To the Moderators: Please see if you can restore the ability to use the advanced search in Google...Please?

Hi, everyone.

 

Well, I think if the moderators take heed of the following, this

forum will once again be a robust site.

 

It used to be, that I could copy the large format link from greenspun

and paste it into the website search in the "advanced search" section

of Google. The result was that google would search through

everything ONLY in the large format forum on greenspun, NOT the

entirety of the greenspun website. This saved tons of time trying to

pinpoint answers in a sea of questions. It also helped avoid having

to ask the same question over and over and getting the response "this

question's already been asked" over and over.

 

As it stands now, just before you post, photo.net asks you to submit

a query on your question. Well..., all this does is search all of

photo.net. A good example of how this presents a problem is as

follows:

 

I've been interested in hooking up a Canon 540ez flash with my large

format equipment. If I was able to seach on the keyword "540ez" with

just the large format forum itself, my answer would appear quite

quickly as it pertains to the world of large format. The way it is

now, I've got to sift through hundreds of unrelated threads, 99.99

percent of them related to 35mm. And yes, I've also tried typing in

540ez with "large format" and many other types of searches...it just

doesn't cut the mustard. I'm not interested in trying to find my

answer in the pages describing the Canon Rebel G with subsequent

photos and readers' comments (nice camera, but totally not anything

to do with what I'm trying to specifically find out about the 540ez)

 

So....

 

Could the moderators please try either restablishing the ability to

use the advanced search in google to search the large format forum

specifically, or could the submit query box be reprogrammed to search

the large format forum only?

 

Otherwise, this forum will not be as powerful a tool for us as it

used to be.

 

Thanks,

 

Pete.

What were you pasting into the Domain field of the google Advanced Search box to restrict it to just the LF forum on LUSENET? Can you illustrate the exact string? I know the LF forum is no longer up on LUSENET, but if you can't remember it, perhaps you could illustrate with one of the other forums, such as Legend of Zelda?

Of course, you can no longer do it anymore on greenspun, but used to do exactly the same with google to search the LF archives - worked like a charm!

Tim, Peter, I quite believe you. I'm just wondering what you were typing into the Google advanced search box. I tried it on a couple of the other forums on LUSENET that are still running, and it didn't work. If you I could see it working, I might be able to figure out how to get it to work on the LF forum here.

Brian, we would enter the search phrase we were looking for, ie. 540EZ into the "with all words" field and then in the Domain field enter "greenspun.com". Or at least that is how I always did it. It worked so well, I think, because there were relatively few photo terms to sort through so odds of success were high. There just wasn't enough common terminology b/n the LF board and the other photo boards to really provide bad results.

<P>

Peter, FWIW, I've done what you are trying to do with the 550EX. It didn't work well for me. I mean, I got the cables I needed to make it work (I called Jeff at Badger, told him what I was trying to do, and he sent them to me), but the output was so low I needed multiple, multiple pops and I never did get things working well. <A HREF="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0035M2">Here</a> is a link to my thread about it.

<P>

-Jen

Are you sure you were searching JUST the LF forum; it seems like you were actually searching Leica, Marin Urology, and all the other LUSENET forums as well; it's just that you were more likely to get a LF hit since most of the other forums weren't photo-related or very big.

Big egg on my face! (but still a good idea).

 

You guys are right, my memory is more glorious than reality. I DID used to just put in greenspun.com, and then I was able to snatch up the relevant information. For whatever reason, you can't search more selective links within a domain.

 

I wonder why you can't search a subsection of a domain? It would make this forum much more powerful. In fact, if photonet did that for all of there forums, they'd really take another step ahead of the pack.

 

A quite subdued,

 

Pete.

I think the way I did it was to put the greenspun.com in the domain,

 

put my search words in "all of the words" and put "large format" in the exact phrase. This cut out 99.9% of posts from other lists unless they laso had the same phrase I was looking for and mentioned LF as well.

 

tim

When the L f forum and LF page will be both at the

domain largeformatphotography.info, you will be able to

do a combined search of the LF Forum archives (and those

archives only) and LF page

using Google. A big convenience indeed. At this point,

it is preferable not to ask Brian to do specific work for us,

since its likely that the LF Forum will be on photo.net only

temporarily.

Gosh, Tuan, I thought when the guys had it ready, you were going to ask people to vote. Has it already been decided?

Brian, I chose my wordings carefully: what has been decided is

to set-up the new site. Whether this will be the final home is

eventually the decision of the community, but my belief is that

it is likely.

The Google search is better than the local search, so things can get better. It might be me not beeing smart enough, but I really miss an advanced search. Before my post on centerfilter for pinhole:

 

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=003V3S

I did search, and could not sort the importance of various discussions.

 

The problem as I see it is that the fewer words, the better search result, and I wan't it the opposite. The "Nikon F90s review" is not interesting when I search for "pinhole center filter camera selfmade"