Give the newbs a break?

[zanthor]

Sometimes I feel compelled to give the new guys a break... the simple answer of "Why don't you search" isn't always viable...

http://www.botbh.com/zimg/raf.jpg

Of course, the opposite is also true, search for recruit-a-friend and you get flooded with mostly useless information...

Searching is an art form to say the least, and artists are rare.

[Ðeceased]

yeah had that happen to me a lot too :S

[Drizzit]

Yea, the search isn't the greatest. I think you need 4 chars min to do a search. I tried to do searches for AV, BG, WSG, EYE, etc... but nothing comes up and i know that people talk about that all the time.

[Thulos]

Searching is an art form to say the least, and artists are rare. This is my biggest problem. I'm very bad with search engines. I tend to be forgiving on a lot of things that people catch grief about on this site. The only time I'm not forgiving is if its stickied information or stuff that's right in Multiboxing 101 on the wiki.

[Ellay]

Yar, I enjoy the chatter quite a bit - it's a hustle and bustle kind of town here in general and we need to maintain and our friendly atmosphere and not being elitists :)

[Wilbur]

We setup a bot in IRC to just enter the google search string for whatever you are looking for on the site.

Works very effectively.

[Havelcek]

You don't need a search feature for RAF...its half the threads on the first page.

[Drizzit]

just make fur post a sticky... lol it has all of them

[Awbee]

I think the point he was trying to make is that the search feature for the forums is not as useful as we would want it to be for the newer visiters.

Ellay or Wilbur is there a way to include one of Google's community search coding into this forum?

[Ellay]

Got a linky to it by chance?

[Wilbur]

We could. But it would involve getting medieval on the php pages :-S

Any php devs kicking around? ;)

[Drizzit]

too bad it wasn't asp :(. i know that they are somewhat similar, but haven't played with it

[Awbee]

Google Custom Search

http://www.google.com/coop/cse/

[Caspian]

As a fairly new member here I would certainly agree that the search is lacking. Initial searches I made came up with squat. I think I got blasted once (with a link at least) and started trying to get more creative with the search. The Wiki is great for something and not for others and is still a work in progress. As a new person you don't always know *what* to search for either. The terms you might think to search for aren't necessarily the correct terms.

There are certainly people that don't even try though, some noobs are noobs.

Some people here can get pretty aggressive about blasting the noobs but it really isn't necessarily always the noob's fault.

[Awbee]

Try this ('http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=008057042136573243121%3A8oo5ucbwy-s')

[Otlecs]

It really does depend. If I enter the obvious search string into the search engine (take "grind" and "quest", for example to find old discussions about this age-old question) and tons of hits come up, they're just another lazy newcomer who wants to be spoon-fed everything.

If nothing comes up - the PiP thing is a recent one I responded to, because the poster wasn't even sure what the feature was called, fair enough.

I obviously have a template of links that I post when appropriate, but I never do so without actually doing the search first.

The fact is, though, that some people are truly, astoundingly, astonishingly lazy.

[Drizzit]

The fact is, though, that some people are truly, astoundingly, astonishingly lazy.

My personal favorite is when I post the link to what they're looking for (ie the wiki section), and they still get pissy with me.

Uhh, what?they get mad at you because they have to do work. You know clinking that link takes a lot of mental ability

[wetstreet]

Screw the noobs! *checks post count* 8| Wait... um...

[Drizzit]

total noob
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkCNJRfSZBU

[Memn]

Try this ('http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=008057042136573243121%3A8oo5ucbwy-s')
^ ^^ ^ This

Woot!

[Otlecs]

Holy crap, that's awesome!

Definitely going to add the Dual-Boxing.com custom search engine (http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=008057042136573243121%3A8oo5ucbwy-s) to my template of URLs :)

[Anozireth]

I think part of the problem with search is that it will only search within what you're currently viewing. So if you go into a thread and then use the search box there, it only searches within that thread. This is very counter-intuitive IMO, and could easily lead people astray.

[Drizzit]

Try o5ucbwy-s" wcf_href=http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=008057042136573243121%3A8oo5ucbwy-s>this ('http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=008057042136573243121%3A%3Cimg%20src=')
^ ^^ ^ This

Woot!OMG this is like an Legendary drop

[Talamarr]

OMG this is like an Legendary drop

Obviously Rogue gear then.

[Caspian]

total noob
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkCNJRfSZBUHow many people know what that instance is? Have actually run it? When it was hard? When you could take 15 people? When you could take 40?

[Awbee]

ubrs, yes, yes, um didn't know you could do 40 other than for early bwl.

[Caspian]

ubrs, yes, yes, um didn't know you could do 40 other than for early bwl.I never did it but know people who said they did, they were among the very first 60s on a release server.

[blast3r]

Screw the noobs! *checks post count* 8| Wait... um...

You do realize that a year from now your post won't make any sense whatsoever. :)

[Thulos]

Holy crap, that's awesome!

Definitely going to add the Dual-Boxing.com custom search engine ('http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=008057042136573243121%3A8oo5ucbwy-s') to my template of URLs :)Added to my iGoogle page and thanks awbee!

[BobGnarly]

The problem, imo, isn't somebody who misses some obscure thread buried 40 pages down in the "macros" section, it's the throng of people that ask a questing which is in the wiki, or in a sticky. "Searching" is more than typing a phrase into the search box, you can spend some time browsing around the site. I know, because that's what I did, and by the time I created my first post, I had a pretty firm grasp on how it all worked and what was what. That's what I wish people would do.

Having said that, every forum has this problem, and short of going all Elitist Jerks on everybody (where they will give you infractions if they don't like your grammar), I haven't seen a solution yet. So, I just usually ignore the people who are just blatantly lazy, rather than flame them. Besides, that's what we have Fur for! :D

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Yeah, this is why I usually remind folks about the google "site:xxxx.com" search syntax. It's pretty much all I use when I want to find something here.

[Wilbur]

Yeah, this is why I usually remind folks about the google "site:xxxx.com" search syntax. It's pretty much all I use when I want to find something here.

^^ Best way to find anything here.

[wetstreet]

Screw the noobs! *checks post count* 8| Wait... um...

You do realize that a year from now your post won't make any sense whatsoever. :)I guess that means that I can't just write posts to boost my post count. ;(

[kadaan]

total noob

How many people know what that instance is? Have actually run it? When it was hard? When you could take 15 people? When you could take 40?

Originally UBRS was the only entrance to BWL, so you had to zone in, defeat Rend, and then you go gain access.

I'm not sure if it ever allowed 40, but it did allow 15 for a long time (when the release the dungeon set 2 quest line, it was capped at 10, WoW 1.8 I think?).

Same goes for BRD --> MC. MC (in beta I think? maaaybe wow 1.0) was part of BRD... so you'd take your 40 man crew, crush BRD, then enter MC.

Somewhere around WoW 1.0 or 1.1 or something they made MC a seperate raid entrance, then later added the "attunement" option.UBRS was only the tentative entrance to BWL. It was never the actual entrance. When BWL was released you just did the attunement quest to use the orb. MC had a portal in BRD in the early beta, but the attunement quest was there the day the game went live.

Also _every_ instance was 40-mannable in live. I've got screenshots somewhere at home of a 40-man strath run :). Back when it was common practice to drop the group before a kill so you'd get quest credit, then get invited before you got ported. When they fixed the drop-group-quest thing, there was tons of QQ on the forums because everyone thought Scholomance was IMPOSSIBLE to do as a 5-man. Heh.

[Stabface]

Scholo was 10 man.


Also, no break for the noobs, because in the first few days BEFORE anyone was abbreviating it RAF, you know when all the threads were getting posted every 2 seconds? You could find all those posts by searching on 'recruit' 'recruit a friend' 'recruit-a-friend' 'triple xp' etc. No one searched, or even bothered to look at the forum index, threads since your last visit, or threads of the past 24 hours. The only thing I'm willing to break is some heads!

Also also, if you really want the forum to be able to find RAF posts you can change the parameters on the indexer, by default it is probably 4+ or maybe 5+ letter words. You can set it to 3 but you may have performance issues as it builds indexes for things like 'the' 'and' 'you' and 'ass'.

[kadaan]

Right.

I thought Scholo was originally a 10 man instance?Nope, ALL instances were originally uncapped. They only added the caps later.

Here's a SS from 2005-03-12 in scholomance, and you can see at least 14 people (12+2 in chat off screen). I had no raid frame mod at the time so I don't know exactly how many people were there.

http://kadaan.com/gallery/d/3179-1/WoWScrnShot_031205_214108.jpg

[Stealthy]

Right.

I thought Scholo was originally a 10 man instance?Nope, ALL instances were originally uncapped. They only added the caps later.

Here's a SS from 2005-03-12 in scholomance, and you can see at least 14 people (12+2 in chat off screen). I had no raid frame mod at the time so I don't know exactly how many people were there.

http://kadaan.com/gallery/d/3179-1/WoWScrnShot_031205_214108.jpg

Yep, this is correct - originally they were uncapped. The caps were introduced very early on though (only 2nd patch after release) - patch notes here for those interested:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/patch-05-07-04.html

Ahh the memories... :)

Cheers,

S.