INDEX TO 00 LOCO MODELLING/CONVERSIONS

[richard]

The website-wide search facility also includes the forums (although it might not have the latest and greatest posts):

http://www.lner.info/search/search.shtml

It is powered by Google so it supports all the Google functions, operators, etc.


Richard

[Atlantic 3279]

I find there's a recurrent snag with that Richard. All LNER loco class designations are a single letter followed by a number. Every time I try, the search engine refuses to look for such small, simple search "words". Am I not applying enough knowledge and intelligence to my loco-class searches?

[Kestrel]

Why don't you go straight to:

http://www.lner.info/locos/locos.shtml

[jwealleans]

Have you read this thread from the beginning?

[Atlantic 3279]

Correction to, and clarification of, my preceding post:

If searching for a discussion relating to say "A3", I was finding that if I use the search facility as it appears within the forums, the term "A3" is ignored as being too insignificant and / or common. Certainly, if you use an actual search from Google's own page, and incorporate "A3" into a phrase such as "LNER A3 locomotive" then you get lots of useful web-wide search results, usually headed by some items on this site. BUT, we enthusiasts often write only "A3", since we know in context what we are referring to. The Google search for "LNER A3 locomotive" is not likely to display an isolated reference to "A3" only as one of its top results, if it finds it at all, so this may not for instance find you a highly relevant model conversion article unless its author took the trouble to specifically insert the full phrase "LNER A3 locomotive",

I now see that the search facility accessed via this site's home page, (which I rarely visit as I have no need, always going straight in to the forums) which seems to be the one listed above by Richard, WILL do a search for say "A3" alone, but as that does not then generate results that focus primarily on the forums, it is still for me not the ideal way to quickly find a modelling article.

On that basis, might an index of conversion articles, and maybe other indices of particular types of article be preferable? It might save us having to guess which terms to include in a search in order to find what we want.

[S.A.C. Martin]

Or perhaps - thinking aloud - if Richard likes the idea, perhaps for each locomotive entry on the encyclopedia, you could have a section at the bottom "modelling" which links back to relevant threads and posts on this forum.

E.G. on the B2 entry, at the bottom a link to Graeme's build with a brief description and a picture of what it entails.

[2002EarlMarischal]

Gentlemen I feel that we are right "on the same page". The fact is that there is so much excellent material on this forum, and especially detail available to modellers, that it has reached the stage where we need a modeller's index to help both existing and new members find material based on locomotive class.

Despite, I hope a logical mind and some modicum of intelligence(!), I have embarassed myself and tried the patience of other members by asking questions which have already been answered thoroughly in the past, even as recently as in the last year, but the pertinent thread has already slipped back several pages in the listing, and as so capabably put above, the search facility does not help.

This is in no way a negative criticism, rather a measure of the great success of this forum!

[richard]

I understand that there might be a search problem but there's a lot of work involved in both potential solutions:

First, yes I am a software developer, but I did not develop the forum software. "phpBB" is a popular open source package. I don't have the time to modify the search in it. Even if I did, it would lead to a maintenance headache (already a problem due to some of the extensions I've installed).

Second, going through and adding links to each and every loco page is a huge job. I considered "revamping" the loco pages a few years ago (basically bring them to the same standard, especially the older ones) and I think I only did two or three pages before stalling (in theory I'm still doing it...). Manually indexing the forums is a huge job. Adding new links as new threads are written is a huge job - bigger than, say, keeping up with new model releases and preservation activities.

The entire site is already automatically indexed on a weekly basis. This is used to feed Google, so the Google search should be as up to date as we can reasonable expect.

I actually have a license for a different web search system which I use on a couple of my commercial sites (where no third party advertising is a benefit!). I am unsure if this would be an improvement or not. I could implement this fairly easy, but at the moment, the indexing has to be performed manually and has to be done locally - not online. I would have to investigate a way of automating it - and there might be weeks it doesn't run (eg. I'm away, the PC is being used for something else, etc).

[richard]

I've updated the forum search so that it should work with words of 2-14 chars (previously 3-14).
A word is considered "common" and is ignored if it appears in more than 5% of all posts (no change).

Flood limits remain unchanged (5 secs between searches per user; 1sec between each guest search - all guests).

[Atlantic 3279]

Very kind of you to take the trouble to investigate and address that particular issue Richard. Many thanks.

[S.A.C. Martin]

I'll second that thanks, just tried it and found some very useful topics I wouldn't have done so before.

[richard]

Yes I suddenly thought I should check if there's an option to see if the number of letters can be reduced (the back end of the software could be easier to navigate...).

About an hour or so after making the change I realised I should rebuild the index to include the 2 char letters. I started that over an hour ago, and it is still running. Currently indexing 6-8 posts per second...

The downside is that the new index is going to be quite a bit larger.

And as I type that, the indexing finishes!

Richard

[Horsetan]

None of the links given in the original post work now.

[richard]

That goes back to the forum update back in January. I explained that this would be a side-effect: All deep links would be broken and would need to be updated.