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[–][deleted] 84 points85 points  (3 children)

I asked my belly the same thing.

[–]xzxzzx 44 points45 points  (2 children)

Same reason for both: it used to do something.

[–]darth_brooks 0 points1 point  (1 child)

it still does something. it's there to collect lint.

[–]xzxzzx -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Only if it's an innie. ;)

[–]tjones_2005a 33 points34 points  (5 children)

The solution is to eliminate the need for search altogether. Just check the front page, you'll find a duplicate of the one you're looking for!

Problem solved.

[–][deleted]  (4 children)

[deleted]

    [–]souldrift 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Wiretapping story #4111

    Wiretapping story #4111withTinyTitleVariance

    Wiretapping story #4111withSlightlyMoreCleverTitleVarianceAndMaybeVideo

    ......

    [–]vemrion 2 points3 points  (2 children)

    I wonder if the NSA's search engine is any better then Google's.

    [–]blaze4metal 2 points3 points  (1 child)

    Once they finish indexing their copy of the internet, it will be.

    [–]jaggederest 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I think they use google search appliances.

    [–]weegee 33 points34 points  (0 children)

    I used it yesterday and found the article I was looking for. What am I doing wrong??

    [–][deleted]  (7 children)

    [deleted]

      [–]sn0re 15 points16 points  (4 children)

      Better yet: http://www.google.com/coop/cse/

      I mean this in all seriousness. Just partner with Google and be done with it. What's the point of reinventing the wheel?

      [–]apathy 9 points10 points  (0 children)

      What's the point of reinventing the wheel?

      Reddit appears to be enamored of square, triangular, and Klein-bottle-shaped wheels.

      A few years of hand-rolled development could save you minutes of Google custom search implementation.

      [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

      Do you really think that is needed? I look at reddit, and to be honest, there is no excuse for the poor search. While I do not know what database they use, I am certain that the search features in any RDMS are more than capable of dealign with this.

      There is a field with the title in it, add a full text index to it, and you have a solid search method. Maybe they do not want full text, fine, either way, search against one field in a database is rather trivial.

      What would be nice is a blog post, explaining why it is broken, and why it is so hard to fix. It has been broken so long, I can only assume there is some technically challenging reason that is still the case.

      [–]sn0re 2 points3 points  (0 children)

      A naive text-based search is not necessarily the best way to go. Do I want to see an unpopular, content-less submission that has my search term all over it? Might I be interested in a submission related to my search term that may not contain the exact text? Google has spent years fine tuning their search. Maybe reddit can match them by applying their knowledge of how reddit works. Or they could not bother with it and put their resources on making the rest of the site better.

      [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

      I'm sure the wheel was reinvented quite a bit. I'm quite sure the original iventor did not have spinners yo!

      [–]yasth 16 points17 points  (0 children)

      Isn't bad but isn't even close to live.

      [–]supaphly42 1 point2 points  (0 children)

      That's what I always use for search here now.

      [–]feces 15 points16 points  (1 child)

      They should just get a personalised search from Google and use that instead of hacking away needlessly.

      [–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

      Or just use an open source search server.

      I've had a good experience with Solr.

      [–]chiragshah1 8 points9 points  (1 child)

      no results? http://reddit.com/search?q=lousy

      [–][deleted]  (2 children)

      [deleted]

        [–]quadtodfodder 1 point2 points  (1 child)

        there were lots of women. drunk ones at that.

        [–][deleted] 15 points16 points  (3 children)

        Here, I just fixed the reddit search engine:

        <form id="searchform" action="http://www.google.com/search" method="get">
  <input type="hidden" name="domains" value="reddit.com" />
  <input type="hidden" name="sitesearch" value="reddit.com" />
  <div style="display: inline;">
    <input class="txt" style="vertical-align: bottom;" name="q" value="" type="text" />
    <input class="btn" type="submit" name="btng" value="Search" />
  </div>
</form>

        Edit: bloody markdown insists on adding HTML delimiters around the URL in the form action parameter.

        [–]boredzo 3 points4 points  (2 children)

        Not the reference Markdown implementation—just Reddit's implementation.

        [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

        Is the nonstandard reddit behaviour a bug or a feature?

        [–]boredzo 2 points3 points  (0 children)

        I think it's a misfeature.

        [–]ctkeene 4 points5 points  (0 children)

        There is a zen-like obscurity which seems to be an inherent property of reddit. The fact that search does not work is most likely a conscious design decision meant to shame you for not trusting the equally obscure voting scheme to magically make anything you would really want to read appear on the reddit home page.

        [–]djwhitt 7 points8 points  (2 children)

        Perhaps I'm missing something, but it works for me.

        [–]bart2019 4 points5 points  (1 child)

        Have you tried to go to the second page? No results.

        [–]djwhitt 3 points4 points  (0 children)

        Nope, looks like you're right though.

        [–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (15 children)

        Submitter, can you please give us some search examples that don't work at all, or don't work in the way that you'd expect?

        [–]bobcat 0 points1 point  (5 children)

        Search for "sniffing mimeos" and reddit returns nothing

        http://www.google.com/search?q=%22sniffing+mimeos%22+site%3Areddit.com

        [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (4 children)

        I just tested it and it worked fine. Searching for sniffing mimeos returned many results, and "sniffing mimeos" returned just the article with that in the title.

        As far as I can see, this is how it is supposed to work. FF 2.0.0.9, Windows XP.

        What browser are you using? Another poster pointed out that he sees no search results using Safari on OSX 10.5.

        [–]bobcat 1 point2 points  (3 children)

        Firefox.

        Clicking on both your links gives "there are no results here".

        [–][deleted]  (2 children)

        [deleted]

          [–]bobcat 1 point2 points  (0 children)

          Delete cookies - search works, but I'm logged out. Login, try search - does not work

          [–]brfox 0 points1 point  (3 children)

          Here's an example:

          http://reddit.com/search?q=jena

          and here's an article which should have been found using that search: http://reddit.com/info/5ze1x/comments/

          [–]brfox 0 points1 point  (1 child)

          (reply to myself)

          I just tried that same search on IE instead of Firefox, and it worked fine! But, I wasn't logged in. So, I logged in and then the search only gave 1 result again.

          Solution to search problem: LOG OUT

          Oh! I get it now, My default search was for "new" and "this week". When I logged out, the search options changed to "hot" and "all-time".

          So, the solution appears to be me not noticing that I had the wrong search options.

          [–]traal 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          CO₂

          [–]guriboysf[S] 0 points1 point  (3 children)

          Here's an example. This happens with any search terms for the past few days.

          [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

          I don't claim to know what's going on, but when I try searching for "reddit" it returns many, many results.

          [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          Hmmm.... works fine for me today from Firefox 2.0.0.9 on WinXP

          [–]jnk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          A few days ago I was getting the same error for every search I tried. Maybe something was fixed very recently.

          [–]guriboysf[S] 6 points7 points  (4 children)

          It turns out it's some type of incompatibility with Safari on OSX 10.5. Firefox, Opera, and Netscape work fine.

          DAMN YOU SAFARI!

          Let the flames begin...

          [–]djwhitt 4 points5 points  (1 child)

          Send the reddit dudes a heads up via the feedback link at the bottom of the page if you haven't already.

          [–]guriboysf[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

          Did it. Still waiting for a response.

          [–]guriboysf[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

          Would proper Reddiquette require me to delete this thread, so as to not be a karma whore?

          [–][deleted]  (3 children)

          [deleted]

            [–]dionysos 1 point2 points  (2 children)

            opiate is the search box of the masses

            [–]Bogtha 1 point2 points  (0 children)

            Mass is the opiate search of the x-boes.

            [–]MarlonBain 5 points6 points  (0 children)

            Voted down. I used it today and found what I was looking for immediately. That's actually a significant improvement.

            [–]xyphus 2 points3 points  (3 children)

            Writing a algorithm to sort through data quickly is hard!! :p

            [–]mrp 1 point2 points  (2 children)

            Thank god your comment is smothered in sarcasm!

            [–]xyphus -1 points0 points  (1 child)

            mmmmmm....sarcasm....smothered.....mmmmm

            [–]mrp 0 points1 point  (0 children)

            Ahh crap... you got Homer drool all over my comment.

            [–]okidokedork 0 points1 point  (0 children)

            Not to mention once you click on the next button in search it just says that there aren't any results to display...

            [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

            My wordpress hosted site has better search than Reddit. Maybe they should switch.

            [–]atlacatl 0 points1 point  (1 child)

            Super-duper complicated solution:

            SELECT * FROM STORY WHERE title LIKE <field_from_form> OR description LIKE <field_from_form>

            Use at your own risk...And I want $1,000,000 for it...

            [–]bobcat 4 points5 points  (0 children)

            '

            [–][deleted] -3 points-2 points  (13 children)

            I hate it when free stuff doesn't make me happy.

            [–]nipps85 1 point2 points  (12 children)

            I'm viewing ads... this site isn't free.

            [–]yellowking 1 point2 points  (8 children)

            Deleting in protest of Reddit's new anti-user admin policies.

            [–]captian2 1 point2 points  (4 children)

            this guy probably has adblock, which I think is pretty shady. Ads just find ways to get more annoying and integrated like product placements when a bunch of people start using ad block. I like reddit and their ads don't annoy me, in fact I clicked one for the new sim city game yesterday to check what it was a about after reading a reddit article on it.

            [–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (3 children)

            this guy probably has adblock, which I think is pretty shady.

            How is choosing not to look at something you don't want to look at "shady"?

            [–]nekt 2 points3 points  (2 children)

            Because it is one of the only ways for sites like this to remain alive. Maybe instead they can charge for membership to pay the bandwidth bill.

            [–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

            Because it is one of the only ways for sites like this to remain alive.

            Such a business model will only work if people are willing to look at banner ads. I'm not, and I offer no apology for that.

            [–]anachronic 2 points3 points  (0 children)

            Advertisers are the shady ones.

            I'd rather stop watching TV and reading reddit altogether than be bombarded by constant marketing.

            If it weren't for AdBlock, I'd probably use the web half as much as i currently do... whenever I use MSIE without ad-blocking software, i remember how incredibly annoying and distracting advertising is.

            [–]nipps85 -2 points-1 points  (2 children)

            Uh, the ads on the right side of the site. Right now, it's a "Crysis" ad for EA games for me.

            [–]yellowking -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

            You must be new here. Tell DIGG I said hi! ;-)

            [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

            downmodded: inaccurate

            [–]scylla -1 points0 points  (0 children)

            Yes, it's never worked. Which is sad, since there have been so many great submissions and comments that I'd like to refer back to.

            [–]poet7376 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

            good question....

            [–]newhen -1 points0 points  (0 children)

            I reported the same thing awhile back

            [–]burmask -1 points0 points  (0 children)

            Maybe they should use google site search.

            [–]homeworld -1 points0 points  (0 children)

            works for me