Some of us do alot of searches, either 0 hits or 1,000 hits for things that don't apply to what we were seaching for. One of the problems with almost every seach engine is that if something is just mentioned in passing and does not actually apply to the topic it is still there and the post returns in a search.
Grandma's house for gifts.
Now I wonder how many people will find this site doing a google for "nice gifts to take to grandma's house" for christmas this year ?
This post will probably shows up in a list of 3000 hits for people who want nothing to do with power.
Titles don't mean alot. Post a question or results for one thing and often the post gets into something else, as intended but not titled.
"I built a 5k wind gennie and it works" for a title and then the post gets off into "it put's out 48V how do I get it down to 6V?" All the answers may be there but the title don't show it and in 300 hits for a search it may not be read by those of us doing the search. I know my answers are here somewhere when I am asking question, but I rarely find them with a search though I do try.
Some of us are search illiterate, see above also. We simple cannot think of the correct way to do a search to get the results we look want. For example I was searching for something the other day, I KNEW I had posted something on the topic MYSELF already in the past. Could I find my own post?? NO!!
I did finnally find MY post and the answer I wanted was in the same group of posts, above or below mine somewhere. I found mine only because I knew it had been less than 3 weeks since I read and posted in that subject and went back 20 pages of postings at a time till I found
Some of us are not too smart, see above! Right after that I realized I could have just viewed the "Your Comments" to find the post I had made!
Sometimes seaches just don't work!
While searching for something I know has been posted on 100 times I kept getting 0 hits, Finnaly I got 1 hit, that hit one of the dans suggested seaching frequently asked questions for (Whatever it was). I did that, 0 zip, nada. No hits at all!
I too hate seeing the same old basic questions at times, I hate asking those questions myself even more!
The suggestions of bookmarking specail posts is a good one, something I just started doing myself a few days/week ago. Have a specail folder of bookmarks for other power only stuff. Still, it doesn't help unless the person as seen the post at least once already though.
If the forum software gets changed to something else at anytime, I would like to suggest looking at pcabusers.com or videohelp.com and see what they use. I am not complaining, but this is the hardest forum to use of all those I been on. Replies are the worst. All other forums seem to have all the posts in a message group in a row when you click to reply. Simply scroll to the message you want to quote or re-read and it's there. Here you only get the one specific message you clicked to post or replie, so if you have 2 or 3 things to say regarding several posts it's harder to do. If I want to quote 2 people I have to make 2 posts. Or did I missed something??
Love the forum and not complaining, just suggesting. I don't know what the other 2 forums I mentioned use for software, both are different, but it seems both are very easy to use.