Stop Looking and Start Finding: Tips for Searching the Forums
1. SEARCH A MEMBER'S CONTENT
Clearly, the easiest way to see all of the topics that another user has merely initiated (as opposed to contributed to) is to look at that specific member's content ...
MEMBERS, Search Members, {name (or partial name)}, search, click on the member's name. This takes you to their profile, showing you their Recent Activity i.e. the topics (blogs, photos, etc.) they have created. If the topic you are looking for is not in the initially-displayed list of 10, click on view {name}'s content. Page through, 10 per page. You can sort it by Most recent, Alphabetical, # of views or # of comments.
2. SITE HELP & SITE SEARCH
The following sources of information are available:
Help - at the top right of the homepage screen. Type in a word like speed and it will show you a list of Forum discussions and also and Frequently-Asked-Questions or Articles about 'speed of play', great chess players playing quickly, browsers running slowly, games timing out, etc.
Immediately after you have used the Help feature, you are brought to the Site Search form (this is where the list of matching results is presented). The first box is labelledKeywords; you could specify play games on line. The second qualifier is a drop-down menu labelled Category; by default, it is set to Entire Site, but you could choose Forums,Articles, etc. If you leave it set to Entire Site, and click on Search, you will see that one of the results is this one http://www.chess.com/forum/view/help-support/playing-on-line-games
which talks about Play. Online Chess. Tournaments. Live Chess. Against the Computer. Vote Chess. Learn ... low on time in a game so that you will not forfeit the games by time. ...
Any time you click on the FORUMS button at the top, you will be offered the Search the Forums box (on the right of the screen). This will limit your search to the Forum discussions. When the lists of results is returned, you can refine your search by selecting a particular Forum area e.g. Chess.com Community or Help & Support.
Look at a few hot topics. Locate anybody talking sense. Send that person a message, challenge them to a game & chat with them, drop a note on their homepage. A person can be a quick guide to finding your way around the chess.com labyrinth.
Happy hunting!
3. GOOGLING CHESS.COM
Is there any way ...to do a seach specific to a particular area: such as a search just in blogs, or just in articles, or just in chessopedia, or just in the forums?
Google for ...
ajeeb site:blog.chess.com
ajeeb site:blog.chess.com/batgirl
"Mating Patterns" site:www.chess.com/articles
Turk site:www.chess.com/chessopedia
"cafe de la regence" site:www.chess.com/forum
4. MOST RECENT POSTS
The Most Recent Posts list on the Forum page contains about 10 items. It shows the posts which have been most recently updated. (Off-Topic posts are not featured). Since new posts are arriving at a rate of several per minute (depending on time of day) , a post may be visible for only about 2 minutes.
It is possible to list the posts in creation order, by using a trick: leave the forum search box empty - and click on search. A list of all the posts ever written are now displayed, 10 to a page. They can be sorted by Most recent or # of posts. However, most recent in relation to this full list means: most recently created- not most recently updated.
So, first: shouldn't the Most recent posts heading be a link that takes you to the full list?
Secondly, it would be more logical for most recent to have the same semantics in both cases - preferably most recently updated. (Or, better still, offer both most recently created and most recently updated as separate options).
5. SEARCHING THROUGH ALL OF SOMEONE'S CONTRIBUTIONS
In the message forums on other sites, there is an option to "see all posts by this user." At the moment, when you click on someone's "activity" here, you only see the threads that they started. It would be nice to see all posts that this person has made in other threads as well. I wouldn't want this to show up in "my tracked activity" cuz it would get too full too fast, but it would be nice to be able to quickly access this feature.
This can be achieved, to a certain extent, using Google's advanced search option. Googling for "billium248 site:www.chess.com/forum" locates all the topics Billium248 has either written or been mentioned in. To restrict it to just the ones Billium248 has written, use "by billium248" site:www.chess.com/forum".
The most detailed level of resolution for topic contributions (both within Forum Search and via Google) is down to the containing page - about twenty or so postings. Chess.com currently supports tracking of Topics on a per user basis. If it offered tracking of individual postings instead, the number kept track of would increase, probably by a factor of 5 .. 10.
These discussions also contain tips on searching:
http://www.chess.com/forum/view/community/forum-feature-i-would-like
http://www.chess.com/forum/view/help-support/is-there-any-way2
http://www.chess.com/forum/view/help-support/privacy-and-google-searches
http://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-players/posting-the-obvious
https://www.chess.com/forum/view/help-support/lost-forums
http://www.chess.com/forum/view/help-support/search-with-two-keywords
http://www.chess.com/forum/view/help-support/help-with-help
http://www.chess.com/forum/view/community/forum-filing
http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/index-for-locating-threads
6. ADDING TAGS
Not forgetting that you can go back and re-edit all of YOUR OWN posts, so you could insert tags. e.g. your topic SIMPLE LOCAL TIME NOTE is hard to find when using forum search for "SIMPLE TIME". If you were to edit the first post and put in a unique keyword, you could find that topic more easily. In that discussion, I mentioned "Mountain Std Time" (I'm avoiding the full word in THIS discussion) - which is an uncommon phrase in chess discussions. Hence, when I use Google to search the chess.com forums for "Mountain Std Time" (spelt out in full), it takes me directly to your discussion.
7. SIFTING THROUGH PAGES & PAGES
You can also use the BINARY CHOP technique for searching through ordered lists, This might be usefully applied to one of four lists:
- topics you have created (FORUMS, Topics I Have Started)
- topics you have posted in (FORUMS, Topics I Have Posted In)
- tracked topics (FORUMS, Topics I am Tracking)
- all topics (refer to the MOST RECENT POSTS trick mentioned earlier)
