Don't Waste Time on Fedora Mailing List Archive Searches - Search Engine Broken

[Mark Weaver]

David Curry wrote:
> Mark Weaver wrote:
> 
>> David Curry wrote:
>>
>>> Matt Florido wrote:
>>>
>>>> David Curry wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Subject thread says it all.
>>>>> The basis for my assertion is many experiences trying to find 
>>>>> information in fedora archives.  Today, I made notes of steps in 
>>>>> trying to find information in   fedora-config-list archives and 
>>>>> conducting quite a few searches for messages dealing with pup.  I 
>>>>> asked for searches on all sections, on keywords, on title, and on 
>>>>> body.  I asked for searches of the entire archive and for searches 
>>>>> on a couple of individual months.  In every case the result was the 
>>>>> same - 0 hits.  I searched on pup + yum and again 0 hits on pup 
>>>>> with a few hits on yum.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> [...]
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> The Red Hat archive search engine is broken, broken, broken.
>>>>>
>>>> I've experienced something similar, but it's not broken.  Try the 
>>>> extended search or just entering your search query again after it 
>>>> returns the initial 0 found.
>>>>
>>>> Works for me.
>>>>
>>>> I found ~2000 hits for fedora-config-list.
>>>>
>>> Thanks for the feedback, Matt.  With extended search I got 25 hits, 
>>> all of which were not relevant to yum or updating packages.  One was 
>>> a reference to experiences "as a young pup", eniac, altair, etc., 
>>> several pointed to messages concerning a book entitled "Practical 
>>> Unix Programming" and the rest contained references to "pup up the 
>>> volume".  Entering the search query again after an initial return of 
>>> 0 found, returned 0 -- again, and again, and again.
>>>
>>> If Fedora archive searches work for you (sometimes) and for Rahul, 
>>> but not for me then they are not completely broken -- just random, 
>>> blatantly unreliable events.
>>
>>
>>
>> but doesn't the mere fact that you had to go through specific "extra" 
>> steps to work around the primary search function mean that it is 
>> indeed broken on some level? broken == doesn't work according to 
>> initial design.
>>
> No quarrel here, Mark!  Even the specific "extra" steps were total time 
> wasters for me. Referring anyone directly to the list archive instead of 
> to the archive through an alternative search engine (or engines) such as 
> Google is likely a disservice.
> 

heh! obviously they're not using Swish-e, or if they are its definitely 
not indexing the archives correctly.

-- 
Mark
-----------------------------------------------------------
Paid for by Penguins against modern appliances(R)
Linux User Since 1996
Powered by Mandrake Linux 8.2 & RH Fedora Core 3
ICQ# 27816299