We have now been running our discourse installation for over four years. During that time a lot of cool stuff and good memories were born, including a nickname or two, in-jokes and partially a lingo of our own.
Four years is quite a long time, so it’s inevitable that at some point we’ve set off on a road trip down the memory lane, trying to figure out some of the exact dates stuff was born to have some context, you get the gist of it.
I’ve now bumped into some issues regarding the search, first of which is the fact that you simply can’t search deleted posts. Since you can’t completely destroy deleted posts, why can’t we search them either? I would imagine this type of limbo is exactly the opposite of what little benefits hiding posts would have.
That however, I can live with because I like the idea that there are discourse instances out there that are swelling up with flagged old post gold just waiting to be discovered by future civilizations or sentient, rubbernecking extraterrestrial lifeforms.
Also, trying to find the first occurrence of something seems to fail miserably every time I try it, and looking for context using the date limits apparently has some hidden logic that I’m unaware of, making post dates irrelevant.
The sorting options all feel like they just randomize in different ways how the same, probably unwanted results are shown. The one option that is missing, is to sort the hits by actual post date.
The advanced search feels like flying in “No Man’s Land”, you get all sorts of buttons you can press that gives you the illusion of you doing the flying at first, but in the end just emphasize the feeling of wrestling a railroaded automation which does get you where you want to go.
Now it’s important to say that the fuzziness of Discourses’ search is insanely good. Throwing around a few incomplete words slightly, or even possibly related to each other, and you get what you want within the first five hits? Almost like magic.
So, I guess, my question is, how would I be able to find actual, first occurrence of a word in a discourse forum?
希望我能就此阐明一些情况。
