Searching is messed up..

[Basti]

it's hard to detect joking on the internet. especially if you use smileys showing the opposite but whatever... sorry if I somehow offended or insulted you.

[Patterns]

why is everyone so mad about it? it's not like you have to pay for RGM or the admins/mods get paid for running RGM. give them some time. yeah it sucks that there wasn't a response for a few days but as I said the admins etc also have a real life to follow. get over it.

since I never used the search function I have no clue how important that is for you but as I said, I never used it and I never ever had any problems browsing on RGM without it. get over it and relax.

I think people are mad because admins here are unresponsive and don't care for the users as much.

1. They took down the more efficient, cleaner looking forum.

2. They installed a clumsy, buggy, new forum.

3. Despite protests and displeasure, they never did anything to make the forums look cleaner or better.

4. The search doesn't work and they don't reply. The PM doesn't work either. You can't even PM a mod anymore.

I think the clear answer here is that the admin(s) is cheap and doesn't want to pay the bills.

When they took down the PM system, their excuse was that people were starting personal attacks against each other. Then again, people will just start personal attacks against each other in the public forum.

Before, RealGM was super slow and the servers crashed often. It took them years to upgrade the servers.

Now the search doesn't even work and they haven't replied.

The only logical explanation is that they want to milk the ads and want to pay less bandwidth bills.

[The Flying Gent]

According to this site:

http://directory.sootle.com/website-wor ... lgm.com%2F

RealGM is worth over a million bucks. They be some pretty stingy and assholelish admins if that's true.

[Sleepy]

you can replace the realgm search function reasonably well with google. Try <searchterm> site:www.realgm.com and it'll give you at least something.

[TrueBullFan]

you can replace the realgm search function reasonably well with google. Try <searchterm> site:www.realgm.com and it'll give you at least something.

i really just want to see my recent posts so i can reply back to people. The actually search feature has never worked.

[Howard Mass]

We know it's been rough guys but hang in there.

We hope to be able to permanently fix this in the near future.

[southnc]

Glad to hear this news. However, I think everyone would find your statement more believable if you gave us a date for when you expect this to be resolved.

[Patterns]

Glad to hear this news. However, I think everyone would find your statement more believable if you gave us a date for when you expect this to be resolved.

Agreed. I don't know how it could take several months to bring the search back up.

[The Flying Gent]

Nice, thanks for the update.

[TrueBullFan]

At least you could do is tell us what the hold up is?

[dreamcloud]

Any new updates?

[The Flying Gent]

Could you let us know what the problem is? To me this seems like a situation that could be fixed with the flip of a on/off switch.

[pballa]

terrible.

hope this gets fixed soon but i doubt it

[Blame Rasho]

I works for me once a blue moon...

[southnc]

We know it's been rough guys but hang in there.

We hope to be able to permanently fix this in the near future.

Well, its been nearly a month since you made this statement. Can we get a better idea of what "near future" actually is?

TIA!

[True Warrior Zo]

I'd also like to have the search function back:

1. I also used it as a faster to way to respond to poeple who responded to my posts. It was a great way to keep track of threads I posted in

2. There are certain posters that I enjoy reading, and I used the post to see if they had posted anything insightful. I have been reading RealGM since 2005 and even before I signed up I was still able to use the search function.

~Off topic, but I would also like the box back in teh bottom right corner of the page that let you type in teh page number you wanted to go to. Reading the Raptors forum can be a pain when a thread is over 50 pages and you stopped reading at 20. I don't think that would be too much trouble.

[Guy Smiley]

Me complain again. No worky.

[Double Helix]

I have to admit I'm a little surprised. I've been online since the sportstalk days and consider much of the conversations we've had over the years to be INVALUABLE. It will be a real tragedy if this archival information has somehow been lost, Howard, which is what I'm now beginning to fear might be the case. I understand the idea (in theory at least and from a financial perspective) that maintaining internet archives for more than half a decade might not be viable but if this is a situation where RealGM is trying to quantify its importance to the average user... Well, then I implore you to what you can to keep as many years worth of old posts available and searchable as you possibly can afford given your budget.

Howard, please don't let this relatively small thread in any way convince you that this isn't an important feature to the community. Many of the long-time posters (the ones that actually click on the ads on occasion) would be much more upset if they realized this feature wasn't coming back than they currently are. Everybody's pretty much given ownership the benefit of the doubt on this one even though it has been a couple months now.

The RealGM archives and the ease with which we used to be able to dig up old threads are HUGE parts of what's made RealGM as popular as it currently is on the internet. Don't kid yourself about new message board stylings, blog entries or wire taps. People come here to talk first and foremost so the very idea that all of those discussions die the minute they fall off the front page might be enough to dramatically reduce the user base.

Other sites with similar message board styles and software have maintained archives. I haven't posted on the Starwars.com message boards since the second prequel but I recently went back to log in and realized that I could still easily find my old posts.

[Double Helix]

A FEW SUGGESTIONS: (if money really is tight and you're trying to figure out a long-term sustainable approach to your message board archives)


- Making the entire archive base available for a limited time and announcing an official expiry date on all threads not active over a certain period of time. You guys make a global announcement that explains that threads that haven't been posted in for a certain amount of time (hopefully 3 or more years) will be deleted after this initial grace period. Obviously, making the entire archive base available could only happen however for a limited time so when it's first made available it's explained globally that for the next 3 months the entire RealGM archive will be available for searching and posting in and that only the best of the best threads will be maintained.

- Announce an official annual archive cleaning maintenance day so that your users are on the same page as management.

- Immediately announce and implement the 3 year rule after the first clean out of old, redundant and low value threads so that everybody knows what's up.

- Deleting old material will be extremely easy with an approach like this because you'll be able to delete from the back part of the catalog and work your way forward until you reach posts from say (January 2005 for example

- Or... think up another variation on the same ideas I just mentioned.

- Approaches like this will allow you to dramatically reduce the amount of low-value or unused threads and bandwidth, especially, will be saved. Best of all, however, the absolute best thought-provoking community discussions can exist for many, many more years to come in a sustainable, community-driven way.

RealGM was built on community and I hope it stays that way.

[Magilla_Gorilla]

Day 79 - No search function


Progress made - 0%


Communications from Admin - 1