Forum quality

Adding your search words on the end

and add your search term

Can you give a working example? I tried https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/11/topics/softload and it gave an error, so apparently you don’t add it to the end like I did.

Can you give a working example?

And such an example will/would be very difficult to find without an effective search mechanism due to thread-drift!

“Forum quality” indeed!

Using the search window – top right – is there a way of searching a+b or a-b ?

Ie

Iyonix + Harddisk

Very sorry I’ve not explained it at well, all my examples have managed to strip off the important part of starting with “site:”, you also need a space after /topics/ and the fact it needs to be IN a google search i.e. Copy all of the following line into a Google search box or a Firefox URL bar:

site:www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/11/topics/ softload raspberry pi

This gives me 84 results

I believe a web page could generate the correct link and redirect to google from a user’s input search terms.

I believe a web page could generate the correct link and redirect to google from a user’s input search terms.

I’ve very much not a proper programmer, but I’ve knocked something together which by fluke seems to vaguely work. It’s not polished, it’s not written in perfect code, and purists might need to look away, but anyone else, feel free to try it (and probably break it): http://www.owlart.co.uk/roolsearch

Thanks Andrew that was exactly what I was thinking of. Now if people can try and post in the most relevant forum things will be even better!

Andrew, i have tried your application – thanks for doing it – but can you do a version that doesn’t use G**gle? I try to avoid G**gle preferring DuckDuckGo as a search engine.

I try to avoid G**gle preferring DuckDuckGo as a search engine.

Hear, hear!

And hear, hear to the Thanks, too!

Personally I use Google as, well, I’m probably using Android so the mothership may already know.

As for DDG, the syntax seems pretty much the same as Google: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/syntax/

However, it might be worth running a few searches on both engines side by side to assess the quality of the results. Sometimes I use Bing because Google….is not always your friend (not to mention being easy to game by sites that serve one thing to Google and something entirely different to visitors).

Just did a quick test manually…

site:www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/5/topics/ sharefswindow

Google found four threads, DuckDuckGo found three.

After 4 successful searches Google has thrown a hissy fit and will no longer search. It goes to a page which shows:-

About this page
Our systems have detected unusual traffic from your computer network. This page checks to see if it’s really you sending the requests, and not a robot. Why did this happen?
IP address: 81.168.40.10
Time: 2021-07-22T11:40:53Z
URL: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.riscosopen.org%2Fforum%2Fforums%2F1%2Ftopics%2F+tbxtest

You weren’t consuming enough adverts.

You weren’t consuming enough adverts.

Sadly, I fear you are not joking.
It makes a mockery of “Do no evil” and “Do the right thing” both in the Alphabet code oconduct (according to duckduckgo).

This page checks to see if it’s really you sending the requests

What browser? There’s likely to have been a Captcha to show you’re a real person.

As to why it happens, too many searches within a short time, especially if you search for the same thing multiple times.

What browser?

NetSurf – I don’t use much else when using RISC OS.
As mentioned above it worked for the first four searches.
Google did not like the 5th and any subsequent searches.
It seems to have black-listed my ip address which is Orpheus.
It only affects searches using
http://www.owlart.co.uk/roolsearch/
Other Google searches are fine.

I just tried roolsearch using Iris. Six searches in a row with no problem. It appears that Google objects to NetSurf rather than my ip address
Unfortunately the Sharedlibs problem is still unsolved and Iris knock out the Python environment.
So its back to NetSurf. Too bad about roolsearch I was finding it useful.

@John Rickman

Sadly, I fear you are not joking.
It makes a mockery of “Do no evil” and “Do the right thing” both in the Alphabet code oconduct (according to duckduckgo).

Not really, something has to pay the running costs for that search engine, and as much as we don’t like it, it’s funded by advertising.

Not really, something has to pay the running costs for that search engine, and as much as we don’t like it, it’s funded by advertising.

No problem with Google earning a living – its the dishonesty I don’t like. If the message said “go away, or pay the man some money” fine. But it doesn’t. It says “suspicious activity on your ip address”

It’s neither dishonest nor complaining because you’re not looking at the adverts. It’s quite simply because it thinks you are behaving like a bot.

If your browser was a little more capable than NetSurf, you’d see a captcha (as I mentioned). Solve the infernal thing and your IP address would be marked as “human, not a bot” and you can carry on searching for stuff.

It also helps, I think, if you have an Android phone pinging the mothership from that same IP address, as I would imagine before they refuse to provide you with search results (not great PR, that!), they’ll look to see if that address is associated with any other Google service. I’ve just tried a number of times using NetSurf, including pasting the same search string into five windows, stacking them slightly offset, and then clicking refresh on all as fast as I could. Google now probably has me categorised now as “dickwad (but human)” rather than “suspected bot”. ;-)

“Don’t be evil” was (mostly) removed from the code of conduct of Google in 2018.

Hmm – In Duckduckgo – seems you can get results from entering ‘site riscosopen sprite plotting’

Google too…

Search is only braindead when you’re looking for something specific. ;-)

Taken from here

So why do we do these childish putdowns?

Not entirely; forums separate from a blog have a purpose. A forum is where you go for answers and help to solve a particular problem; others see forums as a social place, where interaction occurs between several people with a shared interest; in other words, things related to RISC OS.

I believe that a few are damaging the usefulness of the forum, not adhering to basic social rules, which include:

• Sticking to the question that’s asked.

• Recognising the importance of creating a new topic, with a relevant heading

• Using the right tone in a thread; consider how you’d like to be spoken to, be polite and courteous.

We all need to recognise that what’s said here represents how the community is perceived; helpful versus toxic. That means how we all participate in the discussions here will influence the uptake of and the use of RISC OS.

@ROOL; if you don’t address the issues with warnings, suspensions or closing accounts. Then aren’t you just damaging RISC OS?

Oh the Irony.

I’ve come to the same conclusion as many others that Aldershot has to go, it was fun while it was for a few light-hearted off topic posts, but it has been abused with a certain individual treating it as a blog. Not only has the signal to noise ratio been damaged, but the entire forum has become a laughing stock. People are getting angry and posts are becoming increasingly toxic.

It need to be cut out, and the other areas of the forum moderated so we stick to subjects related to ongoing RISC OS development.

• No treating it like a blog – we don’t care what you are doing from minute to minute
• No ramblings about other computer systems – take it elsewhere, we aren’t interested
• No trying to force everyone to accept your outdated views on programming
• No obsessing about saving cycles obsolete machines – there are other forums for that
• No endless sequences of posts, if people don’t reply after the first one, they just aren’t interested

Enough is enough.

ROOL cannot control this forum and seem unwilling to do so.

Tonight I am severing my links to this site until someone contacts me to tell me it is OK to return.

’Bye everyone.