few weeks

[Gerry H]

Excellent news! Gripe over

[ScoobieWRX]

Boolean Search strings!! 'AND' 'OR' and 'NOT'

We use that a lot in recruitment when sifting through the body of many thousands of CV's and it works very well once you have the hang of it. I find it's the best way of searching through masses of text. It would be easy to add a text search facility page on this site so you could search every single page if you wanted to. My guess is though that you would narrow it right down even more if you had dropdown boxes with things like original posters username and original thread name, you could add date of the original post and other things to help narrow down the search as much as possible.

My own database on this PC has well over 17,000 CV's on it and i can get to within a couple of CV's of what i am looking for every time with a text search software package i use called DT Search. Usually the most relevant one comes up first and usually on the right page if you have narrowed it all down properly with the appropriate keywords.

Takes some practice but i wouldn't do it any other way.

Sorry for the momentary thread hijack Gerry but i though this might be useful. :thumb: