Searching the Forums

[Bertie]

Moved from another topic.


This [the Find-Outers series] is my favourite series by far, and as I'm re-reading it once again (currently up to Pantomime Cat), I keep wanting to post on each books thread to get some kind of chat about them going again.

However it's really difficult to find the threads for the books, and some of the more recent ones are often just a page or two long and about one particular thing, such as the cover or illustration or something.

Would it be possible to have some kind of subsections in 'The Books' forum, where it's easier to find the main thread for each book / series? Or would that be a lot of hassle or lead to even more confusion?

I just think, as it is, having to search all the pages going back years to find a thread that really discusses each book seems to be a big discouragement?

[Jack400]

Can't you search the general FFO and get the results you've after?

[Ian]

Another option that would be good (if feasible to organise) would be to enable people to do reviews of books, which could be posted next to the book in the 'Popular Series' section of the site. At the moment the main series books all have reviews but these have usually only been written by one or two people and it's often the same people that review a whole series. These reviews have been up for many years with no additions. Don't get me wrong, I think that the reviews presently on the site are well-written and interesting but why not allow other site members to do reviews in order to widen the range of opinions? I understand that this may be onerous as reviews would need moderating but it would reinvigorate this section of the site. Another idea is to have a 'Book of the Month' or maybe one from each of the popular series and invite reviews on these books for that month. Personally, I'd be happy to do reviews and reread the focus book(s) beforehand to ensure that nothing is missed.

[Anita Bensoussane]

This [the Find-Outers series] is my favourite series by far, and as I'm re-reading it once again (currently up to Pantomime Cat), I keep wanting to post on each books thread to get some kind of chat about them going again.

However it's really difficult to find the threads for the books, and some of the more recent ones are often just a page or two long and about one particular thing, such as the cover or illustration or something.

Would it be possible to have some kind of subsections in 'The Books' forum, where it's easier to find the main thread for each book / series? Or would that be a lot of hassle or lead to even more confusion?

I just think, as it is, having to search all the pages going back years to find a thread that really discusses each book seems to be a big discouragement?

My initial thought is that dividing the board into more sections could make things more confusing in some ways - particularly for newcomers, infrequent users or casual visitors. Also, there are many off-beat topics, or threads which discuss more than one series, and those would be hard to categorise. I don't know what others think.

Do you use the Advanced search feature, Bertie? It can be pretty helpful when it comes to finding threads. Many regulars probably know about it already but, for anyone who hasn't used it, it's the symbol that looks like a cog at the top right-hand corner of the page.

Once you've clicked on Advanced search, you can then select various features. Search for keywords is useful, as is Topic titles only. I use both of those a lot.

Search for author can be useful if you're looking for a post by a particular member (that's what's meant by "author"). You have to put in their username.

There are other options too, as can be seen:

search.php



If I wanted to find threads on (for example) The Mystery of the Invisible Thief, I would click on Advanced search and put "invisible thief" into Search for keywords. I would then select Topic titles only. Doing that brings up the following four topics:

search.php?keywords=%22invisible+thief% ... mit=Search


I could also do separate searches on various other things from the book, e.g. "Twit", "Colonel Cross" or "criss-cross", to see what came up.



Some of the meatiest discussion is in our Readathons, where we choose to read a book by a certain date and then discuss it. We haven't had one for two or three years but it's similar to your Book of the Month idea, Ian - though far less frequent! Searching on "readathon" and selecting Topic titles only brings up a list of the Readathons, and people are welcome to add their thoughts to any of those threads at any time:

search.php?keywords=readathon&terms=all ... mit=Search



One last point is that it's possible to search within a topic. When you've opened a particular thread, there's a Search this topic... option at the top.

I don't know if any of this helps!

[Bertie]

Thanks, Anita! That's all very helpful.

I did always 'search' for the key words such as pantomime, necklace, etc - but that often excluded the titles and just threw up pages and pages of options where the words are mentioned in any thread.

I didn't know about the advanced search option, and being able to filter by Topic title only. That's exactly what I needed to find them quicker so that's perfect. Thanks again.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I'm glad it's of help!

[Judith Crabb]

A thousand thanks, Anita. I'll be making up for lost time with all this new-to-me search information. (Well-I-never - that's what the cogs for! etc.)