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> Reddit's search really needs some work. It's practically useless for me unless I am using old.reddit.com/. I always thought that “Reddit search is bad” is pr

> Reddit's search really needs some work. It's practically useless for me unless I am using old.reddit.com/. I always thought that “Reddit search is bad” is pretty much as old as Reddit itself. I don’t think they ever seriously invested in that, for whatever reason. Here’s a post from 8y ago where people were already accepting that it has been like that forever, and it hasn’t changed a lot ever since. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/146gop/why_does_reddit_have_such_poor_search_and_sort/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/146gop/why_does_...

TeMPOraL 5y ago
I haven't seen a single social media or messaging platform where search didn't suck. Reddit search was bad, after redesign it's just hot garbage. Messenger search is unreliable and near-useless. Facebook search only worked well for the brief moment when they introduced "graph search", but that got quickly killed due to popular outrage. HN's bolted-on Algolia search is the least bad I've seen. And let's not even talk about Twitter, Instagram or Slack. I'd go as far as saying that search features are being underdeveloped on purpose - perhaps they allow usage patterns that service owners don't like. But then, Mastodon's search is even worse than Twitter, and that project has no incentive to disenfranchise their users. So I'm honestly confused about all this.
- stingraycharles 5y ago
  I think it’s a combination of “search is hard” and “witty comments / titles make it even harder to search for”. I’d argue most of these sites would be far better off with just using Algolia or Google as their main search engine and calling it a day.
  - whatyesaid 5y ago
    It's not some impossible problem with their resources. I think it's moreso the case that they prioritize newer (but less relevant) stuff you can still engage/social-mediaize with than the actual query even if you don't use the new filter.
  - derefr 5y ago
    Google even has a Custom Search API that allows a site's backend to treat Google Search as (essentially) its own search cluster, ala ElasticSearch. Oddly, I've never heard of any actually using this API. Sites that integrate with Google only ever seem to do so by having their search box bounce you to a Google Search page.
    - obventio56 5y ago
      We do https://www.thecrimson.com/search/ https://www.thecrimson.com/search/
- tsian2 5y ago
  This lead me to believe that search must really hard to implement, but then a few days of getting into Sphinx convinced me otherwise. It's kind of like the big sites where you have to load the whole video before it'll start playing (no HTTP partials). They could do better, they just don't.
  - medstrom 5y ago
    Um. Example of sites where you have to load the whole video? I've never seen that in my life (I'm 29).
    - na85 5y ago
      I'm only 35 and I remember this. It was quite common before YouTube.
      - slimsag 5y ago
        27 and I remember this vaguely.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
    "It's kind of like the big sites where you have to load the whole video before it'll start playing (no HTTP partials)." It sounds like this is decribing the so-called "moov atom" begin placed at the end of the file.^1 1. https://www.adobe.com/devnet/video/articles/mp4_movie_atom.html https://www.adobe.com/devnet/video/articles/mp4_movie_atom.h... If not, can anyone provide some examples of these "big sites". Would like to test.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  Slack’s search is excellent for me. I use it probably at least once a week to find something important for work. Granted, I’m usually searching for things that I know will be an exact substring match of the message I’m looking for, but for that it works great for me.
- mooreds 5y ago
  As long as we're piling on about search, here are my two least favorite site searches: * meetup * AWS docs Going straight to google for both of these nets better results 99% of the time. It's probably a cycle at this point. More people use google (or other general search), so these sites optimize for them, rather than invest in the site search experience. General search engines are where the users are coming from.
lacksconfidence 5y ago
> I don’t think they ever seriously invested in that, for whatever reason. They have recently invested in it, switching to lucidworks[1] a few years ago. Sadly i don't think it changed anyones opinion of reddit search, but it might have saved them some infrastructure cost. [1] https://lucidworks.com/customers/reddit/ https://lucidworks.com/customers/reddit/
tornato7 5y ago
There's an independently made Reddit search that is leagues ahead of Reddit's own search: https://redditsearch.io/ https://redditsearch.io/ It's made by the guy who runs pushshift.io - he does an incredible public service by archiving terabytes of social media data into a fully searchable ElasticSearch cluster. Plug for his Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/pushshift https://www.patreon.com/pushshift
- abhijat 5y ago
  I think pushshift is what powers all the reddit undelete websites, because it doesn't register post or comment deletes. So for a true, unrecoverable delete you have to edit your post to empty body or something nonsensical, and then delete it.

TeMPOraL 5y ago

I haven't seen a single social media or messaging platform where search didn't suck. Reddit search was bad, after redesign it's just hot garbage. Messenger search is unreliable and near-useless. Facebook search only worked well for the brief moment when they introduced "graph search", but that got quickly killed due to popular outrage. HN's bolted-on Algolia search is the least bad I've seen. And let's not even talk about Twitter, Instagram or Slack. I'd go as far as saying that search features are being underdeveloped on purpose - perhaps they allow usage patterns that service owners don't like. But then, Mastodon's search is even worse than Twitter, and that project has no incentive to disenfranchise their users. So I'm honestly confused about all this.

stingraycharles 5y ago
I think it’s a combination of “search is hard” and “witty comments / titles make it even harder to search for”. I’d argue most of these sites would be far better off with just using Algolia or Google as their main search engine and calling it a day.
- whatyesaid 5y ago
  It's not some impossible problem with their resources. I think it's moreso the case that they prioritize newer (but less relevant) stuff you can still engage/social-mediaize with than the actual query even if you don't use the new filter.
- derefr 5y ago
  Google even has a Custom Search API that allows a site's backend to treat Google Search as (essentially) its own search cluster, ala ElasticSearch. Oddly, I've never heard of any actually using this API. Sites that integrate with Google only ever seem to do so by having their search box bounce you to a Google Search page.
  - obventio56 5y ago
    We do https://www.thecrimson.com/search/ https://www.thecrimson.com/search/
tsian2 5y ago
This lead me to believe that search must really hard to implement, but then a few days of getting into Sphinx convinced me otherwise. It's kind of like the big sites where you have to load the whole video before it'll start playing (no HTTP partials). They could do better, they just don't.
- medstrom 5y ago
  Um. Example of sites where you have to load the whole video? I've never seen that in my life (I'm 29).
  - na85 5y ago
    I'm only 35 and I remember this. It was quite common before YouTube.
    - slimsag 5y ago
      27 and I remember this vaguely.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
  "It's kind of like the big sites where you have to load the whole video before it'll start playing (no HTTP partials)." It sounds like this is decribing the so-called "moov atom" begin placed at the end of the file.^1 1. https://www.adobe.com/devnet/video/articles/mp4_movie_atom.html https://www.adobe.com/devnet/video/articles/mp4_movie_atom.h... If not, can anyone provide some examples of these "big sites". Would like to test.
tshaddox 5y ago
Slack’s search is excellent for me. I use it probably at least once a week to find something important for work. Granted, I’m usually searching for things that I know will be an exact substring match of the message I’m looking for, but for that it works great for me.
mooreds 5y ago
As long as we're piling on about search, here are my two least favorite site searches: * meetup * AWS docs Going straight to google for both of these nets better results 99% of the time. It's probably a cycle at this point. More people use google (or other general search), so these sites optimize for them, rather than invest in the site search experience. General search engines are where the users are coming from.

lacksconfidence 5y ago

> I don’t think they ever seriously invested in that, for whatever reason. They have recently invested in it, switching to lucidworks[1] a few years ago. Sadly i don't think it changed anyones opinion of reddit search, but it might have saved them some infrastructure cost. [1] https://lucidworks.com/customers/reddit/ https://lucidworks.com/customers/reddit/

tornato7 5y ago

There's an independently made Reddit search that is leagues ahead of Reddit's own search: https://redditsearch.io/ https://redditsearch.io/ It's made by the guy who runs pushshift.io - he does an incredible public service by archiving terabytes of social media data into a fully searchable ElasticSearch cluster. Plug for his Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/pushshift https://www.patreon.com/pushshift

abhijat 5y ago
I think pushshift is what powers all the reddit undelete websites, because it doesn't register post or comment deletes. So for a true, unrecoverable delete you have to edit your post to empty body or something nonsensical, and then delete it.