The search function :-\

[paul6]

Is it me or is the search function a pain in the butt? I've never been a fan of this forum software since I've been here.

If I try searching for "Mario 64 ds", it ditches 64 and ds because it considers them too short, and returns every post with "mario"

Than later I try searching for Advance Wars. Because it does not allow strings, it will return every post with "advance" or "wars" in it. Inevitably people are going to put "Game Boy Advance" in their trade lists, so I get every topic that has Lego Wars / Star Wars / Guild Wars crap in it.

These are just two examples, I could go on and on with problems like these.

[CheapyD]

Version 3.5 has support for fulltext searching, which should help.
It should be final soon.

Here is a link to all the new features:
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=138544

[Scorch]

I should write a search FAQ.

Make the search forum specific. For advance wars DS, point it to video game discussions, search for 'advance', and make it search thread titles only. It yields quite a few Advance Wars discussions.

[cyberlian]

The main problem I have with the search is when looking for games in the trading forums. For example, with "pac pix" both words are too short. If I add the *, I have 20 pages of psp's that have the bonus "pack" and either do or don't have dead "pixels".

Maybe we could somehow tie some of the more popular games to a general game database of want/have lists like the list at dvd Aficionado. (say you want pac pix, so after searching, the results show everyone that has it for sale or as a want) Or maybe would could assign a 10 digit number to each game and people just use that number in their trade list.