I must be missing some basic technique on searching this forum.
Before I made the post on adding “Evidence of Presence” categories that was quickly shut down, I spent 45 minutes searching the entire forum, and then tried limiting the search to Feature Requests, followed by General. My search terms included “Evidence of Presence,” “Evidence Categories,” and then in desperation “Evidence.”
None of those searches turned up the two topics you suggested… I DID turn up a thread from 2021 on “problems” with the feature a few months after the June 21 introduction of the feature. But it did not include much discussion of new categories.
I also want to point out that the title of this post, “Searching the Forum Successfully,” nicely turns up a post “iNat Forum searchable by key terms,”
I always do what I consider “Due Diligence” before making a post. That’s why I first spent 45 minutes looking to see if it had been covered before. In fact, I was very surprised that there wasn’t a topic, so I kept searching. It’s also why I posted to General in order to first flesh out the feature request. I will definitely work through the post by @tiwane that @twainwright suggested, followed up by the thread @fffffffff suggests.
And I’m going to now read the thread on how to successfully search the forum.
Hmmm, this morning I found the post by @tiwane using the same search terms as yesterday. Can it be that I was on a phone hotspot out in the field? The load times were much longer and perhaps not all discussions loaded? That would be strange.
Anyway, I apologize for making the post. I just wanted to let you know that I did in fact make an attempt at searching before posting.
I know the feeling! I’ve done the same. Searching on forums is a mystic art, and I certainly give you credit!
Seems like it might be useful to add a series of key words in the original post to help the search process, although most of the time I’ve had luck finding a topic just based on what words are used in the topic title and OP message. Although some of the more interesting discussions wandered off on a tangent from the OP topic.
I often find posts only because I remember some words used there, sadly names of topics are very chaotic and it’s hard to find anything.
Yeah, searching for particular topics is hit or miss, in my experience.
No need to apologize!
This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.