$12256 / $11500
Something seems wrong with the search function on OGA, and I can't use it to find newer art. For instance, piacenti recently uploaded a 3D model titled "Cyborg Wheeler", which is tagged with "cyborg". I would expect that if I typed "cyborg" into the search bar, it would come up, but it doesn't!
This is just one example. Searching for "crate" does not turn up "A smple crate", searching for "chess" does not find "Chess Pawn", searching for "skull" does not find "Human Skull" and others.
It's not just 3D art either, "mermaid" cannot find "mermaid", "smoke" does not find "Smoke particle assets". I'm sure other art types also suffer from this.
In fact, out of every piece of art less than 1 year old that I randomly tried to find, I could not find it through a search.
When I search for general things like "rpg", "sword", "tree", or "platformer" I only find art which is over a year old, even though I know there are more recent submissions.
This is only using "search" - browsing by tag is able to find anything. Why does search not work for new art?
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I have noticed the same thing!
I tried searching for some recent hot tunes, Mad Robots and Miami Soul, but neither seem to show up no matter what I searched.
I would think a search for 'Robots' would turn up Mad Robots, but it doesn't show for either a search on 'mad' or 'robots' Same thing with Miami sould.
something else I notice is that when I search in music, I see almost all results with the old style preview button, the one that had a little picture of the wave in there. Newer submissions don't have that. So I think it is a problem with searching 'recent' submissions.
I'm glad I'm not the only one! Good point about the music previews - the transition seems to have happened around February 2014. Searching can find art published out to July 2014, so I would expect a few songs with the new style icon, but like you report, mostly the old.
I wonder if the powers that be tweaked the database structure around that time, and never got around to updating the search function?
How did you deterimine the search results end around July 2014?
That's pretty insane! I know this site can be a bit sleepy at times, but to have the search broken for a full year?!?! makes me sad :(
I figure general terms like "rpg" are likely to show up frequently, and search results come ordered by date. So I search for a general term and look when the top result was posted.
"rpg" - 24 Armor Icons - July 8, 2014 (also top result for "pixel")
"platformer" - Post Soviet Tileset - July 1, 2014
"gun" - sci-fi rotor fighter, June 29, 2014
"sprite" - NES 8 bit tile sheet - July 10, 2014
Altogether, I haven't found anything more recent than July 10, 2014 with a search.
so as 'work around',I noticed that Bart's new search tool:
http://opengameart.org/search/solr/
does list newer art. It also seems a tad faster too, although the UI for it is still under construction.
Oh cool, I had not seen that search page before. I think I will use it going forward. Thanks for sharing!
@All Admins:
This is still broken. I don't want to be alarmist, but I do think this is a pretty serious problem.
Any submission from the last year is basically lost and/or useless if it doesn't turn up in the search results.
Can someone who works on the site please at least acknowledge that they are aware of the problem?
BTW
As a further data point, the issue seems to tied to searching with a search string. As an example, if I search just 'submitter = surt', I get back all surt's wonderful work. However, if I search 'search string = nes & submitter = surt', I get only stuff older than July 2014, even though surt has posted several more NES tilesets since then, including one just this week.
Search has been busted in various ways for quite a while. It was towards the top of Bart's to-do list, but something must have held it up. If I happen to see him on the IRC I will ping him about it.
@Redshrike: gotcha. Let us know if you hear anything. I have to admit this makes me pretty sad. It's hard not to feel like the site is in trouble when problems like this persist for a long time. :(
In my experience it has seemed that the search has only looked at the contents of the description while ignoring the title and tags.
Red warrior needs caffeine badly.
@surt: yeah, I've noticed that as well. For example, searching 'Wonder World' returns no results, presumably because that string does not actually appear in the description text in your 'Monster Boy in Wonder World Mock-up' set. On the good news tip, searching 'Wonder World' on the new experimental search engine does returns the 'Monster Boy in Wonder World' mock up as well as parry647's mods to it. So there's some hope for the future right? :)
This happens with all or nearly all of my art! I've posted it here http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/tag-site-bug
Thank you and i hope it will get resolved pretty soon!
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Non-violent and fun games! - www.crystalgames.space
Peace!
Yeah, I hate to sound pissy but this really sucks!
It's a total disservice to all the hard working artists who have been contributing great new stuff to this site for the past year!
Is there nothing that can be done to fix this?
More than willing to contribute my own time and/or programming/database skills to the task if it'd help!
I have access to the Drupal admin pages.
The Search settings page claims the site is 99% indexed, with only 3 items waiting to be indexed. (I don't believe it).
There is a "re-index site" button. Here's the warning it gives:
I did not press the button (yet). I left a message for BartK on IRC to see what he thinks.
yeah that's a scary warning indeed, don't don't touch the button!
https://youtu.be/NITBfc1EOBo?t=26
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YleXlgHI1oM
well played! :)
I tend to use the "experimental" new search feature (http://opengameart.org/search/solr), which in my experience produces better results than the regular one.
Perhaps rather than trying to fix the "normal" search, it's a better idea to finish whatever is missing for the experimental one?
Yeah, I have been using the experimental search since I realized the main one is broken and agree it produces really good results.
Honestly, even without fixing whatever it broken with it, I'd say swapping the solr search out for the current search box would be a good idea. I mean, whatever what's up with the solr thing, it's hard to be more broken than 'doesn't return anything submitted after July 2014'.
In short, search sucks and needs to be fixed.
The experimental search feature is down at the moment until I get solr running again. It's my top priority at the moment, although I'm still pretty tight on time.
Bart
Things take time to do properly, don't worry and take the time you need.
Although I tried using the search again yesterday and I was banging my head against the desk at the... interesting results it returned. I'll be very happy when solr search is back. :)
Welcome back Bart! Hope all is well!
I second Every's comment about taking your time fixing search, but you might put some sort of notice up about it on the front page, just so folks are aware of the problem and know someone is working on a fix.
Thanks again for all your hard work on the site, hope you know how much we appreciate it! :)