Moderator, please don't waste valuable knowledge that's brought into the forum....

[Angélique]

Hi Boat Design Net Moderator,

Please don't waste valuable knowledge that's brought into the forum....

Richard / Apex1 has brought a lot of valuable knowledge into this forum. When I try to find it back I see the search options to find his posts are disabled.

For example for ‘‘this post’’ I looked at the ‘‘Barnacle Prevention’’ thread and went to the ‘‘Who Posted?’’ option.

One can click there on the number of the posts of each poster and gets a list of the posts of that poster in that thread. Which is a very useful option if one is looking for posts of members who are known for their valuable contributions to this forum.

But Apex1 his name and his number of posts there are not clickable so this function can't be used for his posts.

Please reopen all search functions for Apex1 posts, including the above and ‘‘Find all posts by Apex1’’ and ‘‘Find all threads started by Apex1’’ and this ‘‘Forums Search’’ option for ‘‘Search by Key Words + (Apex1) User Name’’ and make his name all over the forum clickable again so it will lead to these functions.

Remember there's a lot of valuable information in his posts which was posted to help the other members of this forum. Please don't stand in the way of that by blocking the search functions.

Thanks,
Angélique

[Boat Design Net Moderator]

Thank you for your suggestion Angélique.

Unfortunately, this specific user was permanently deleted 6 months ago. When a user is permanently deleted, the username no longer exists in the user database and the user-functions are no longer possible for that specific username.

All of the information in the posts is still searchable by a keyword search, but not by a username search. Hopefully this will still turn up all the good and valuable information posted.

The google search is also often more useful when searching for ideas rather than specific keywords as it has more intelligence to find disconnected key phrases within threads than then simple internal keyword search.

[Angélique]

Thanks for the reply Moderator.

Originally Posted by Boat Design Net Moderator

Unfortunately, this specific user was permanently deleted 6 months ago. When a user is permanently deleted, the username no longer exists in the user database and the user-functions are no longer possible for that specific username.

What I get from that is that when the username is put back in the user database then the search functions for that user's posts are restored . . ? ?

All of the information in the posts is still searchable by a keyword search, but not by a username search. Hopefully this will still turn up all the good and valuable information posted.

Yes it's available but less findable. When looking for information posted by a specific user then the information searched for will drown in the large amount of found results in a general search.

The google search is also often more useful when searching for ideas rather than specific keywords as it has more intelligence to find disconnected key phrases within threads than then simple internal keyword search.

Yes, when seeking general information about a subject the Google search is indeed the better option. But when looking for information posted by a specific user then the search options mentioned in post #1 will lead directly to the posts searched for and therefore are the best option for this objective.

So the request is to put the username back in the user database to restore the specific search options for his posts.

If the only purpose is to prevent posting you can block this function and don't hurt other members and visitors by limited search options.

I'm sure legally you can do what you did. But morally seen I think you have the obligation to keep the here posted information available* in the best possible way which includes the use of all search options.

* as this was the reason for posting and what this forum is all about.

So the request still stands, please reconsider...

Thanks,
Angélique

[Boat Design Net Moderator]

I understand your desire.

I also realize that the internal search can at times be wanting when searching for specific information and in the case of permanently deleted users the additional tool is not available. However, I believe the combination of the internal search and the google site search will still find all the valuable information being sought in historical posts, and without rehashing or confronting new members with some of the later problematic posts of deleted users as they fought with other users which probably wouldn’t be searched for by keyword or concept.

A future project could be to clean up all undesirable or the off-topic attack-type posts of the few permanently deleted users (whether it was repeatedly calling other members *****, retard, *******, ****, etc.) and then investigate reassociating both deleted user posts and also posts made by guests before registration was required. However, reassociating or associating historical posts with a userid has not been attempted before so I am not sure what complications would arise.

For now, I hope that the combination of the internal keyword search and the google site search will locate the actual information being sought by searching by keyword and google-searching by phrase or concept.

[Angélique]

Moderator, thanks for the reply although I don't agree with the objections against restoring all search options for the valuable information in Richard's / Apex1 posts. But I'm out of arguments to convince . . . . .

Regards,
Angélique

[Boat Design Net Moderator]

I do understand your suggestion Angélique and I do realize that there is room for improvement in the search functions.

However, hopefully a combination of the internal search and the more powerful google site search can locate the valuable information when you're searching for specific information on a given question and without necessarily turning up a deleted user's list of problematic posts where a permanently deleted user has insisted on fighting with other members or calling them *******, ****, retard, or other ****ed terms. (as it's unlikely someone would search for **** or retard or ***** or ******* by keyword so hopefully those problematic components of a permanently deleted user's post history won't be returned by real-world searches looking for specific information.)

It could be a future project to go through all the historical posts and cleanse out all the problematic attack or insult portions of the few users that were permanently deleted and then reindex all the good and valuable portions by new userid so that the additional tool of search by userid is available. I can see how this could also be useful for the older guest posts which are also not linked to userid simply because those people had not registered before posting as it was not required then, so there is no userid associated with many of the older posts.

Hopefully the search will continue to get more powerful and user friendly in the future.