Lack of Advanced Forum Search is Crippling for Max Development

David Butler's icon

I've been working on numerous Max and Jitter development projects recently, and I've found it absolutely maddening to not be able to search the Dev forum when I (frequently) come across issues often caused by the not particularly comprehensive documentation of the Max (and especially Jitter) SDKs.

I've very rarely had a problem I could not solve by searching the Dev forums, but it is impossible currently to wade through the masses of results from every forum for development-specific posts.

This is a really serious problem. Cycling 74 have a massive mine of useful information available in this forum but it's currently impossible to access.

I have raised this issue twice before (https://cycling74.com/forums/new-forums-advanced-search-missing-again) but even the Google workaround isn't functioning now.

stkr's icon

I agree so SO much. This forum is a joke and has been for quite some time. It seems to receive constant infuriating tweaking but there is never a look in for essential features such as advanced search or pming. I've given up searching and accept the loss.

Peter Castine's icon

I've been using Google with the site: specifier for so long to search the forum that I've forgotten it had a built-in search function.

Yes, it would be nice for the forum to have a smarter search function. But does the work-around buy you anything?

Tarik's icon

Wow I'm amazed... and please enlighten me, do I understand correctly that currently there's no way to search through the forums specifically? Not even talking about advanced searches is it currently even impossible to search for two keywords in for instance the 'dev' forum? Or am i missing something embarrassingly obvious?

DRKOSS's icon

@Peter - I agree - i use google that way and find it works great!

metamax's icon

Yes, Google is the way to go - not only for search features but for speed. The lag on this forum is significant… and often affects my choice to visit, let alone search. It's also quite ironic that a community-driven project like Max has a forum that doesn't allow members to message each other. It's been half a year now.

Peter McCulloch's icon

Agreed. Private messages were a great way to not have to communicate your email address to the world. They also provided useful ways of pointing things out privately and politely.

Cycling '74's icon

Hi everyone - I hear you, and I apologize for features you wish were here but aren't. re: advanced forum search, and private messaging, we're considering our options. re: the speed of the forum, I hope you find it significantly faster lately. We've been able to shave more than 90% off of the average response time.

Ben

vichug's icon

"significantly faster", yes, but it's still quite slow and significantly slower than before before - when there was private messaging

brendan mccloskey's icon

re: speed and PMs (and search)

I never understood, or was even told, why the move to the new host happened. It just did. Fixing non-broken things? The site looks good, but handles like a drunk cow. There has since been a litany of problems with posting, uploading and browsing. I miss private messaging, and the search list hierarchy is a bad joke. Visiting this site has become a frustration, marred by intermittent behaviour and reduced functionality. Not good.

2c

brendan mccloskey's icon

OT

I heard an informed opinion yesterday that relegates Twitter/FB/G+/LinkedIn etc to the realm of commercial MMOGs: contribute your personal data then join the fun.

Not for me, I'm afraid (sic)

Brendan

Cycling '74's icon

@noob_meister - I'm sorry for your frustration. We definitely want the forum to be a good experience for everyone, so I appreciate all candid feedback.

In fact there were several things fixed by our upgrade to the latest version of this forum software, but they were mostly "invisible" administrative or back-end improvements. There were also regressions due to plugin incompatibility - eg, private messaging, advanced search. We're working to patch these up now.

brendan mccloskey's icon

@Ben

I love my old Mitsubishi Carisma, but it's a bucket!

And now I'm paranoid about being resistant to change........aaaaaargh, no, please don't let me morph into a Tory. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

dhjdhjdhj's icon

I remain convinced that the purpose of the slowdown was to stop people like me who complain a lot -:)

More seriously (I hope!), it is certainly the case that I have significantly reduced my participation in these forums, answering other peoples' questions when I could less often than I used to, because it took too long to go through them.

These days I'm just keeping an eye out using an RSS feed but rarely actually visit.

Roth's icon

I feel like there was a preview feature the last time I posted too. For me that was very important as I find typesetting and layout an important part of communication.

Also, I don't think it was like this before, but it feels very strange entering a post in a monospace font when that is not how the posts are shown. I guess that may be good for when you put code into your post? /shrug

AudioLemon's icon

My participation in the forum has also reduced significantly. It is by far the slowet forum I use, it feels like it's constantly stalling. Rather than feeling light and easy to use - it feels clunky and slow... This plus missing functionality. I used to check in a couple times a day - now it's a couple of times a month. This is not all down to the site but a lot of it is.

Search is broken in every forum I use so cycling is not alone there... It's still frustrating but I guess Google will always be better.

do.while's icon

forum speed is like a thunderflash now

dtr's icon

I wouldn't say that but it definitely sped up.

AudioLemon's icon

It's faster on the laptop but on my I do most browsing on the iPad and it takes 10 to 15 secs to open a thread. My contributions are usually not great anyways so maybe it's for the best :)

Leigh Marble's icon

+1

Not being able to search within specific forums is ridiculous. The data (the posts and threads) are obviously already tagged as belonging to one forum or another. So to be able to search by forum, the only thing missing is one extra webform field (forum selector), and a couple lines of backend code.

I'm not so concerned with the loss of private messaging. There are so many ways to reach people these days without giving out an email address.

Also, at what point was forum search removed entirely? Seems that the only search option offered now is the site-wide search box, at the top of the page - do I have that right? And then after search results are served back to you, you have to narrow it down by these categories?

    All results
    Forums
    Did You Know?
    Toolbox
    Wiki
    Projects
    Tutorials

vichug's icon

i would add that i am a bit concerned by the absence of private messaging :S not everybody on the forum has linked a place where s/he is easily reacheable, and several times i wished i could contact the author of an unactive thread and couldn't/tried to bump it randomly, which is not that efficient.

do.while's icon

+1 Vichug

Leigh Marble's icon

Vichug - I see your point about the virtues of private messaging. Although I'd be fine with just an anonymized email forwarding service (like what Craigslist does), rather than Cycling actually hosting a PM inbox for each user. Any PM system would need a notifications system (by email) to alert users that they had a new message anyways... so just cut out the middle man, and let users receive forwarded messages, while keeping their actual email addresses private.

vichug's icon

well there was such a system before (how long ago ? i actually can't remember...)... no email alert, i'll grant you that, but it was already something useful.

diablodale's icon

I took a peek at the underlying code on the Cycling74 search results page. I see a lot of references to www.google.com/cse/ which suggests that the forum search feature is using google for its search. Perhaps a search lag is due to the pre or post search result rendering cuz everyone's mama knows Google searches the world in 0.0000000001 seconds.

If this is true...and anyone gets different/better results using the search at google.com...I think it would be beneficial for Cycling74 to have exact query examples so they can better their integration of google into the forums.

Leigh Marble's icon

Dear Raja_The_Resident_Asswipe,

While "crippling" may be an overstatement, that was just the particular word choice of the OP. Those posting here in support of the general sentiment nonetheless would agree, I suspect, that the current search capabilities are at least "seriously hindering" access for forum information.

I strongly disagree that this is a case of:

this is one of those 1st world probs where people start to feel more entitled and high-maintenance no matter what they get.

Here is why:

1. The Cycling '74 forums used to have decent search functionality. That was taken away. We're not asking for the moon and stars here. We're asking for a decent "advanced search" panel... you know, a level of technology available on even the crappiest of phpBB installs for the last ten years or more.

2. Using the Google search is inconvenient. You have to memorize, or poke around to find, the URL string to include in the site: part of your query. I use the site: restrictor all the time when doing Google searches, but I don't memorize all the URL strings for all the subforums on dozens of websites I may need to search. Having to use a Google "workaround" as your primary search method violates the "Don't Make Me Think" principle of easy, intuitive access to information.

3. The Google search results returned are incomplete. Go ahead, try it. I just tried searching for the phrase "a very melodramatic/hyperbolic word", and the search engine returns "No Results". Hmmm, funny about that, because I clearly see that phrase two posts up from this one.

So no, this isn't a case of feeling "more entitled no matter what we get". This is a case of good shit being replaced with bad shit, and some of us want the good shit back. OK?

Leigh

vichug's icon

ye, all in all it's quite fair. But you have to acknowledge that it's frustrating to have all that previous cool features that got removed for what seemed like cosmetic changes - even though they have stated it was not cosmetic, database migration and all ; but from the average user point of view it's quite not obvious to see what improvement it brought...

Lee's icon

also, over the last couple of weeks the forum has slowed down considerably again. I'm often waiting 3-4s for a page change. This did seem to improve for a while, but now...

Lee's icon

wtf???

Lee's icon

now you're alter ego is calling yourself an asswipe...

damn, that's too freaky, even for a Friday night ;)

Lee's icon

but yes, PMs, please!

Leigh Marble's icon

Dear Raja_The_Resident_Asswipe,

Don't Make Me Think is a "classic" (if such a term can be applied to such a young field) book about web usability, written by Steve Krug, originally published in 2000. It advocates the position that a "web site should let users accomplish their intended tasks as easily and directly as possible". This is what I was referencing in my post above.

Your ad hominem comments about my parents and the way I was raised do nothing to address the question of why the forum search capabilities here are so poor. It is interesting to hear that you have a personal history with Cycling '74 – though I must say it is more interesting still that, although you apparently have an axe to grind (for all I know, entirely justified) with them on many fronts, you are still taking it upon yourself to defend their website design.

I strongly disagree with your assertion that "the average user of this site is not qualified in any way to judge it". If the site isn't working well for the average user, then who is it working well for?

Regardless of how much money I give to charity, I am still going to think it is a poor choice to not offer a forum search tool when you are hosting a forum. End of story. I am not saying that Cycling '74 owes me a forum. But I continue to be baffled as to why, since they *are* hosting a forum, they have gotten rid of a forum search tool.

Leigh

vichug's icon

hmmm the search and speed of forum are somehow back to normal for me (or have i gotten used to it ?...)
Raja, still a double-edge pleasure to read from you ;)

C74 Ginger's icon

Hi everyone,

We took a look under the hood again and tried out some ideas to help improve the search function on the site.

Particularly in the case of being able to search within specific forums, if you type in "Forum:*nameOfForum* *yourSearchItem*" it should bring up more relevant results.

Sample would be: "Forum:Dev crippling search"

vichug's icon

hey, the sample works ;) By the way, any idea on the advancement of private messaging ?.. I'm sorry to be so direct, but..

C74 Ginger's icon

We're in the middle of making a bunch of site updates, Vichug. Thanks, for asking.

I know the PM feature has been on the list for way too long. A big focus as well is to improve site speed, and that's definitely an active project. Adding features at this point in time would affect lots of things, so we are being careful of what to introduce. It would be difficult to just implement something halfway and then not provide proper attention to it. :)

Roman Thilenius's icon

aha, updates. :)
i was just about to post a note about the malfunctioning of some of the css in my possibly outdated browser.

Leigh Marble's icon

Ginger,

Thanks for the update on the forum search functions. It's still a bit clunky, though, as the correct name for a couple of the forums isn't clear:

Particularly in the case of being able to search within specific forums, if you type in "Forum:*nameOfForum* *yourSearchItem*" it should bring up more relevant results.

Sample would be: "Forum:Dev crippling search"

So, the "Dev" forum is a straightforward one. However, the URLs for the Max For Live and Beta forums are different that their actual names. They are ...forum/max and ...forum/edge, respectively.

And, having tried searches that include Forum:"max for live", Forum:max_for_live, and Forum:max, I can say that none of them correctly select (exclusively) for the Max For Live forum.

Thanks,
Leigh

C74 Ginger's icon

Hi Leigh,

I typed in Forum: "Max for Live" audio as a sample and got top results for topics all inside the Max for Live forum:

And here is a link to a search for Forum: "Beta" audio.

Can you post a link to a sample search query you made?

Leigh Marble's icon

Here is a link to sample search query.

But now that I take a closer look by clicking on all the results, it may be that it is indeed working to exclusively select from the "Max For Live" forum.

However, at first appearance, it looked like the first 3 results were within the "Max For Live" forum (in that the titles of the threads began with "Cycling 74 » Forum: Max For Live »", but that most of the other results were NOT from that forum.

Screenshot attached, in case these search results change...

Thanks,
Leigh

Screen-shot-2014-04-30-at-2.16.19-PM.png
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frank desben's icon

+1
it's such a shame...