Posted on 12/07/2020 6:46:05 AM PST by A Conservative Future
Hi folks,
I have been reading here for a very long time, but only recently registered an account. Since registering, I have done my best to take the oft-repeated admonishment to search before posting so that I am not one of the dunderheads who posts the same news five times (I am a dunderhead for other reasons). However, I do not seem to understand how the search function works, and I must say, I feel pretty stupid admitting this. For example:
Yesterday, I searched on the name "staten" looking for articles about the bar owner who hit a sheriff's deputy on Staten Island. I got three results, all a year or more old. I tried different permutations of the search options - title, text, etc - and it did not seem to make a difference. I then scrolled down through the latest posts and found a thread about it posted a few hours before.
I plead ignorance. What am I doing wrong? I usually end up having to search the site with Google, which seems silly. Thank you for your help. I have donated to the Freepathon as is appropriate for making Vanity posts with young accounts :)
You’re not alone.
Pick a significant word from the headline and then search by title. Check most recent results. This takes only a few seconds and does the job 99% of the time. If you copy the whole title and search for it, you risk running into trouble if someone has put a parenthesis/bracket in there or modified it some other subtle way. But the significant word method always works unless they didn’t cut and paste and made a typo with that word. That’s pretty rare.
Later.
Don't feel too bad, I spent 25+ years working in IT as a Database Administrator and System Administrator and I've had an account on FR since '98, yet I've never gotten the search to perform adequately.
*One addition to my guide: The word must be four or more letters long. You can’t search for something shorter than that.
But do what I said and search will easily work you.
Your best bet is to enter only the most important words in the title.
You will come up with articles with similar titles and if your exact article has already been posted it will show up too.
I only use the FIND function at the top right corner of Free Republic’s home page. Always works well for me.
Try it.
Just search for cheese, moose, or sister - anything worth reading will come up.
When I want to search FR I just use CTRL F. This brings up a little box where you type in the word you are searching for, and it highlights that word on the page you are on. I think FR defaults to 50 entries per page. So if you are on a thread, it will show 50 comments before you have to hit the next page button. The same is true for news link, it will default and show you 50 links before you get to the bottom of the page to hit next page.
To make searching easier, go to Account, and then My Preferences. Change the setting of Thread Pagination, and browsing to 250. Now when using Ctrl F it will search 250 threads, or comments.
This works well for me. You won’t get years old info, and the search word just has to be spelled the same, not an exact match.
Forget the search.
If you see an article that you think deserves FReeper attention, and it does not show up when you scroll your forum and the sidebar, post it!
Chances are, if the article has been posted already, it was several hours prior, and if it is no longer being bumped to the top, a new FReeper audience will enjoy your article.
Naturally, one or two FReepers with nothing better to do will point out that your article has already been posted - ignore them!
Post away!
Back to your question...
Just go to the search bar at the right side of your screen, strike out the asterisk that's there by default, manually type in 'title' (w/o quotes) all in lower case, then without hitting the space bar manually type in a colon. It'll look like this
title:
Now all you've got to do, without bothering to enter a space, is enter your search word, or words (of course, these search words have to be separated by spaces), like so
title:staten
Not putting a space after the colon will save you one keystroke. But over 20 years it'll save you thousands (potentially). Also, after the colon, caps are ignored. So you don't have to use them, but can if they make you feel better.
Sample try - use next line as template
Site: freerepublic.com (sample-headline)
Your mileage may vary
+1 on the Ctrl F.
See my post 14. If more people realized how easy it is to search, perhaps we would not have 10 to 15 duplicate and similar threads posted on a regular basis.
This is fascinating to see, because I often see threads removed with the reason given “Search still works”.
Then go to your room!
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