No way to search the Current Events forum

[x586]

Current Events needs to be added to the search/Advanced Search

[Connor]

bumping this one, still can't search it.

[Intuit]

It's this way by design.  I can only guess/speculate at the reasons.
Best thing you can do is to archive posts for subsequent searching.
http://www.snapfiles.com/reviews/WinHTTrack/httrack.html
I would guess that admins would still be able to search them though.

Among the reasons could be:
1) Additional load on the server (searches are resource intensive) and costs not warranted or relevant to the content (computer hardware) of the site.
2) ?Encourages further topic creations instead of a recycling of old posts.
3) Not all past political opinions should be searchable.

On a side note, you can't even use Google to pull results on that section of the forums which is unusual.

[rrussell]

Yah but you're missing the abuse angle.

It's not a problem they want to fix.

[Connor]

It's this way by design.  I can only guess/speculate at the reasons.
Best thing you can do is to archive posts for subsequent searching.
http://www.snapfiles.com/reviews/WinHTTrack/httrack.html
I would guess that admins would still be able to search them though.

Among the reasons could be:
1) Additional load on the server (searches are resource intensive) and costs not warranted or relevant to the content (computer hardware) of the site.
2) ?Encourages further topic creations instead of a recycling of old posts.
3) Not all past political opinions should be searchable.

On a side note, you can't even use Google to pull results on that section of the forums which is unusual.

Those reasons should hold for Off Topic as well if that were the case.
However I think you can use google under some conditions as I did it recently - i did have to be very specific on the words I was looking for in the post though.

[Intuit]

Curious as to how it was "abused" ?

[rrussell]

Sure makes you wanna peek over your shoulder, doesn't it?

LOL

[Connor]

Sure makes you wanna peek over your shoulder, doesn't it?

LOL

It does make it sound like some sort of Identity fraud Scam - doesn't it?

My curiostiy wants to find out what actually happened - presumably between April and October last year.

[rrussell]

Nah, just a healthy dose of good old-fashioned paranoia.

Remember, he who owns the press controls the message.

Connor, to the best of my recollection, there were some (unscrupulous) folks who searched out some OTHER folks' posts and did the classic hack-and-slash to pull out context-free, self-serving quotes.  Since the current events section can get very hairy at times, it was a less-than-savory experience for all involved, hence the decision to just cut access altogether.

Keep in mind, this is from an independent observer.  What actually went down could be worlds different.