How often do you use the "user search"?

[Laura F.]

I'm close to turning on the next generation of the search functionality in the forums which (I think) has an improved interface for searching and filtering messages.  However, the user search interface isn't so great. However, I don't know how much user search is actually used by people other than me. I just want to get some quick feedback on if you use the user search and if so, why you use it.

Thanks!

Laura
Web Support & Operations
National Instruments

[RavensFan]

It is a feature I have only rarely used.

[elset191]

I have very rarely used it as well.  99% of the time anyone I want to search for can be more quickly found on the Kudos leaderboards.

[altenbach]

I use it once in a while. It definitly should not disappear.

Of course I have no idea what "isn't so great" means. 😄 Relative to what?

• Is it worse than the current user search?
• Is it better that the current user search but not as improved as the new forum search?
• Is it just different?
• Are the user search results better, but the interface is harder to use?
• ...?

One thing could be improved. There should be a way to sort partial matches by the number of posts so inactive members don't  clutter the first dozen pages of the search result. For example, if I search for "Dennis", I want him on top of that huge list. (many, many pages!)

If I search for "Dennis K" I still want partial matches, but currently there is no result if I do that. (Why does "Dennis" return many matches while "Dennis K" returns nothing (!!?), and "Dennis Knutson" again works????)

[aeastet]

I do not think I have ever used it.

[RayFarmer]

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@altenbach wrote:

........ 

If I search for "Dennis K" I still want partial matches, but currently there is no result if I do that. (Why does "Dennis" return many matches while "Dennis K" returns nothing (!!?), and "Dennis Knutson" again works????)

---

This seem to because the Search uses 'With all the words' which seems to act like an AND function and there isn't aDennis K, where as if placed in the 'With one or more of the word' this acts more like an OR function therefore you get all the K's (K only names) and all the Dennis's.

[Ben]

I use it on average maybe once a month.

In its current form it (as Christian mentioned) less than ideal so what will we loose?

Ben

[smercurio_fc]

I've used it maybe a half-dozen times for the whole time I've been on these forums. 2 of those times was to see how many previous accounts I had...

[Laura F.]

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@altenbach wrote:

I use it once in a while. It definitly should not disappear.

Of course I have no idea what "isn't so great" means. 😄 Relative to what?

• Is it worse than the current user search?
• Is it better that the current user search but not as improved as the new forum search?
• Is it just different?
• Are the user search results better, but the interface is harder to use?
• ...?

One thing could be improved. There should be a way to sort partial matches by the number of posts so inactive members don't  clutter the first dozen pages of the search result. For example, if I search for "Dennis", I want him on top of that huge list. (many, many pages!)

If I search for "Dennis K" I still want partial matches, but currently there is no result if I do that. (Why does "Dennis" return many matches while "Dennis K" returns nothing (!!?), and "Dennis Knutson" again works????)

---

To answer your questions as best I can, the new user search is just different. The way that it presents information is different (you can check out Lithium's community to see what I mean). When I do a search, the user I expect to show up first does not necessarily show up first - in that way, it's about the same as your Dennis example. I think the current search works better for me because as an Admin I get the ability to search more fields. 

On the plus side, you get the option to sort the user results by Login name (alphabetically), rank, posts, or registration date, all which could help you with finding Dennis.

So to summarize, I think the actual results will be similar with some added sort functionality. The user interface is very different, in more of a grid view as opposed to a list.   I don't know that I would classify it as better or worse.  That's a great wishy-washy answer, right?

Thanks,

Laura

[TCPlomp]

I use the user search on a regular basis via the RSS-interface, I follow a bunch of people (tst, ben, altenbach, myself, colleagues) in one RSS-folder.

Whenever I see more than one person posting the same thread I'll read (and learn). Hopefully that doesn't go extint.

Ton