Search misses despite correct keyword, also tagging questions
Wednesday, February 24, 2016 - 03:01
I wanted to search for my own art, to update it. I used the search because I thought that might be the quickest way to get there.
It's this: http://opengameart.org/content/double-axe-povray-scene-file
I first searched for "double axe", and I got no results.
The I searched for "axe" and got a lot of results, but not mine.
Something is broken in the search.
Edit: Should one use tags in plural form "weapons" and "tools" or singular "weapon" and "tool" in this case?
Edit 2: If I add more tags, the "save" button often doesn't work ... sometimes it does. I couldn't find out yet what makes the difference.
The search for "double axe" still yields no results.
The problem that most of the time the "save" button is inactive after adding new tags to existing art is very annoying. I'm trying to improve tagging for my old works, and this way, it's quite a waste of time.
hmm... If i read the date right, that's a fairly recent post. There was an issue not too long ago where search stopped returning results past a certain date. Something about new records not being indexed correctly. I wonder if that's happened again. :(
https://withthelove.itch.io/
Yes, the search had problems in the past, that's why I reported this. I assume it doesn't affect only my work, but others, too.
Searching for "aircraft" doesn't find this one either:
http://opengameart.org/content/retro-futuristic-aircraft-povray-scene-file
If the search uses a search engine, I'd say, the search indexer isn't running anymore.
yeah, I think that's pretty much it. Hopefully it gets fixed sooner than it did last time :(
https://withthelove.itch.io/
Personally, I consider the search broken and the site barely usable until the solr search is back up...
browsing and tag listing works quite nicely though
I've done some more searches, and it seems the search index was not updated since mid of December. Art that I've submitted in October can be found.
If this is right, all art that was submitted over the last 10 or 12 weeks, maybe more, cannot be found through searching for keywords that are contained in the title.
Even if parts of the site are functional, I consider the search very important - if I look for art, I use the search and if I find nothing, I let it be, becuase I assume that there is nothing more. I'm not sure, but I'd assume that particularly new people who find this site, rely on the search and give up if they don't find any matches.
Again? Dang it all.
I haven't been on the IRC much but I'll try and poke Bart about it.
I didn't check the dates, but I half way wonder if the indexing process isn't actively running, and so what we have is just indexes up to the last time bart pressed the emergency 'rebuild search indexes' button.
Way to check would be to compare date on the forum post where he announced he'd done that w/ the cut off for searches.
https://withthelove.itch.io/
OpenGameArt is notorious in the indie web world for having absolutely crap searching features.
I do not know what the indie web world might be, but they should spend more time and browse through all the art. That is, if they value their work.
Even if search worked, you would be relying on words, titles and tags, not the actual content.
While I agree there's something to be said for taking your time and browsing the site, at the same time, I don't think it's a stretch to say that an archive needs a functional search tool to be truly useful.
Any word on getting this fixed? I just don't want to see it go months like it did last time :)
https://withthelove.itch.io/
By indie web world I mean a few sites and small game making companies (people use the word "indie" to describe the independent game makers, i.e not controlled by huge companies.). People know that the search is bad, but still they really look for it and that's good because they find other art to use in their games while they're searching.
Are there news about the search? "Double Axe" still finds nothing. Same for "urns" which I had expected to bring up this:
http://opengameart.org/content/two-urns-or-amphoras-povray-scene-file
Edit 2: If I add more tags, the "save" button often doesn't work ... sometimes it does. I couldn't find out yet what makes the difference.
Interesting. The problem occurs with Firefox on Windows, but not with Firefox on Linux.
@Varkalandar: Could it just be a temporal thing? I have noticed that 'save' can take some time, even with posts. And it'll even time out on rare occsasions. Never quite sure if it's my internet connection flaking out or the OGA server taking a pass.
https://withthelove.itch.io/
I haven't found out a pattern yet. On Linux adding new tags it worked every time so far, on Windows often not. I think it works better if I choose a tag from the drop down list, but if I type it, the save button seems to stay inactive.
Since I have a solution that works for me, using Linux, my biggest interest of a bugfix is to get the search index updated again. The tag inpute can wait.
I've seen that you offered help with site development. I hope they will accept it, since the site clearly suffers, and more admin power will help.
I have always found the search tool to be near useless. I just use Google instead, putting opengameart in the search query.
Stay a while and listen.
Is there any hope for on-site search to be repaired?
If not, is it possible to provide a google based search by a link, that only searches this site, like Arcanorum uses to do?
I keep discovering a lot of good art, but rather randomly.
I have got the same problem. I am an elite programmer so I even offered to help the admins fix the website of the problem you have posted, in return for site link or something but so far have not had a response.
Same problem. Searching for "calm bgm", for example, returns no results, yet searching for "calm" returns "calm bgm" as one of the results - what!?
Well, I think there are two problems:
One problem is a general issue with the search. It's not that great at finding things. Taking my own meager contribution as an example, searching for 'instant dungeon' turns up nothing. Searching for 'dungeon' does turn up the work, and searching for "Instant Dungeon" (with the quotes) returns an endless list of surt's Ikaros submission, I guess because I mentioned Instant Dungeon! in a comment??
Anyways, this is a general issue, and bart was working on a newer search engine that seemed to work much better, so there's hope on this front.
A second, acute problem is that the search cache/database doesn't appear to be updating anymore.
If I search 'dungeon' and sort by date the first result is from Jan 16, 2016. Similarly, if I search 'Town' the most recent result is dated Jan 17, 2016. Search 'tiles' and the most recent result is Jan 16, 2016. Even though, in all three cases there are many newer submissions that should match that search query (admittedly, given problem one, it can sometimes be hard to say for sure what 'should' return in a search).
This problem has occured before, and Bart did eventually fix it. IIRC, he said he did so by pushing a giant 'UPDATE SEARCH DATABASE' button somewhere in the admin pages for the site. My guess is that that was only a temporary fix, it updated the search database with all the submissions up until that moment, but whatever process is supposed to continuously update the database with new submissions is either not working correctly or not running at all anymore. Of course, I don't really know anything about the software that runs this site, so that's really strictly a guess.
Sadly, last time it took months to get the issue addressed and here we are again, this thread is already four months old :(
I really wish there was something I, or anyone else, could do to help with the admin of the site. It seems like the community is doing a great job keeping the submissions going and the mods are still doing there best to handle the licensing issues, etc. but there doesn't seem to be anyone who can handle the site administration (and development, see my seperate post about updating the faqs/guidelines, etc) except bart and he appears to be busy with other responsibilities for now.
https://withthelove.itch.io/