Searches limited to 500 posts (by name at least)
 

I've gone back a couple of years in this forum and the issues doesn't appear to have been raised before. Forgive me if this ground has already been covered, but here goes:

A week ago, someone contacted me, hoping that I had the backup information on a long post of mine from a few years back, which we both remembered, but neither of us could find using the search function, which was odd.

Then today I was looking for information on a member, whose profile indicated that s/he last posted in March, 2008, but when I ran a name search it came up with exactly 500 hits, ending in November, 2007. So then, I tried the same thing on myself, and it gave me (with the exception of today's activity) my most recent 500 posts. And yet I only used the default date parameters in both cases. (I think.)

So, where I'm about to crack 1,000 posts on NT, does this mean that the first 500 are essentially lost? (And if I was to manifest in my OCD avatar, would I be stymied in an attempt to check out Jo's 12,890 posts for consistency?)

Seriously, the data is still there, because the threads are clearly preserved. But what really concerns me is that when I searched under my name and a couple of key words that had to have been used on a post on spinal cord stimulation - unrestricted as to forum - nothing came up. Almost as though the search routine was only looking for matches among a restricted amount of posts where the name of a forum member was itself a search constraint. And if that's the case, it really should be corrected.

And then why would one person's 500 post allocation start with the present and go back in time, while it appears to be possible to access only the initial 500 posts of someone else?

Any assistance would be appreciated. Thanks.

Mike

This might help.

In the User CP go down to the
Edit Options section then scroll down to Thread Display Options
to the Default Thread Age Cut Off
You may specify a time period from which to display threads. Threads older than the age you specify will not be shown.
Default Thread Age Cut Off: set the drop down to -show all threads


that might be what is limiting your searches.

Thanks Jo. I've had some progress. Specifically, (1) going into Default Age Cut Of and changing and saving the setting to -show all threads, coupled with (2) setting the date range of search my search to "Yesterday and Older" and alternating the descending/ascending display option, increased the total amount of hits to 1,000:

The 500 oldest if I searched in ascending order, and the 500 newest in descending order.

In other words, what I had before when I was stuck at 500, without realizing that the ascending/descending choice had real consequences. Still, I'm limited to recovering 1,000 posts as an outside maximum.

Nor did going into Default Age Cut Of and changing and saving setting to "-show all threads" allow me to access to any posts under my user name and either "SCS" or "S.C.S.," which remains bizarre

For what it's worth.

Mike

I know the search tool requires at least 4 letters - many of our 3 letter medical terms & abbreviations won't work very well.

I searched using your name & stim and got 3 pages of results back to 2006 -same with using spinal cord stim

If you can think of another key word in the posts you might be looking for that might help too.

You can also try Google instead if you're having problem with internal search, or it's not giving you what you need or are looking for.

site:neurotalk.psychcentral.com keyword1 keyword2 etc.

That's a great idea where I'm still playing hide and seek with the one article that got me into this into the first place. (At last a benefit in having our posts popping up online!)

Now if something could just be done that would allow searches of more than 1,000 posts (the 500 oldest & the 500 most recent) of yourself or any other forum member - in addition to 3-character acronyms - we'd be cookin'.

Mike

Mike
just an FYI that some of the defaults are features that are "built in" to the vBulletin format and so not something we necessarily have control over.

More Search Tricks
 

With these three searches, I managed to cover your entire output with a bit of overlap. From my notes:

Advanced Search, User Name fmichael, In Descending Order, gives 500 posts from present back to 11-13-2009.

Advanced Search, User Name fmichael, In Ascending Order, gives 500 posts from 10-08-2006 to 08-04-2009.

Advanced Search, User Name fmichael, Find Posts from A Year Ago and Older, In Descending Order, gives 500 posts from 12-10-2010 back to 05-20-2009.

Of course this would be less useful if you had 14,000 posts to search through. If I can't search on a particular keyword because it's too short or too common, what helps me is figuring out what other words are especially likely to turn up in the post(s) of interest and try searching on those.