just hit *24 or *xxx and you would get the ones you want.

Yeah, that'd be the perfect solution if we could search with wildcards. But since the wildcards no longer work either, it makes it a little tougher.

OK. I stand corrected. I thought you were gnawing on my leg instead of yanking my chain. &

I guess I’m still not getting my point across. The software is the software. How ‘bout some help on how to use it?

I know that it’s more than 3 and less than 11 characters.

No wildcards.

And that’s about it.

Is it case sensitive?

Does it respect multiple words?

Does a partial word produce results?

???

When you search for something that you know is there, but it doesn’t give you anything…

In other words, it’s broke.

Sorry if I came across as grating. It's an unavoidable side-effect of being grating, I guess.

That's the problem, though. :-/ Trying to work around the settings Geoff configured is one thing, but when you're saddled with buggy, faulty software that works in some instances but, as you demonstrated earlier, inconsistently doesn't in others... I don't know if there's really much we can do at this stage.

Precisely! I'd heard other vBulletin users complain about searches not working, but I meekly assumed everything was fine on DVD Talk (as in, the problems people were experiencing were the result of limitations intentionally set through the software) until recently.

It's not case sensitive...not sure what you mean by "respect multiple words" ... partial words don't work (this last one's in my FAQ I believe...which should be updated to reflect the 10 letter limit).

What if we put things together like say for 24 that aired on 12/03 we listed it in the thread title 24/12/03, or XXX/release date

It's probably tough to expect people to start writing in ways that will help forum load.

Besides, if we do that I insist we go with my approach and eliminate vowels. . .Stupid vowels.

<small> </small>

As I pointed out in another thread, it's pretty ridiculous that you can't search for "DVD" on DVD Talk.

It makes it tough to search for threads on something like "Sony DVD Players," "DVD Player reviews," "DVD Empire Deals" etc.

You can fool around and usually find a few results, but I'm sure you miss some threads, and get some unrelated stuff. For example a search on "Sony Players" in the hardware forum brings up threads on CD players and DVD players, where before you could put "DVD" in the search box and only get threads mentioning Sony DVD players.

As I noted after that, I did not know that you could not use the 3 letter word at all. I had assumed that one had to use a minimum of 3 characters, so then one could search for SONY DVD. But I know see that is not true, and so I consider the forum search broken also.

Still, I go back to the point it's a VBB problem and we need to wait until the next release. Unless Geoff is willing to take the server load hit from a 3 character search, which I doubt he is.

I wanted to do a search for "The Way of the Gun" but guess what, not a single word in the title will work. This really needs to be fixed. We can put a man on the moon but a simple little search casues the whole thing to come crashing down.

It's a good thing letter, minimum, and word are all at least four letters, or nobody would be able to find this thread.

Just in case you hadn't noticed... We can't put a man on the moon.

We were able to at one time, but no longer due to budget constraints.

I'm not sure how much it cost NASA to put a man on the moon, but if DVD Talk had the same budget as NASA, I think Geoff could swing a three-letter word search.

Is there any way to make a list of three letter words that can be searched for? So searches could be done for movies / words like Red, xXx, UHF, mp3, but not other three letter words.

Also, why doesn't a search for others turn up anything, but a search for *others* (with astericks on each side) comes back with a list? What exactly does an asterick mean to the search engine?

Because the NASA scientists that worked on the Apollo 11 space program also coded vBulletin's search functionality.

I hate to bring this subject up again, but will the new forum software allow us to search for words less than 4 characters, or is the resource issue still a factor?

I'd really like a 3 letter limit. lots of stuff in TV Talk can't be found with the 4 letter and 3 plus an asterisk never works for me. obviously 2 letters would get too many hits, but I think 3 would be the right balance between number of hits and being able to search for stuff you actually are looking for

one of my favorite movies in recent times is "may". after watching it on dvd i was excited to come here and search for discussion on it to see what others think about it.

anyway, that plan failed.

the problem isn't just for movies though, it's everything: movies, music, books, songs, artists, etc

can't even find an old DDD thread unless someone mentions deepdiscountdvd in it.

I too would like to see this reduced to a three letter minimum. Four is a royal pain in the ass.

Two issues I have: sometimes the fuzzy search doesn't work. Case in point, I was looking to see what threads were available about Live Aid (the bandaid concert). Live returned far too many, Aid wasn't allowed. When I tried adding various bands and people like Geldof, it did find ones, but not the one I was looking for. Surely allowing some three letter words as qualifiers would be good (ie you need at least one 4+ letter word and the three letter words will only get rid of some of the threads already found).

Aside from the greater than three letter issue (which is a problem), it would also be nice if you could do a search for a specific string. If, for example, I search for "Bill Gates" (quotes included), the search will also return a thread about front gates with a line 'posted by Bill Bloggs' as being a hit.

Makes it really difficult when you're trying to use fuzzy words to get around the three character search.

I still say the biggest problem is not being able to search for "DVD". But I can understand your frustration in not being able to search for your all-time favorite show ... ALF.

No one is ever going to be able to search for the movie M. Oh well.

I share your pain. Nobody can find my review of O either.