talkmagic.co.uk

Check your spelling of 'Noblezada' before blaming the search function. I always find it works well.

(Actually, check your mental state before searching for 'Noblezada' in the first place)

Mandrake wrote:Can anyone expand on these Search Function problems? I use it several times a day and it's working fine as far as I can see. If it's a question of a Search returning too many hits then that's something else but, apart from the odd occasion when the Forum has had techie problems, the Search function does what it does very well indeed.

Would it be possible to add an extra smilie pack to the emoticons list? The ones we have are the defaults and, while they cover a good range of emotions, it'd be nice to be able to add more subtlety.

On the other hand...I'd advocate banning emoticons altogether . They give forums a silly, over-cute Fischer-Price look . Surely it's not too much effort to use the English language to convey subtlety, is it? It's pretty flexible.

(PS I'm experimenting with a few days off the medication. Can you tell? )

Charles Calthrop wrote:(PS I'm experimenting with a few days off the medication. Can you tell? )

Oh yes

I'm a "newbie". I try and make a solid contribution. a little fun when appropriate, answer a question when i know the answer, write a review where i can.

so a couple of observations from me the Newb:

(1) to those who dont post reviews anymore simply because no one apprecaites them...

dont feel so sorry for yourself! look at Tom Lauten's reviews. they are always well read and replied to because he lays them out well... i can read a few lines and quickly decide if i should read on or if "not for me". he is consistant in how he does this... user friendly! because of this, i ALWAYS at least look at a TL review, and i usually get good value out of it.

please consider changing the review section to a template ONLY layout if possible. i mean, you must fill in boxes rather than have a big area to type an "essay". perhaps this will help encourage people to answer the questions we want answered, where did you buy it, how much, what does it do, how difficult is it etc...?

(2) The "Search Engine":
I am not sure what the criteria the search function here uses, however i can tell you that before i posted my recent review for:
Garret Thomas "The Ring Thing"
i did a search. I searched the entire site and got 2000+ possible matches, then i searched the review section only and got 600+.

after checking the subjects of the first few, I could see that the key words search system meant any post that included key words came up as a potential match. that meant a post about the PK Wizard ring was a potential match for Garret Thomas "The Ring Thing"...

as a result, i am afraid i could not be bothered sorting through 600+ posts so i just went ahead and posted my review anyway. if you want people to use the search function, it needs to be better explained how it works and preferrably it should work more like the eBay search system works. take a look at how the eBay system works... if you search using 4 words, you will get a result such as:
5 matches contain all 4 words
20 matches contain 3 of 4 words
100 matches contain 2 of 4 words etc...

yes, i am sure there are a million reasons why you CANT make the search function work like that but please try find just one why you can. it would be really helpful.

(3) the quality of posts in decline?
i guess with so many posts, it will always be the case that the number of "??? posts" will always increase. one of my favorites is this one:

subject: New ellusionist.com coin vanish
author: balejben/Preferred Member
review: I have not bought this trick and i am glad i have not. My good friend bought it and told me how it was done. He was not impressed i am not giving out the secret. Its notworth it. do not buy this at all.

what a review! this is gold!

and then the reply by Seige... almost as good as the original post:
Thanks for the wholesome and informative review. We shall obviously steer clear of that, err, whatever it is.

the PERFECT reply!

and now this post is 5+ pages deep!!! so i guess the drop off in quality must be what people want??? hmmm... seriously however, for every post like that, i see just as many where somneone has gone to a lot of trouble to share some info, ask a question, review a product. and on reading through the posts you often find it is half full of so called "senior" members arguing whether or not someone (not necessarily the original author) is guilty of exposure, or trying to "correct" someone about a quote or comment. these "ego trips" are every bit as trashy as the "can someone tell me how sinful works" posts. we dont need 1000 post police... that's what mods are for.

(4) OK, so Talk Magic is no longer the "intimate" little place it once was for some people... it has become way too popular for that. too bad, because it is still a wonderful resource for magic, an opportunity to share information and ideas and a place i enjoy very much.

so that's my 2 cents... but i am a newb so take it with a grain of salt.

You make some really good points, Bobby. I think people pining for an 'elite' forum should pay attention to what you say in point 4 and think back to how tough it would have been when they were newbies if everyone with knowledge and experience was off at invite-only places like The Seconds Deal and Chris Aguilar's forum instead of sharing what they know.

With regard to the search thing though; that's what the 'Search for all terms' option-button is for. If you had checked this you would have only gotten posts that contained all three words rather than every post containing 'ring' AND every post containing 'thing'.

Thanks Charles, I just did a search for "The Ring Thing" and set the search criteria to "search for all terms" as you suggest.

this improved things in that there were only 32 posts to look at this time however almost all of them had nothing to do with what i was looking for and most had subjects (and so i assume content) that did not contain all 3 search words in the same order.

this means that depending on what one was looking for, the number of posts that appear could still be significant and so not user friendly. having said that, you suggestion definately helped so thanks.

re my post above, well... even Houdini was a Newb once apon a time right?

B0bbY_CaT wrote:this improved things in that there were only 32 posts to look at this time however almost all of them had nothing to do with what i was looking for and most had subjects (and so i assume content) that did not contain all 3 search words in the same order.

They will contain all the words somewhere, but - as you say - not necessarily in the right order and not necessarily all together. You can't get it to do an 'exact phrase' search unfortunately (unless I've missed something), which is a weakness. Making it better would be a programming job for somebody with the skills, the time and the inclination to do it.

I'm a software developer and I'd offer, but I've never had need to look at this PHP stuff so I don't even know enough about it to know if it would be hard or not.

Regarding the search feature I agree with what Flash said earlier; if there was a way of setting up the search feature to look for post titles only that would make things much easier for everybody in the long run otherwise as time goes by this problem is only going to get worse.

a) In connection with the Search Function, words like colour and color need to be spelled correctly otherwise you get zilch results. Using more than one word also narrows down the number of hits but again spelling is crucial. I wouldn't even begin to guess at spelling 'Noblezada' without Googling first to check the correct way!

M5 returns nothing but M5 System gets quite a few posts, although not a particularly useful set of results. Has anyone tried the same processes on other Forums? Would M5 work over at the Hutch I wonder?

As far as I know, the same answer applies to this as for adding emoticons - the Forum is set up with the basic functions and that's about it. According to phpBB there are add-ons and embellishments but presumably there is a cost involved somewhere and, at the moment, TM is wholly financed and supported by the owner plus the recently introduced commercial advertising. Personally I'd push for a built in and compulsory spelling checker before anything else - but I'm rather biased in that respect!

b) B0bbY_CaT and others have made some extremely valid points and I feel I must reassure him that balejben, he of the wonderfully encompassing and intensely interesting posts (!) was banned ages ago, came back a couple of times under other names, and was banned then as well.

In some respects I'm more than a little disappointed with some of the remarks. TM is always evolving and seems to go from 'good' to 'not so good' and back again quite regularly but that's nothing new, over the last 3 years or so we've seen the same thing several times. There's a lot going on in the background which never sees light of day in the Public or even in the Restricted Areas so you can rest assured the Mods are beavering away most of the time!

Very significantly, for a few months late last year no new members could register or join in and things were very quiet - almost dismal in fact - but despite this complete and utter lack of posts from 'annoying' newbies there weren't all that many posts from the oldsters either so I really can't understand why lots of posts from newbies are now being blamed for the older members not posting. Quiet or busy, some folks prefer not to post and that's their individual choice but there's nothing that can be effectively changed without someone getting upset so perhaps we all have to live with it as best we can.

Once the 'no registration' bug was fixed and new folks could register we had a sudden flood of interest, some of it not at all appropriate or welcome, but new blood was arriving which inevitably meant a slightly different TM came out of it, IMHO with all the good points of the old quieter times plus some newer ideas and thought. We've also welcomed several extremely good nett contributors, both amateur and professional, who are adding daily to the store of collective knowledge and opinion without expecting anything in return. We've also lost some extremely good nett contributors, both amateur and professional, due to petty and inconsderate responses from eejits.

Yes, the amount of posts has risen dramatically, usually a couple of pages per 24 hour period or so which is difficult to keep up with and which means that we perhaps have to be selective about which posts are read. Yes, there are probably far too many 'rate my Double Aardvark nullifed reverse transpo' threads but that's what the file sharing section is about to a certain extent. It isn’t compulsory to read everything so by all means let's be selective - would we really benefit by going back to the days of 20 or so posts a day maximum when even some of those were tripe? And yes, there are certainly too many, 'How do you do…' and 'Where can I get free…' posts but those are nothing new, we've always had them and although the amount of totally silly stuff such as 'I LUV…(insert name of current teenybopper idol here)' and links to exposure sites increases every so often, again they get dealt with eventually. The SinBin takes care of a lot of daft stuff and many of the regulars will also 'advise' newcomers where they've gone wrong.

It's been said before that TM isn't 'the cosy place it once was' which is quite true but that's happened at least three times and each time it's evolved into a new 'cosy place' for many. Unfortunately, some of the newer members have now been made to feel rather unwelcome and their input less valid as a result of some remarks so perhaps we should take heed that if newcomers with a genuine interest in Magic aren't welcomed and helped to a certain extent then TM could easily just fizzle out. IMHO change and development come about by contributing from within, not from inaction or criticising from outside. Sorry if that's upsetting to one or two but a lot of Mods' time and energy is spent working for and running TM and it would be nice to see it more appreciated than it seems to be at times.

Well said Mandrake ! Actually beautifully said !

Search function was just an example I spelt it all correctly and the DVD in question is actually called COLOR not colour changes as it comes from across the pond as it were, and I wasn't searching it for me. it gets 370 matches and my review of Sankey/Skutt which had one reply comes up before it as does MW's CCIM.

In conclusion my comments were completely justified I wasn't having a go at the search function merely pointing out that a lot of results do appear.

Finally I'm a supporter of TM only recently I critisised someone on the forum for saying that they had left because of new comers - if anyone has a problem over here spend a week on the hutch TM is miles friendlier and much more "idiot free"

Thanks for that Chris, I get the same daft results as well. It looks as though more than one word is the key but even then that's no guarantee. I'll ask the forum owner if there are any improvements which can be added but I wouldn't get too excited as there wasn't anything available last time we asked about this sort of thing.

Just to clarify, I fully agree that your comments were completely justified, in fact yours were some I had in mind when referring to the good nett contributors. I won't highlight the particular sentence which I though was appropriate but you've made one which I'm seriously thinking of hanging on the front of my screen here at work - priceless and so accurate !

Apparently if one searches X review on Talk Mahgic via Google better results are produced - I'll see if that is the case...

... I got to the review easily but indirectly via the above method it's a bad example however, as the title in the review section is "Penguin magic's Color Changes, Jay Noblezada" I usually find what I want with a bit of thought

Thought you say? we buy DVDs now you know