BUG - Forum search operation (redundant results)

Brad Jones

So, when you do a search in the forum, it will bring up forum entries that match your criteria based upon a search requirement.  Now, the problem is that each one of those search results will have the same title, and even the same display text, they just repeat in the list over and over again.  

 

Example:

Discussion Title "xyz24"

First Entry: "Here is my topic about xyz24"

Reply1: "Yes, we agree, that is a topic about xyz24"

Reply2: "Please, can someone fix xyz24, it is making my customers angry"

Reply3: "Hey y'all, there is a fix to xyz24, just check the link here to the SS training manual"

Reply4: "Fantastic! Thanks for the help"

 

That term has shown up four times in this discussion.  Now, I go to do a search in the forum for "xyz24".  This is what my search results look like:

 

Discussion

xyz24

Here is my topic about xyz24 (see more)

 

Discussion

xyz24

Here is my topic about xyz24 (see more)

 

Discussion

xyz24

Here is my topic about xyz24 (see more)

 

Discussion

xyz24

Here is my topic about xyz24 (see more)

 

Proposed solution:

Please only have one result listed per discussion thread.  Otherwise, on really popular topics, the poor user may have to search through 20+ pages of redundant results, and try and remember, "have I read that discussion already?"

 

J. Craig Williams

I agree.

I thought I had posted this request before, but it might have gone direct to support.

 

Craig

Brad Jones

You may have Craig, but then again with how hard it is to find something when searching through the forum....

Shaine Greenwood

Hi All—

 

To clarify, this is expected behavior in the application, not a bug, but it is undesireable behavior in the application.

 

I've got your votes down for this on our enhancement request list for further consideration by our Product team. 

J. Craig Williams

Shaine, 

 

A known (expected) undesirable behavior is not considered a bug?

If it was DESIGNED to have an undesirable behavior, I might agree with you. 

Otherwise... it is a bug.

Might be a bug that never gets fixed (a "known issue"), but still a bug.

 

As time goes by and more and more threads are added to the Community, the search feature becomes less and less useful - in large part because of this bug.

 

Craig

Shaine Greenwood

Craig,

 

This is currently the way Community search behaves—it finds everything that matches key words and will treat discussions and their comments as seperate return results. On the backend, they're separate content types.

 

I'd like those to be grouped together, and I'm definitely pushing to get that feature (and search by tags instead of having to click on an existing tag somewhere) added in to Community search.

Brad Jones

Please do fix it.  Craig is right, and I have seen a difference between when I started and today.  

Brad Jones

@Shaine - combine duplicate forum posts.

 

You know, speaking of duplicates, there are dozens of duplicate discussions started because people are either too lazy to search before they post, or they just can't find the right post from the search.  If a system admin were to delete redundant new posts, perhaps while migrating the new post comment over to the existing thread (or simply killing the post while sending the user a link to the existing thread), then this would greatly reduce the garbage pile of redundant enries.