Unable to select categories in advanced search.

[coder2000]

I have tried a couple of different browsers and I am unable to select a category to search in. It only lets me select all categories.

 

[ILikeTheSun2009]

Same

Having the same issue...

 

[coder2000]

It seems to still work but doesn't indicate that it is checked

 

[ILikeTheSun2009]

Same

You used to be able to leave the search field blank, but it appears you cannot do that anymore.

 

[EndOfStory]

It would be a big step backwards in functionality IF the search field has to be filled.

The blank search with X number of categories checked was a very practical way of looking for new submissions in the categories that are of interest to you

 

[driv2u2]

Same

Unable to check any category in advanced search .

 

[shoprat]

Having 2 issues: categories in search won't stay checked, and text is now required in the search box. Having to put in text makes the search engine much harder to use, as you can't just see everything that's out there sorted in whatever way you want it, you have to know what text to look for. Major step backward if this was deliberate.

 

[ILikeTheSun2009]

Text

It would be a big step backwards in functionality IF the search field has to be filled.

The blank search with X number of categories checked was a very practical way of looking for new submissions in the categories that are of interest to you

I agree that this is a big step backwards. How or who do we make aware of this to see if they can fix it?

 

[Vostrok]

Use "new" as search term, without the ", of course. Worked like a champ. Your welcome.

 

[shoprat]

That doesn't work. Using the word "new" in the search simply returns all the stories that have the word "new" somewhere in them, assuming you're using the default "title and text" search. Good grief, there are stories from 2002 in the first page of the results if you search for "new" in titles and text and then ssort by relevancy.

To illustrate this, search for "new" using the option to search titles only. You'll see that every story that comes back has the word "new" in the title.

For now if you use a word like "and" or "the" that's likely to be in most every story, you'll probably get most everything, but it's not guaranteed. You need to be able to either leave the search field blank or have a true wildcard.

 

[Vostrok]

You simply set 'SORT RESULTS BY:' to 'date' instead of 'relevancy', and keep 'IN DESCENDING ORDER'. Until they fix this glitch, this gives you every story mark with the yellow 'NEW' tag, or it does for me.

 

[ILikeTheSun2009]

Fix?

You simply set 'SORT RESULTS BY:' to 'date' instead of 'relevancy', and keep 'IN DESCENDING ORDER'. Until they fix this glitch, this gives you every story mark with the yellow 'NEW' tag, or it does for me.

Do you suppose they'll fix it?

 

[shoprat]

I just now did a tag search with "new" as a tag and sorted in descending date order. That search returns only 3 stories that are less than a week old.

If you use any common word not as a tag but as a title+text search (such as "the" or even "new" as text but not a tag) you'll see tons of stories returned that are newer than the newest one returned from your search with "new" as a tag.

It is clear that searching for "new" as a tag does not do what you think it does.

For now,just using a common word likely to be in most any story, such as "the" or "and" seems to return plenty of stories, but there's of course no guarantee that any word you pick will be in every story out there.

We need the blank search string back.

 

[EndOfStory]

searching for "a" (without the ") is probably the nearest we will get for english stories.

re: until they fix this glitch:
Until they (the admins) confirm its actually a glitch, i would like if people actually kept talking about their take on things.

Because that is the only way that the admins can know what people actually think

 

[shoprat]

Hopefully, they won't put in a check for common words and take that away from us as well.

The one thing that's always been amazing about the lit search engine is that text search for words and even quoted phrases works REALLY well and seems to be quite fast. If you can remember a word or two that got used often in a favorite story, you have a good shot at finding it. Unfortunately, you can do searches on titles only or on story text+titles, but not story text only. But not a big deal, you'll just get a few extra hits from occurances of your word or phrase in the titles.

I absolutely agree, people who have noticed that they took away blank searches need to keep talking about it. I think somebody deliberately implemented the new check for an empty search string without realizing that there is no other way to completely wildcard a search and without understanding how useful that capability is.

In addition to using it as a good way to see the new stories in a particular list of categories, I use empty search strings in the text field but with an authors name to get all stories from a particular author sorted by date or sometimes by vote score. I wish a moderator would chime in and explain the thinking on removing the ability to do empty searches.

I'd love to see them add some capability to the search parameters, not take away flexibility. Date ranges would be awesome as would the ability to search text only.

 

[ILikeTheSun2009]

Hopefully, they won't put in a check for common words and take that away from us as well.

The one thing that's always been amazing about the lit search engine is that text search for words and even quoted phrases works REALLY well and seems to be quite fast. If you can remember a word or two that got used often in a favorite story, you have a good shot at finding it. Unfortunately, you can do searches on titles only or on story text+titles, but not story text only. But not a big deal, you'll just get a few extra hits from occurances of your word or phrase in the titles.

I absolutely agree, people who have noticed that they took away blank searches need to keep talking about it. I think somebody deliberately implemented the new check for an empty search string without realizing that there is no other way to completely wildcard a search and without understanding how useful that capability is.

In addition to using it as a good way to see the new stories in a particular list of categories, I use empty search strings in the text field but with an authors name to get all stories from a particular author sorted by date or sometimes by vote score. I wish a moderator would chime in and explain the thinking on removing the ability to do empty searches.

I'd love to see them add some capability to the search parameters, not take away flexibility. Date ranges would be awesome as would the ability to search text only.

What is the best way for us to continue talking about this?

 

[Ozymandius]

I have just been using the letter a by itself in the search field and it seems to do a reasonable job of returning everything.