Help with searching discussions

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Lisa Frank on July 19, 2009 at 2:23pm

Thank you for the tip, GJ. I tried it but either I'm doing something wrong or there isn't much indexed yet. When you say "only some, of the discussion topics in the groups are being categorized while others are not" are you referring to tag categorization?

Permalink Reply by John Newmark on July 19, 2009 at 4:26pm

That seems to be an actual advantage to the Comment Wall. I had been encouraging people not to use it at all, but it appears the Groups Search only finds comments, and completely ignores the Discussion Forum, as well as the text boxes on the Group's main page.

The tags in a group are only local. That is, if I click on the 'search' tag in this thread, I will find all other posts that use the 'search' tag in the GenealogyWise Member Help group, but not in any other group.

The person who starts the thread creates the tags. The Group Admin can add tags, but is unable to edit the tags the creator of the thread chose. The tags are visible from the group's main page if the Discussion Forum is set to "Detail View".

I'm not sure why so little of the site is being indexed by Google.

Your profile will only show X number of your most recent discussions. You need to click on "view all" to see all of them.

Permalink Reply by John Newmark on July 19, 2009 at 8:42pm

I haven't used any other Ning platforms, so I'm unfamiliar with what they have and don't have.

Permalink Reply by Lisa Frank on July 19, 2009 at 10:03pm

This is a conundrum indeed. I have also encouraged members to use the discussion forums on each group rather than the comments section, which seems more difficult to control. Yet, the fact that discussion postings cannot be searched negates any benefit of posting a discussion rather than a comment. This is something that should be brought to the attention of the site administrators. At the rate this site is growing, if we don't have the ability to search all of the posts (discussions, comments, text, etc.) at will, then we chance running into tremendous duplication of effort, and frustration on the part of administrators and members alike.

I'm surprised there is no way to specify which type of post to search (e.g. enter "type: discussion" along with the search terms). Does anyone know if this is suggested already in one of the groups set up to give the site managers suggestions?

Permalink Reply by Johnny on July 20, 2009 at 3:57pm

Take a look at my post on the confusion with "discussions" and how tags work.

Although not directly related to the searching, hopefully they provide a little help in this area.