General TF "Search" question

[ScottC]

I've been away from TF for some time and would like to browse some of the older threads to see what I missed.


If I click on "New Posts", I only get about 9 pages of threads. This takes me back in time about 10 days. Does anyone know if there is a way to go back ~3 months?


I don't seem to be able to trick "Advanced Search" engine into doing this. It only wants to provide results if one -- um -- knows what one is looking for...


Any thoughts or search tricks would be appreciated!

 

[SteveK]

In advanced search did you change from any date and newer to 3 months

 

[ScottC]

In advanced search did you change from any date and newer to 3 months

Yes. Tried that, but it won't execute the search without a search term (word/s or User Name). Tried blank and asterisk too. No luck.

 

[High Wire]

Use any single unique word that might be in the post you are looking for. The search will go back years. Use a keyword like “ like”. That will turn up just about everything.

 

[ScottC]

Use any single unique word that might be in the post you are looking for. The search will go back years.

Thanks, but the trouble is, I'm not looking for "A post". I am looking for ALL threads. If I try this strategy with the search criterion "a" or "the", which must appear in just about everything, the search engine tells me the search criterion is too short or too common. I guess they don't want the computers to work too hard ;-)

 

[SteveK]

I played with it and found that it is restricted to the most recent 500 posts. Then I chose must have at least 25 replies and a search for 'tach' went back to 2008.
Guess you have to use the number of replies to shoot past the most recent 500 with less replies. But you need a search word or phrase, *.* not accepted.
Tells me the data is there but you need to know what to search for.

 

[ScottC]

I played with it and found that it is restricted to the most recent 500 posts. Then I chose must have at least 25 replies and a search for 'tach' went back to 2008.
Guess you have to use the number of replies to shoot past the most recent 500 with less replies. But you need a search word or phrase, *.* not accepted.
Tells me the data is there but you need to know what to search for.

Thanks, Soo. Close, but still not what I'm wishing for. I'm sure what I want is not readily available because it is a means of managing server load. But, perhaps a moderator will jump in here, have pity on me, and share a trick none of us have thought to try yet.

 

[SteveK]

https://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=253432

 

[ScottC]

https://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=253432

Thanks! I've never run across that article before.

 

[High Wire]

I searched for “boat” and it returned 500 threads going back to November 1.

 

[Bacchus]

Scott
Good question that I don't know if it's even possible with TF search.
One work around that might help is using Google
When I entered "date=2018 site:trawlerforum.com" I get a list of threads with that date that you can scan through. The only weakness is it also picks up join dates that match but they do show up in the listing and you can simply ignore those. That also lets you scan the titles and only open ones that look interesting to you. Maybe do that one year at a time? If I think of anything else I'll post again.
Hope that helps

 

[ScottC]

If I think of anything else I'll post again.
Hope that helps

Thanks, Bacchus! This looks very useful. It put me on to a bit of experimentation and it seems if I tweak your suggested strategy with a complete date (for example, 10-03-2021 site:trawlerforum.com), I can step through the ~three months I missed one day at a time. Not too unthinkable, in my opinion. It brings back ~15-25 posts per day, which seems, perhaps, a bit light...but this is still pretty good! Should keep me busy from now to Christmas ;-)

 

[Janet H]

The TF search is a keyword search only. You can use the advanced search to search for posts OR thread titles and username. Some terms are too common to be useful (like "boat")

As noted earlier using google can be a better way to drilldown. Check out the link in my signature for some help and look past the ad results at the top