LJ developing a search engine

[vilakins]

LJ seem to have learned from people's reactions to suddenly introduced changes and features, This time they're telling us about the search engine they're developing, and reassuring us that privacy settings will be respected. They're also very funny about the emo stuff:

It uses one third of San Francisco's water supply to cool and it has a dedicated Nuclear Reactor just to provide the power to index the word "depressed". The phrase "my parents don't understand me" takes up so much physical disk space that we had to hire the hangars at Moffets Field.

Bwahaha!

Me, I'm looking forward to it. I sometimes find it hard to find things on my LJ or flist; the search box I have in my profile isn't that great and only goes back so far.

Comments

[entropy-house.livejournal.com]

That was a good newspost. *got my fingers crossed* I sure hope it works without messing up other things. Like maybe *eating* posts.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Why would it? It just indexes them like Google does; it won't change them.

[entropy-house.livejournal.com]

I have lost utility when they did many simple things that seem perfectly harmless, so I am gunshy. Also they did lose posts on me, and never gave an explanation as to the cause, or any assurance it wouldn't happen again.

They've already said it's NOT the same as Google, and I wonder if there are any pitfalls in the difference. I live in hope that it won't cause problems. I know it *shouldn't*... but....*trembles*

[linda-joyce.livejournal.com]

Me, I'm looking forward to it.

So am I, I can never find anything in my, or anyone else's journal except by going through them day by day. What I'm not looking forward to is what ever part of lj will be messed up when it is introduced. It's never anything major just irritants.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

It shouldn't affect LJ any more than a library catalogue affects the books, except maybe for performance, but I imagine it will have dedicated servers.

I've tagged two years of my entries in the hopes of making my own stuff easier to find, but I have yet to finish the rest.

[spacefall.livejournal.com]

Let's hope it works nicely. Could be handy!

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I'd certainly use it!

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

Oh, excellent! The ability to search my LJ is very high on my wish list, and the attitude displayed in that post is very encouraging. Go, LJ! Go! :)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

:-D

I've been tagging my stuff (finally) but I'd rather be able to do a proper search.

[glitterboy1.livejournal.com]

It sounds good, doesn't it? It'll be interesting to see what they eventually do.

For searching my own journal at the moment, I tend to use LJArchive. I'm quite happy with that, but being able to search other journals, too, would sometimes be really useful.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

So how does LJArchive work? I'd like to archive my LJ because of all the fiction on it. I must check that out.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I downloaded LJArchive and cool: it's small, and it archived my journal pretty quickly. Yay!

being able to search other journals, too, would sometimes be really useful

The search box I have in my profile (which you can set to everywhere / my journal / my friends) is a bit hit and miss and only goes back so far, but it's better than nothing in the meantime. I've found entries I wanted using it. :-)

[glitterboy1.livejournal.com]

Oh, cool! Sorry for not having replied to your comment about LJA - I was going to check some technical info. I know that some people seem to get strange errors when running it, so I'm glad that it's worked for you!

One good thing about the LJ search engine (I hope) is that it will let you search all and only the entries that you're able to see when logged in - which of course all the external solutions can't.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Huh! Just noticed something odd: LJArchive thinks I've made 998 posts, but LJ itself says 972.

And its text analysis picks my main 3 things as visual, soft, and order.

[glitterboy1.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure about the number of posts thing - have you deleted 26 posts in the past? If they have a serial number, perhaps LJA is looking at that, while LJ is counting the number of posts actually there?

I sometimes look at the analysis tools, too - it's fun!

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

It says elsewhere that I have 972 posts, but there are 998 in the grid. Weird. I can't be bothered finding out what the discrepancy is. If it was deleted posts, wouldn't the figures be the other way round? Eh, never mind.

[glitterboy1.livejournal.com]

Ah, right - so 998 is the highest 'ID' listed in LJA? Yes, that number is too high for me, too, compared with the number of posts that LJ reckons are in my journal. The difference would be the right way round (if an ID were allocated to a post and not reused, even if the post gets deleted), but I'm pretty sure I haven't deleted 20+ posts. I don't know how it works! Ah well, I'm glad you have the backup, now.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Hah! LJ just did a bug fix post (http://community.livejournal.com/lj_releases/14112.html) and guess what one of them was!

Entry count on the profile would decrease by two when deleting one entry

I didn't think I'd deleted that many posts though. I asked them if they were going to fix the total on the profile page; mine shows 973 but my next post will be my 1000th. :-P

[glitterboy1.livejournal.com]

Hee! I hadn't had chance to read that one properly yet. Well spotted! Like you, I'm not sure that I've deleted even half as many posts as the discrepancy suggests. But it's more plausible.

You could have *two* celebratory posts!

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

But no one will believe the first one. :-(