If anyone in the forum has the knowhow (and time) this wouldbe a really good time to greatly enhance the capabilities of the site's search engine. I
can't help noticing that at least two of the recent requests and posts in articles wanted have been posted before. It was easier to go to the library
and get the articles again than to find them here. I applaud the efforts made so far but I beg for improvement for all our sakes. A nastygram from
ACS suspending your access can screw up a good day. Sedit - 19-10-2010 at 17:22
I think alot of it has to do more with the structure of the request and fullfillment other then the search engine itself. To often the request are not
well reported, missing DOI or not labled correctly and the fullfillment is even more plane then the request quite often giving nothing more then a
file with a name thats just numbers and the person it belongs to.
At Thevespiary we did what we could to take steps to avoid this by granting aministration access to a few that fullfill request often ,such as java
does, and allow them to delete the request and replace it with the fullfillment with a quote of the request. Also all request are required to be in
blue so to keep track of whats been found and what hasn't.
For a forum this large it could all prove to be to much for the moderation team to handle but as long as the person making the request provides as
much information as clear as possible the fucking search engine should in theory work just fine. quicksilver - 21-10-2010 at 09:04
I've worked with the search engine for awhile & found certain techniques that help me a great deal. I always use the "ADVANCED" mode. Then I
attempt to isolate the subject from something that MAY give more hits than less. I also try to use an author that I know may have written previously.
Then use quotes to keep the spread from gathering the words (or widening) - depending upon what I'm trying to find.
Example: "Picric acid", "Picric acid synthesis", "Picric acid manufacture", "Picric acid & aspirin".
Remembering that the words "and , &, or "will provide a method to trap the search in the way I would want. Quotes always prevent a search from
finding both out of context.
Also if I get a hit where the author had more to say but didn't in a specific thread, I try that author's name in a simple search such as ; "Picric
acid" (author's name: Jones), "Dinitro", Trinitro", etc.
Often I have to search within a search. Once I get a hit that is going where I want I use the contextual method to tighten it. Don't forget
misspellings! The very thing you are looking for may have been misspelled or you are misspelling it. For some reason people often forget that some
folks "glue" the words together: leadazide instead of lead azide. Putting the misspelling into the search helps quite a bit.
Generally (but not always) the search mechanism is hard-coded into the software and what you have cannot be altered to any great extent. But you can
take advantage of the idiosyncrasies of the way it was present to the search mechanism.
I have NO proof of this but I believe that the "ADVANCED" mode actually turns on some undocumented mechanisms and the standard 'search" posses very
few Boolean features.
[Edited on 21-10-2010 by quicksilver]entropy51 - 21-10-2010 at 17:35
