Old Members Missing - Lots of New Members - Please USE SEARCH FEATURE

[CritterHill]

Quote:
I was going to suggest this. I think it is a great idea. Sometimes when you are new to a topic, you are not even sure what to search on...

Being a newbie myself, I promise not to be offended

 

[Nifty-Chicken]

Great discussion everyone and big thanks to PC for starting this up!

A few thoughts:

1. This is HUGE and most important for helping others: Be VERY detailed in your new thread subjects!!! Instead of: “Help, sick chick” post “Help, chick with yellow growth on middle leg.” Try to use up the whole thread subject line with good keywords. This makes search infinitely more powerful and easy to use.
2. When searching, first do a search only in subjects and if you don’t get many results, then do a search in subject and message text.
3. As mentioned, searching is an art, but a skill everyone should seriously develop and practice (not only for this forum, but search skills are becoming more and more important every day).
4. Show results as “posts” and then use the browsers “find” function to search the screen for words to quickly access those parts of the posts within the search results.
5. On the home page of BYC there is a Google search bar that searches the whole site including the forum. Give that a try and play around with it.
6. Don’t be afraid to try advanced search tools:


One of the more powerful features of the search is how to use wildcards. These wildcards make search VERY powerful on a forum, especially one with as many posts as we have here.

"Using an asterisk at the end of your search term will find many variations of the term you seek.

Example: If you enter the Search: child* you'll be returned with information on children, child, childs, etc.

You can also use other "Boolean search operators” like AND, OR, NOT.

Learning how to use the asterix and the AND OR NOT and you'll be able to find pretty much anything you are looking for.

Oh, here are some geek links if you really want to be a search master:
Cool video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vube-ZcJFk4
Reading:
http://www.le.ac.uk/li/sources/subject3/physics/ist/boolean.html
http://photoswest.org/wild-bool.html
Really geeky: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_logic

 

[MissPrissy]

Quote:
I have never had a chicken with a middle leg before. It sounds like that is a bigger problem than the yellow growth.

 

[Buster]

Quote:
I have never had a chicken with a middle leg before. It sounds like that is a bigger problem than the yellow growth.

I was wondering about that myself but didn't want to laugh at Nifty! I would have to wonder if the hatchery was near a nuclear plant.

 

[DuckLady]

We always laugh at Nifty. He likes it.

 

[MissPrissy]

I often try to find a longer thread and post a link to it for repeat questions.

I know one day I wrote the same thing at least 4 times and really got to the point I didn't want to the answer the same question again.

At that point I often do suggest using the search feature.

 

[tnkinhunting]

PC, thank you for starting this thread - without it I would probably still be grumbling under my breath "why don't this site have a search button?"

 

[coopist]

I'm just still chuckling over PC's hypothetical thread "my chicken is making a noise."

 

[PurpleChicken]

Thanks to Nifty, the mods and everyone else, especially the newbies who explained
their perspective on this.

As our community grows we aren't going to know each other so well like we have in
the past. It's important that we continually discuss how to help each other, make this
a better place, and get along.

This post started as a rant but you all made it work.


Last thought: A few of us like to mess around here. For any newbies reading this
it is ok to make a vague topic in order to bait us in.

Examples:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=23030
https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=30533
https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=35243

Had to use the search function to find those

 

[hypnofrogstevie]

Yeah PC is a prankster and sometimes his pranks are usually taken to be serious from the new people.