FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

The forum search sucks. No matter what mod name I enter, it almost never finds it. Example: Try searching for “weirdores”, “useless_mod”, <your mod name here>, …

>:-(

Edit: Proof these topics actually exist, all have the exact search term in the title:
[Mod] Weird ores (and antigravity) [github] [weirdores]
[Mod] Useless Mod [20131012] [useless_mod]

-_-'

Why are you searching for weird an useless things anyway?

Yes, the search sucks.

use google just search

Casimir wrote:Why are you searching for weird an useless things anyway?

-_- these were just examples.

It would be nicer if the forum search would work, anyways. ;-)
I hope it gets fixed.

Maybe the downgrade to phpBB was not the smartest move … :-(

There's probably no viable way of modifying the phpBB search to be better. Really the PunBB one was bad too - at least personally I rarely found it useful at all.

Maybe the search field should be switched to use google instead of the internal forum search? That'd be just a small modification in the forum theme, which is very doable. Any objections or thumbs ups for this?

EDIT: Actually, we could try to modify the default search parameters a bit first. For this, we need a bunch of example searches for which we know what the most relevant result is. Maybe Wuzzy could come up with a list?

Then by playing around with the advanced search options, it can be tried which options produce the best results for most of the searches

The problem only occurs for punBB (old) topics. All topics created with new forum software are found by the search function.

@celeron55, changing the seach form to use google would be easy. but what then? do you want read out the results and display them here (with a new created page/plugin/whatever) or do you want redict ppl to google? first wouldnt be that fast done, second is not really an improvement IMO

BlockMen wrote:The problem only occurs for punBB (old) topics. All topics created with new forum software are found by the search function.

@celeron55, changing the seach form to use google would be easy. but what then? do you want read out the results and display them here (with a new created page/plugin/whatever) or do you want redict ppl to google? first wouldnt be that fast done, second is not really an improvement IMO

I'd suggest https://next.duckduckgo.com due to many people here using DNT, JS disabled, and don't prefer ads.

I also know that it supports doing this for site search;



So, searching for simple mobs, you'd get;



Which returns simple mobs -- not MOBF.

Picture proof in the spoiler;

Jordach wrote:

BlockMen wrote:The problem only occurs for punBB (old) topics. All topics created with new forum software are found by the search function.

@celeron55, changing the seach form to use google would be easy. but what then? do you want read out the results and display them here (with a new created page/plugin/whatever) or do you want redict ppl to google? first wouldnt be that fast done, second is not really an improvement IMO

I'd suggest https://next.duckduckgo.com due to many people here using DNT, JS disabled, and don't prefer ads.

I also know that it supports doing this for site search;

Your phone or window isn't wide enough to display the code box. If it's a phone, try rotating it to landscape mode.

Code: Select all

site:forum.minetest.net <search terms>

So, searching for simple mobs, you'd get;

Your phone or window isn't wide enough to display the code box. If it's a phone, try rotating it to landscape mode.

Code: Select all

site:forum.minetest.net mobs

Which returns simple mobs -- not MOBF.

Picture proof in the spoiler;

+ Spoiler

I think I will go with that Jordach.

I object to using external services as a search replacement. I think its pointless. If I want to use Google anyways, I’d simply use Google. If I want to use DuckDuckGo anyways, I’d simply use DuckDuckGo. And so on.

I'd suggest https://next.duckduckgo.com due to many people here using DNT, JS disabled, and don't prefer ads.

https://next.duckduckgo.com is not without ads and JavaScript. The ads come in form of a “sponsored link”, like in Google.
https://duckduckgo.com/lite/ is without JavaScript but not without ads.
You have to use http://duckduckgo.com/lite/?k1=-1 to get rid of JavaScript and ads.
By the way: DNT is not a privacy feature, it is bullshit. The servers might as well ignore it and still track you. Even Apache, a very popular free web server software, ignores it. Some servers may respect it, but then the questions are: Why were they collecting data in the first place? And why was your stupid browser sending so much data to that server, thereby giving it the very possibility to abuse your data, in the first place? ;-)

Back to topic:
The problem with external search services is that they just make a full text search. They do not access the database directly, so all the advances searching functions (for the forum) can not be used. If you still want to access an external service, you could also as well uninstall the search function altogehter. It would make no difference to accessing Google, DuckDuckGo or whatever directly.

I fulfil celeron55’s request:

Here are some mod (folder) names. I consider the thread to be the most relevant result.
factory. The thread is found, but the original thread is buried deep down.
laser_mod. The search finds just a reply, not the thread itself.
player_textures. Again, thread is not found, only one reply. Astonishingly, the search is cluttered with completely irrelevant threads where the string “player_textures” does not even appear once. It seems to me the search is seriously broken.
All searches are done with default parameters.
Seriously, just do some searches in Mod Releases by yourself on some mod names. You rarely find the relevant thread. The patterns always seems to be the same to me.

By the way: Since all threads in Mod Releases have to follow a strict naming convention, would it be possible to write a script which extracts the names and make these searchable?

My suggestion is that thread titles should be generally given a higher “weight” than text in the postings themselves. If the concept of weight is even known to phpBB …

Whatever, as it seems the search is not really going to be fixed, I can as well use DuckDuckGo then …

Wuzzy wrote:factory. The thread is found, but the original thread is buried deep down.
laser_mod. The search finds just a reply, not the thread itself.
player_textures. Again, thread is not found, only one reply. Astonishingly, the search is cluttered with completely irrelevant threads where the string “player_textures” does not even appear once.

It seems like there are really only two main issues with the phpBB search:

1) It searches for posts instead of topics. It can be switched to search for topics by default, which greatly improves the results for factory and laser_mod,
2) It sorts the results by date, and there is no option to sort them by relevance of any kind. Only various completely useless alphabetical orders. This ruins the search for commonly discussed mods and words.

The second one just plain sucks and ruins searches for older topics.

EDIT 2016-06-07: I now switched the search to search topics instead of posts by default. This helps in a lot of cases. Things that are discussed in a lot of places during a long time, like "mobs" or "player_textures", remain hard to search for, due to lack of relevancy sorting.

Even sorting the resulting topics by reply count would work much better, but no; that seems not possible either. It's like they simply gave up development of the search function.

BlockMen wrote:The problem only occurs for punBB (old) topics. All topics created with new forum software are found by the search function.

Yeah this is the issue. I know with vBulletin software it had an option in the admin control panel to completely reindex the search tables if necessary. I'd assume phpBB would have such a basic feature.

This board isn't particularly big by message board standards so it shouldn't take hours like what I used to have to go through.

It would also be great to offer a link to all threads started by a user in that user's profile. We used to have that in the old forum, and it seems doable with a specially designed link.

The new topics-based search seems better than the previous one which was more or less pointless - I didn't find my own mods that way - let alone mods from modders where I knew who created them and how the mods where named. Still, it's a long way to go.

Please also take into consideration that new users will NOT know who did what when and what's around in the forum. We have a load of great mods people simply don't know about. The MMDB is some help but requires too much manual work in order to add a mod. MT isn't just about new games which illustrate what the engine can do. The strength of the game lies (apart from its good performance on low end hardware) in the many mods it has and the easy way of creating new mods.

Mods also do not become abandomed simply by not beeing placed in mod releases (I'm not even sure all my mods are listed there) - and they specificly do not become useless if the modder who created them did not add a new feature and posting withhin the last five minutes. It makes me angry to read posts where people complain about other people asking questions about old mods which may just require a slight modification to run under recent versions. Same with buildings - they do not become abandomed just because they're finished and standing there for people to enjoy. At least not the better ones I hope to see around.

So, what does that mean for mods? I'd love to have a place (perhaps one sticky posting in the forum) listing them all (specificly including old ones and those posted only in modding general - but not those who never progressed beyound a mere idea). This could also be a wiki page. That script that already checks mods in mod releases ought to be extended to also check those in old mods and modding general. Each mod found would be added to the posting or wiki under "unsorted" automaticly. The job of the moderators would then be to move that automaticly added link to one or more appropriate categorie(s) and add a very short description of 1-2 sentences.

Information required about each mod would mostly be category (if several fit, add it to all of them; if none fits, either put it into MISC or add a new category), name of the mod, topic of the thread, link to said thread, creator of the mod, short (1-2 sentences/lines) description of what it does. Liscence, dependencies and even download link are irrelevant here.

It's a lot of work for all those existing mods. There're pages over pages of them. People ought to be able to find and use them!

I added two special links on the user page:

• "List all topics posted by this user" and
• "List all mods posted by this user"

They simply use the advanced search like any user could already do, but this is indeed much more handy.

celeron55 wrote:I added two special links on the user page:

• "List all topics posted by this user" and
• "List all mods posted by this user"

They simply use the advanced search like any user could already do, but this is indeed much more handy.

That's MUCH more like it!

That's a good start! Thank you. It'll help a lot in order to find mods. At least if one knows already what to search for.

Thanks celeron55!, not being able to quickly access a list of my topics was driving me crazy.

Should the mod list show also topics from "Modding General"? Currently it does not.

Only if it contains [Mod] or [Game] etc.

If not, don't.

celeron55 wrote:Should the mod list show also topics from "Modding General"? Currently it does not.

I also have a mod in Other languages/German.

I was searching for the new links for the advanced search and a bit puzzled why I could not find them. After switching the forum theme back to that Minetest style, the links finally show up in the profile. Would it be possible to add them in the prosilver theme as well? For me, the prosilver theme is friendlier to my eyes.

I don't want to start maintaining two forum themes.

celeron55 wrote:I don't want to start maintaining two forum themes.

Understandable, but also unfortionate. That slightly blueish background prosilver comes with is much friendlier to my eyes than the plain white background the Minetest theme provides. Additionally, the important stuff (content of the posting) is always at the left side, while unimportant stuff (avatars, date of join (never understood why that's displayed in the first place), amount of postings etc) is placed to the right where it can be conveniently ignored.

There ought to be a newsserver for Minetest :-) With that, there'd be no problem with themes and background.

celeron55 wrote:Should the mod list show also topics from "Modding General"? Currently it does not.

Hmm, I think not. Modding General also includes discussion topics.

The new little feature is simple but useful, thanks.

Sokomine wrote:That slightly blueish background prosilver comes with is much friendlier to my eyes than the plain white background the Minetest theme provides. Additionally, the important stuff (content of the posting) is always at the left side, while unimportant stuff (avatars, date of join (never understood why that's displayed in the first place), amount of postings etc) is placed to the right where it can be conveniently ignored.

I'd be happy to have a theme that is less bright. But it needs a bunch of redesign instead of just switching colors. I liked how the punbb-derived theme handled it - important content on white background, and everything else non-white. But it had excessive amount of white too.

I also think messages or especially mods should be categorized.
Maybe like this?:
-item transport
-ores
-plants
-furniture
-game improvement
-documentation
-mobs
and many more...

I gave up on using forum search, it is faster to google it :(

I found a proper mod search:

http://krock-works.16mb.com/MTstuff/modSearch.php

It's a forum; having a bad search is a given.

Google save you all !
Why do not to connect or to open forum wider for google huge hug expansion ?