Why does search include ANY instead of ALL terms? (i.e. OR vs. AND)

[flamacue]

Why does the ubuntuforums search include all posts with any of the terms in the search field instead of all of them? (i.e. Why does it search for "this OR that" when I want to search for "this AND that"?) This just decreases the signal-to-noise ratio by showing multiple posts that are unhelpful to me.

I would find this feature immensely more useful if it would search for all terms. Is there even a way to do this?

Thanks for your consideration.

[jpeddicord]

You can use the + sign to use AND searching. It's a pain, but it works.

For example, searching for dapper install would search dapper OR install, while +dapper +install would search for both terms in the same post. (The search system still shows the searched keywords as OR, but the results do come up correctly.)

[flamacue]

Thanks very much for the tip.

Since the icon below your name says you're on the ubuntuforums staff, may I ask: what are your thoughts on making AND searching the default (i.e. that users wouldn't need to use the '+' trick to do an AND search)?

[jpeddicord]

Thanks very much for the tip.

Since the icon below your name says you're on the ubuntuforums staff, may I ask: what are your thoughts on making AND searching the default (i.e. that users wouldn't need to use the '+' trick to do an AND search)?

I'd be in support of it, but I'm not an administrator so I can't change anything. ;) Judging by some vBulletin information I found, this would most likely need to be edited in the source code by ubuntu-geek.

[lswb]

You can use the + sign to use AND searching. It's a pain, but it works.


Thanks for that info!

Another way is to use google, just include as one of the search terms

site:ubuntuforums.org

and google will only return results that originated from here.