Database error: report to an admin

https://imgur.com/a/8avCM

Got this message after searching the following:
"solar day star day -eclipse -eclipses"

Via the normal searchthingy next to your profile-thingy.  Not the full search page. 

Yep, this seems to come up fairly often with more complex searches.

Yep, this seems to come up fairly often with more complex searches.

With respect, this isn't a complex search.  It's not even close to being complex. 

Quote from: PizzaPlanet on February 07, 2018, 08:28:49 AM

Yep, this seems to come up fairly often with more complex searches.

With respect, this isn't a complex search.  It's not even close to being complex.

Respect aside, it is a much more complex search than most.

That says something about most people, not a positive thing.

The forum is shit. The search has never worked right since I've been here 11 months ago. I doubt John is in a hurry to get it fixed though. I guess it could lead to a lot of people finding embarrassing things once said and used against them

The forum is shit. The search has never worked right since I've been here 11 months ago. I doubt John is in a hurry to get it fixed though. I guess it could lead to a lot of people finding embarrassing things once said and used against them

Threads about the terrible search functionality here go back at least a decade.

The index is all borked up due to how much content we have; mistakes have been made regarding encoding our posts due to historical reasons (migrating our site through various platforms over the last decade+.)

I'm open to solutions, and again open to providing a good path for folks to contribute to this.

I have a limited amount of time, but I believe we can do this together.

The index is all borked up due to how much content we have; mistakes have been made regarding encoding our posts due to historical reasons (migrating our site through various platforms over the last decade+.)

I'm open to solutions, and again open to providing a good path for folks to contribute to this.

I have a limited amount of time, but I believe we can do this together.

Is there a reason why the search only goes to 30 results?

That's a setting, iirc. There are reasons to set it that low, but they are a bandaid on the actual problem of not dealing with a set of data an order of magnitude or more beyond the normal operating presumptions of SMF.
edit: and most forums / db setups.

Ever thought of migrating this forum to a much better platform? If a few posts are temporarily lost along the way for a few weeks I promise not to get angry and start a new forum in protest 

Yes I'm working on an independent platform. I'm one man, and its mythical month, but we have passion and a great team keeping the boat afloat.

We stick with SMF in the meanwhile due to a few reasons,
- its obscure enough to mitigate most wide range attacks.
- it has direct support and upgrade paths for the last 10+ years.
- it ain't broke. let's not fiddle with it.
- we know how to use it. you guys know how to use it. we all do.

We are moving because:
- we wish to automate most functions
- we can better control seo, and take advantage of structured data, canonical urls, and other tactics
- we need a cross concern platform - not just one for forums
- we want more social integration
- we want better performance, and caching - especially in non-logged in states
- we don't use much of SMF's kitchen sink features, and its horrid in many ways to a developer, making adding cool stuff for you guys ridiculously harder
- we want better security and features, using modern maintained libraries and resources that end up being free to us if we shift towards a composer based mentality
- our wants are always ahead of long term support, or even plugins which end up being more harm than good due to shoddy support or workflows, and persistence (see: footnotes and latex)
- we need to migrate at some point sometime anyways - SMF is not a long term solution, but a quick and easy one that made sense at the time