The search function seems to be misbehaving.
A recent item in Downloads, Sydney Grew said "let us have at least one item from Bohuslav Martinů." Which seemed odd, since I had posted a Martinu item just last month for download.
So I ran a search for Martinu, both in the Downloads section and the site at large. Sydney's post was located, but mine was not. I checked, it's still there on page 6 in the Czech folder.
So, why is the Search function finding his and not mine?
Another example from the Czech folder is Novak. If you search site-wide or Downloads as a whole, you don't pick up the May Symphony, Notturna and other items by him.
I've run across this problem before, but not reported it and don't remember the instances. But it does cause concern. I often search to determine whether something is available, but also to see if something I want to upload has already been posted.
I appreciate the nature of your frustration with the Search facility :(
With reference to your last sentence...there are at least now indexes of all the British, Irish, American, French and Czech works which have been uploaded for members of the site to allow you to see whethersomething is available or has already been uploaded. With the exception of the Czech catalogue these are all now stickys and perhaps the Czech index(Sydney Grew's post in Czech Downloads Discussion of 13 April 2012) should be added as another sticky ???
I have made at least 2 posts and sent 1 private message suggesting that the search facility is flawed. I had instances to support my findings but now don't remember them. I think you all do a great job and I wouldn't want to be responsible for the upkeep of the site but I agree with Amphissa that the system is not perfect. I could, upon request, find examples where the search facility is incomplete.
An example which just came to mind is the download search for Jan Hanus. Only Symphony No.5 appears in the search facility but I believe all six symphonies have been uploaded plus a ballet suite.
From what I can tell, it only shows the last post made with the word in each thread. Pretty dumb, yeah.
Well, the the software is off-the-shelf open source software and the search function is what comes built in. It's main idiosyncrasy, as I have said many times before, is that it is hierarchical and so, if you type in the search box when you're in a board, it only shows results from that board. That's why I always recommended searching from the home page or the Search page itself. All that said, I appreciate that the inconsistencies which you've highlighted aren't explained by that so I'll see if there are any diagnostics available to test the accuracy of it's results and I'll poke around the support forums in the hope that someone out there has had a similar problem and can fix it.
I don't know if this has anything to do with it but each of the names has a non English letter in the original spelling. Martinu (Martinů), Novak (Novák) and Hanus (Hanuš).
Dan
Oh, great! And unless you have some sort of guide to what's in your computer's character map you could spend hours trying to find the right key to hit! >:( ::)
Betcha Dan's got it.......
Jerry
How about a list of names with the original spelling that could then be copied and pasted as needed?
Dan
That doesn't seem to matter for the Search facility. Type Martinu in the Search box, you get SG's post, which is spelled Martinů, but you don't get mine, which is spelled Martinu.
I just did two searches from the opening page. One was Martinů and the other Martinu. I received entirely different responses.
Dan
I've run the diagnostics and they show that all is in order. That said, the default setting for the search index is aimed at optimising the speed of search by limiting the size of the index (by taking out common words like "the", "and" etc.) and that can apparently prejudice the accuracy. So I'm currently re-indexing to produce a much larger index in the hope that it will improve the accuracy without slowing down searches too much. As to accented characters, I can find no references to the way Search treats them either within the software settings of the search function, or in the online support pages. I'll keep looking but the default in this situation seems to be that á is treated as a and vice versa. Quite how it would cope with ß I don't know! Anyway, this is work in progress. I'll post here when and if I find out more....
I've now replaced the default search index with a much more comprehensive one, which should make searches more accurate and doesn't seem to slow down the search function. Unfortunately, it still doesn't see Amphissa's Martinu post when you use "Martinu" as the search term, although it does when you use "Julietta". Very strange. I supect that accented characters aren't treated as unaccented ones and vice versa, but I have asked the question in the software support forum and we'll see what response we get. Finally, I have added a modification to the board which adds a drop down dialog next to the search box, so you can choose how much of UC your search will cover. This should solve the issue of only being able to search the whole board from the home page. More later, if there are any developments.
What wildcards are supported? I tried ? and % but got variable results (pun not intended).
Also I keep forgetting that the Prev/Next at the bottom of each page don't move between pages but threads. Rather peculiar.
Many thanks, Mark: the search is much improved.
The biggest problem with this site is its success.
Some may feel we have a lot of lurkers and, sure, there are a few guests on here too, but actually the membership is very active in both reading and posting. The amount of material has mushroomed and can be expected to grow at an increasing rate, and interaction has speeded up. The result is a vast amount of expanding material on one site, some of which is unique and much of it of value. Knowing what's here and being able to access it is therefore becoming harder, as is finding posts that can be remembered from previous visits and personally managing what seems of most interest and quality to each of us (indeed, it would be a handy facility if members could have Twitter-like stars to list their favourites, stored in their profile). Organising this collection of material (which perhaps could be aided by some new internal links device) and the search will become increasingly important and probably become greater challenges.
Thanks for the thumbs up, Paul.
There's no documentation about wildcards either, Mike. As I say, I have asked in the software support forum for more details of the standard parameters used by Search, but so far have received a not very helpful reply.
I second Paul's evaluation. Sometimes when looking up an unsung composer I pump the name into a search engine and fairly often one of the links provided is to one of our posts. I'm fairly sure that as radio broadcasts from the world over introduce some of these names to the public we'll get a boost in visits and membership.
Another option for seeking out accented composers is to use an external search e.g. martinu site:unsungcomposers.com (https://www.google.fr/search?q=martinu+site%3Aunsungcomposers.com). That will return all the forms.
There are so many sites I do this on, irrespective of character-set issues, and get much better results than the native search.
The modification which I added this morning, giving a drop down menu next to the search box specifying where to search, also has the option to make a Google search of UC. I've enabled it now, so as well as using UC's native (and evidently flakey) search facility, you also now have the option of searching the site using Google. Thanks for the prompt, Mike.
The software forum's denizens are now proving keen to help on the question of how UC's search treats accented characters and wildcards but I'm afraid that their advice threatens to stray into rather deeper water than I am comfortable with. I was hoping for a simple statement on how UC's search function treats works but so far, despite their best efforts, the answer seems to be "it depends".
You can truncate search terms by using the asterick (*). In other words, if you search with Martin* you will receive instances of Martin, Martinon, Martinu, etc. Unfortunately, it STILL does not pick up my own post of Martinu.
I also discovered that where you search does make a difference. If you search the entire Downloads forum using This Board for Noskowski, you will get much different results than if you search in the Polish folder for Noskowski.
I tried using the Google Search option for Martinu. That was .... interesting. But fruitless.
A very odd situation.
Quote from: Amphissa on Friday 04 May 2012, 23:18. . . A recent item in Downloads, Sydney Grew said "let us have at least one item from Bohuslav Martinů." Which seemed odd, since I had posted a Martinu item just last month for download. . . .
Tangentially (since it doesn't address the search problem) I have now altered the text to "at least one
more item . . ."
I did some test searches for Amphissa's March 3 2012 post. (http://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,1401.msg30150/topicseen.html#msg30150)
Using a different keyword, e.g. Julietta or Goncalves, it can be found with the site search, but none locates them with Google. My hypothesis is that Google hasn't been able to crawl that topic, possibly due to a connection failure (which I find quite very frequent on this site). It isn't a side-effect of the Martinu/Martinů issue.
I think Google may not be able to search the Downloads forum because it is limited to registered members only -- it's behind a login.
Yes, I hope that's right!