Mandrake wrote:Putting 'Marked' and 'Deck' into the Search function will return a lot of posts as those words are commonly used. Even if they appear only once or twice in a multi-page thread that's enough to be spotted and returned as a result.
You are right, Mandrake, and that is how it is supposed to work. But, when I enter "marked deck" and
include the quotes then the search engine should limit it's results to posts that have this complete phrase. So, I decided to visit the phpBB site (they supply the software that runs talkmagic).
First, I suspect we are using an old version. The current version is 3.0.4 and it looks quite different to talkmagic. Incidentally, they no longer support version 2 or earlier.
Second, I went to their user forums and entered "search engine"
without the quotes and as Mandrake said, it produced every post that contained either word. However, I tried again but this time
included the quotes, and it produced only those posts that had the phrase "search engine". This is how it is supposed to work. Incidentally, this is the way Google works (except that Google uses sophisticated algorithms designed to greatly expand the search)
I'm not sure what is involved, but an upgrade to version 3 of phpBB would probably correct this issue. For those who don't know phpBB, it is open source software so there is no charge. But there could be considerable work for the System Administrator to make the changeover.
Please note that this is not just a petty gripe. I believe that a good search function will help prevent duplicate reviews. At present it is very difficult, if not impossible.