answer suggestions

[Thunderchild]

when you type in a quuestion you have to pass a page asking if one of these (list of previously asked questions) is what you are after and if you still want to ppost.

nice feature but what a pity that it finds the most irrelevant things as suggestions and is a waste of my time and server resources, I just go and click yes please without even reading them most of the time as i already know maybe one in twenty has vaguely something to do with what I was refering to

[crete]

totallyagree with you, im always puzzled .

[Thunderchild]

well it has been a few years now that i use the answer bank and am still baffled that this grave error has not been corrected last time i posted this question about a year ago i was shouted down by other uses as to how great it works but I have yet to see relevant results

[kempie]

Have you tried using the search function with specific, relevant keywords to find previous similar questions before posting your own?

This would filter out irrelevant questions which also contain a match to words you place in your question such as 'when', 'you', 'type', 'in', 'a', etc.

[Thunderchild]

my question is not how to find similar questions by rather why is the function so badly implemented, it should either be removed (i never review the results just press yes please) or be made better

[kempie]

If you are not interested in reviewing the results why even question how badly the feature is implemented?

[Thunderchild]

because I often forget that this useless page will show up I have a slow connection so i click post and then go to another page then half hour later come across my question and realize I forgot the suggestions page

[THECORBYLOON]

The point is that the search facility is mince, hence folk post questions that have been asked a 100 times before and others moan about it when they do.

[B00]

Mmmmmmm mince!

[jno]

the search may well provide the exact answers you want, but unless you look through them, I suppose you'll never know. Then some other ABer will wearily provide a link to a previous question you could have seen for yourself.

B00, you're thinking of mints, surely?

[Thunderchild]

no I am sorry but I DO READ the suggested other questions and they are TOTALLY UNRELATED to my question

[kempie]

...which is exactly why I suggested you use the search facility before you post your question because you can then use specific search terms to filter out the dross.

[Thunderchild]

what I am pointing out is that it wastes time and annoys me

[THECORBYLOON]

Why is it that if you click on one of the search results you sometimes get a page of questions and not the actual one that contained the result?

Is it any wonder folk post, rather than spend ages trawling through the dross that comes up?

[jno]

agreed, TCL, there must be some way of filtering out the index pages of subsections and taking you through to the actual questions. As to why they're the wrong questions... well, a search can only link the words you're using to the same or similar words used previously. You can do specific searches as kempie suggests, but it's still far from perfect. I'm not annoyed at the useless lists that come up - what baffles me is when the Q I'm looking for doesn't come up even though I know full well it exists. It's just not a great search engine, though it's better than it used to be.

[Thunderchild]

yea well it's kind of pathetic if "the" and other small meanless search words are also taken into account its not like i wonder why it is a useless function