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Thread: Secrets of doing an effective search?

  1. #1
    Senior Member wpod's Avatar
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    Secrets of doing an effective search?

    Greetings- I hate having to ask stupid questions when there is such a large data base of great info available here. My problem is that I have a very difficult time finding specific posts that I have read in the past. For instance, I know that I saw a PDF of the entire 5235 crossover manual here , but after trying several searches of "5235", "5235 crossover", "electronic crossover", etc, etc. etc.,I still can't find it. I also remember Giskard posting schematics of some new and improved 43xx crossover that he had designed, can't find those either. Could someone please give me a basic primer on searching for specific info, I must be doing something wrong. Thank you, wpod

  2. #2
    Senior Member Hoerninger's Avatar
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    Yes, searching can be painful here. I have no real solution, I help myself with bookmarks or I look into "Find all posts by ...".

    Network Schematics in general you can find here
    http://www.jblproservice.com/navigat...chematics.html
    ___________
    Regards
    Peter

  3. #3
    Senior Seņor boputnam's Avatar
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    We've lamented this "feature" many times. There is no architechture of this database, so things get put in the most unexpected places!

    Maybe there is a way to add a "Search posts with attachments" choice? That would really thin-down the hits.

    Hoping Don and/or John Nebel sees this...
    bo

    "Indeed, not!!"

  4. #4
    Administrator Robh3606's Avatar
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    When ever you are looking for manuals go here first. It's much easier

    http://www.jblproservice.com/navigat...ectronics.html

    It should be added to the JBL Pro links in the Tech Section.


    For the improved 4344/45 schematics do a search for 4344/45 they are imbedded in the threads. You really need a good memory to find alot of this stuff or you can simply add the thread to you Favorites in a Lansing folder in you browser.


    http://www.audioheritage.org/vbullet...highlight=4344

    Rob

  5. #5
    Webmaster Don McRitchie's Avatar
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    Actually, this forum is built upon a very structured relational database at its core and the forum itself has a fairly comprehensive structure imposed upon it through sub forum definitions. The problem occurs when members do not follow the sub forum definitions in placing new posts or hijack an exisiting thread to take it to a new topic that should rightly be found in a different sub forum. The moderators try to address this, but with hundreds of posts a day, it is not possible to catch everything.

    That being said, the search feature actually contains a fair bit of power. To begin with, always try the "Advanced Search" if the basic seach dialog box returns too many hits or inappropriate results. The key to any successful search is trying to narrow down the scope by applying any distinguishing information that you can think of. For example, if you can remember who posted the information, or roughly when it was posted, you can add these paramaters in the advanced search. The same thing applies to the sub forums in which it may be located or whether you remember if the thread was very active (i.e. rough number of replies).

    If you still have too many hits, you can try sorting the results by forum, date, relevance, member, number of replies etc to help sift through them. I always set the results to be shown as individual posts instead of threads. That way, you will see the specific instance where your search term was used in the results summary and not have to open and hunt through every thread that came back with a positive hit.

    Using the above, I typed in 5235 Manual and found the following post and thread in less than a minute. I assume that this is what you were looking for.

    http://www.audioheritage.org/vbullet...nual#post92838

    To Bo, unfortunately, limiting searches to posts with attachments only is currently not possible.
    Regards

    Don McRitchie

  6. #6
    Senior Seņor boputnam's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Don McRitchie
    The problem occurs when members do not follow the sub forum definitions in placing new posts or hijack an exisiting thread to take it to a new topic that should rightly be found in a different sub forum. The moderators try to address this, but with hundreds of posts a day, it is not possible to catch everything.
    , and

    Quote Originally Posted by Don McRitchie
    I typed in 5235 Manual and found the following post and thread in less than a minute.
    Dammit, Don! I tried a number of search strings myself, but they all included "crossover" and that returned a bunch of trash hits. Your post reminds us how search strings need to be specific, tried and revised until the objective is found.

    Quote Originally Posted by Don McRitchie
    To Bo, unfortunately, limiting searches to posts with attachments only is currently not possible.
    Yea, that was my expectation. It would be a nice future feature...

    Thanks, Don.
    bo

    "Indeed, not!!"

  7. #7
    RIP 2011 Zilch's Avatar
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    In long threads, a secondary "Search this thread" using the same search terms brings up the relevant individual posts quickly....

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    Search

    These are all useful and relevant tips, Don. I usually have very good luck with search, and now I think I'll do even better with your refresher course.

    Thanks.
    Out.

  9. #9
    Webmaster Don McRitchie's Avatar
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    Some further features of the search function:

    1. You can search for phrases by placing the text in quotes. For example a search for "Studio Monitor" will only return hits for that specific phrase.
    2. You can include wild cards * in the search to find a range of terms. For example *speaker* would return speaker, loudspeaker, speakers, etc.
    3. You can include the following logical separators between words AND, OR, XOR, -. The - character stands for "not" and it should be noted that the default operator for multi-word searches is AND.


    I also have some further advice for performing searches based on the original example. One way of looking at structuring a search is to strike a balance between narrowing down the scope to the degree possible and preventing the inadvertent exclusion of relevant results. The above example started with a search for 5235, but when that returned too many results, tried to narrow the scope by searching for 5235 crossover. That search actually has a high probability of excluding relevant posts while not really narrowing the scope. The 5235 is a crossover, so adding that term is actually redundant. It's not as if there would be dozens of posts on this forum using the specific number 5235 in a manner that does not refer the the JBL crossover. Adding a keyword that is effective in reducing the search scope means that this new term must modify the original keyword to represent a relevant subset and not just be a synonym.

    To further elaborate on why the modified search was problematic, some people have likely posted about the 5235 and never added the term crossover. They may have assumed that the audience members targeted by their message would know what this is and those posts would be inadvertently excluded in the modified search. Further, some people spell crossover as cross over, cross-over, Xover or just use the term network and all of these posts would be excluded by that search. Going back to basics, what the originator of this thread was looking for was a manual for the 5235. Therefore a search for the keyword 5235 and modifying it with the keyword manual to restrict the search to posts that mentioned both seemed like a good starting point and appeared to work.


    Don

  10. #10
    Senior Member glen's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Don McRitchie
    Some further features of the search function:
    1. You can search for phrases by placing the text in quotes. For example a search for "Studio Monitor" will only return hits for that specific phrase.
    Don
    This is not how it is functioning for me now.

    I get the exact same search results for the quoted phrases "Monitor Studio" as for "Studio Monitor" which is only true because they are being considered as two separate keywords, not a specific phrase.

    When I did an advanced search for "felt surround" the search results were for "felt, surround" (note the separating comma)

    The first hit was my posting about a curious speaker cone with a felt edge-surround. Which would be expected to appear first since it has the two keywords closest to each other.

    But other hits were simply posts that included both words.

    Did the search engine change?
    Is it returning less specific results because my number of hits was so low?
    glen

    "Make it sound like dinosaurs eating cars"
    - Nick Lowe, while producing Elvis Costello

  11. #11
    Webmaster Don McRitchie's Avatar
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    My bad. There are two types of search engines available for Vbulletin. One is a custom engine built by the developers and the second uses the MySQL seach engine of the database. I have set up the forum using the custom engine which does not support exact searches. I'm looking into the ramifications of switching engines, but it does not look good. From a quick look at the Vbulletin support forum, there seems to be numerous posts about problems using the MySQL search engine. I'll keep you posted.
    Regards

    Don McRitchie

  12. #12
    Senior Member glen's Avatar
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    no Search results

    no Search results when I try a forum search for "075", "375", "L65" or "but".
    I guess these are just too short for the search engine, but sure would be useful for us.
    glen

    "Make it sound like dinosaurs eating cars"
    - Nick Lowe, while producing Elvis Costello

  13. #13
    Senior Member sonofagun's Avatar
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    OK...

    I just had zero luck searching for a thread about the JBL Story book by John Eargle. I tried all the tricks: JBL Story (in quotes); JBL Story Book Eargle (all with "and" between) and everything else I could think of.

    Every GD time I got the same results - 20 effing pages:

    http://www.audioheritage.org/vbullet...earchid=295065

    WTF!

  14. #14
    Senior Member sonofagun's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Don McRitchie
    My bad. There are two types of search engines available for Vbulletin. One is a custom engine built by the developers and the second uses the MySQL seach engine of the database. I have set up the forum using the custom engine which does not support exact searches. I'm looking into the ramifications of switching engines, but it does not look good. From a quick look at the Vbulletin support forum, there seems to be numerous posts about problems using the MySQL search engine. I'll keep you posted.


    Maybe that's causing the problem I'm having? What good is an "inexact search"?

    Sounds like an oxymoron!

    Don - are you saying that using "quote" marks or any of the logical separators you listed won't work with the custom engine?

  15. #15
    Senior Member sonofagun's Avatar
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    "Never mind" - SNL quote.

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