I used to be able to use keyword search for articles of a certain subject and then you could also use it to search what certain posters were saying in a thread.
I don't know about you, but I do not like this format.
In the search area in the right hand side of a page that has it, such as news/activism, type in
keyword:YourKeyword
I did it with keyword:berkeley and got this
From there, you can type in any keyword and find what you want hopefully
On the problem of finding someone's posts on a thread, you can, when on the thread, click on “edit” on the top left
Then click on find (on this page) and then type in the user name of the poster whose posts you want to see.
It will go from one to another until they all are shown to you
I hope this helps, if it doesn't well
Here's a BUMP to this thread!
LOL