Forum patches

[Chris Fairbanks]

I am physically back from my 17 day roadtrip but mentally I am not sure I patched up the server tonight with the latest security patches and Xenforo patches. You should not see much changes from those patches. What I did though is the AAW purchased the enhanced search functionality for Xenforo our forum software earlier this week based on my recommendation. The new search engine runs on elasticsearch which powers searches on most major sites on the internet like netflix. It allows you to search shorter words, to supports word stemming, so if you search "test" it will respond with results for test, testing, tested, etc. Also it will now try to return results that it thinks are more relevant instead of just returning a giant list sorted by date. Finally when you start a new thread it will pop up and ask you, based on the thread title, if your topic is already being discussed and share what it thinks might be relevant other threads. Please test it out and let me know what you think. The new system has plenty of adjustments we can make based on your feedback. Thanks!

 

[Brian Gustin]

Haven't tried the search yet, but immediately, I dislike (quite strongly) the "Similar Threads" thingy down below everything, which is showing even when simply *reading* a forum post - they seem relatively pointless unless you're actually searching for something or writing a reply... just seems to get in the way to me, or perhaps have an option in account preferences to hide or display that tidbit..

 

[Earl McLain]

I’m new enough that when I saw “similar threads “ yesterday I didn’t realize it was new. I’m thinking I’ll find it helpful, or at least an excuse to get lost on here fo an extra hour!!
earl

 

[Dave Hulett]

will check it out

 

[Mark Jundanian]

I see what Brian is saying. When viewing a thread a list of 5 "similar threads is given at the end.
I've only read two threads this morning, but my initial impression of this feature is that it's not delivering value for the space it's taking up on my phone.
It appears that the feature will deliver 5 thread titles even if they're not very similar. Reading the thread on removing pencil marks Old Orchard the suggestions were all from 2009 and earlier.

 

[Roger Wiegand]

So it's been a word search rather than a string search (not sure if I'm using the words correctly)? Having it find the search string wherever it occurs is generally a good thing.

I'd really hope that if you search for "test" you will get exactly test, vs searching without the quotes.

Whatever you do don't make it work like Amazon where if you search for pajamas it returns results based on whatever Alexa last heard you talking about!