| Silkie |
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| 21/05/2008 21:21 |
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Show all user's posts
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Is it possible to find more than my most recent 200 posts?
I'd like to find a very old thread of mine but the google search has been unable to find it despite having a very unusual word (spelve) in both the title and text. Searching for my own posts only brings 200 of them.
Is there a solution?
| BrendanS |
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| 21/05/2008 21:27 |
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Re: Show all user's posts
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This one?
http://www.ybw.com/forums/showflat.php?Number=515566&page=0
| Silkie |
| (regular) |
| 21/05/2008 21:35 |
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Re: Show all user's posts
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Amazing! I was just coming back to say I'd figured it out and you've already got it - in six minutes.
I remembered that the post I was actually looking for was by a forumite with a low post count and searched for all his posts. How did you do it?
| BrendanS |
| (regular) |
| 21/05/2008 21:52 |
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Re: Show all user's posts
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Google is very bad at older posts. So I tried a Google search myself to verify it wasn't there, using site:www.ybw.com spelve. Nothing useful appeared, so tried Dogpile, and also nothing useful (I think Silkie and spelve as search terms), and nothing useful, so then tried Altavista, with search terms spelve silkie ybw, which produced this
http://www.altavista.com/web/results?itag=ody&q=spelve+silkie+ybw&kgs=1&kls=0
Took just over a minute in total
More seriously, if you are having problems with finding something with very unusual search terms, and getting no results, give up instantly, and try another search engine, as they all have different algorithms, and you stand more chance of success than persevering with the original search engine.
| Silkie |
| (regular) |
| 21/05/2008 22:17 |
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Re: Show all user's posts
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That's a useful search engine. In the Courtesy Flags thread that it also finds, Sgeir mentions Loch Spelve in his TIC post and I post later. I'm a bit blinkered by google I guess.
Interesting that even although my username was different at the time of the Loch Spelve enquiry it has clearly been able to refine the search with "silkie" since if you just enter "spelve ybw" you get the thread I was looking for, another thread (bit of a favourite Patrick?
) and a page from Webcraft's Atlantic blog where he mentions Loch Spelve and the YBW forums.http://www.altavista.com/web/results?itag=ody&q=spelve+ybw&kgs=1&kls=0
| BrendanS |
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| 21/05/2008 22:25 |
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Re: Show all user's posts
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If you put the search term, search engines, into a search engine, you will get a variety of engines to use.
Altavista
Some of them actually do their own crawling and compiling search results, others compile results from other search engines, but all of them tend to bring up different results, so well worth experimenting if you are having difficulty finding something.
Unless I'm really struggling, I tend to give up on a search engine or search terms, if I can't find what I want in first page, or first few pages if I know it's a difficult search. Very difficult to explain, as it's more of an art than a science.