Member Search

[kcm.MN]

I tried searching for a member earlier and it showed up first thing. Tried searching for another member, but it only goes to one person who made one post and disappeared. Any chance there will be more of a listing-type result when searching for members? I remember scanning through the list before and seeing lots of members with extremely similar names.

Or maybe I'm just not using it correctly??

 

[cpratt]

I don't see anything that lets you just list all users. I would bet that is by intention. With 190K users, a list like that isn't useful to anyone but the bad guys. The old list was heavily used by spammers trying to get personal information. I can see that they've dropped that concept.

On Find Member, if you start typing a name, it will give you the list of people that match that name to search through and see which one you want to look up. So the functionality is there, just without a complete list of everyone to manually search though.

 

[Brown David]

I don't see anything that lets you just list all users. I would bet that is by intention. With 190K users, a list like that isn't useful to anyone but the bad guys. The old list was heavily used by spammers trying to get personal information. I can see that they've dropped that concept.

On Find Member, if you start typing a name, it will give you the list of people that match that name to search through and see which one you want to look up. So the functionality is there, just without a complete list of everyone to manually search though.

There was a list, I found it yesterday. Forgot how I found it and can't find it now.

Maybe you changed it?

 

[kcm.MN]

I don't see Member Search being fully helpful all the time. I typed in 4 letters and it only showed 10 possible members. That's not going to help much if we cannot remember exactly how someone has their Username spelled.

 

[cpratt]

You're right, it really depends on knowing the beginning part of the name accurately. It also won't show anything if you type characters that just happen to match a real user. Like if you type chris, only my name will come up, not all the "chris"es. If you add a space, then my name will disappear and only people with "chris " will start to appear which will not include the "christopher"s, the "chrisMN" (like a Chris in MN). It looks like it's written to help someone who knows the username they are looking for or at least roughly knows the name. This makes sense because the same code supports finding users in starting a conversation. There you start typing the name and it gives a list to select from to find the person you want to start a conversation with. In that case, you'd almost always know the individuals username (if you didn't, you would too easily start a private conversation with the wrong person).

 

[kcm.MN]

A person might have better luck (sometimes) just doing a web search for as much of the username as they can remember. Either way, I foresee Member Searches being an all-too-often tedious task.

...If the member has special characters in their Username, do they have to be typed in as well?

 

[cpratt]

A person might have better luck (sometimes) just doing a web search for as much of the username as they can remember. Either way, I foresee Member Searches being an all-too-often tedious task.

...If the member has special characters in their Username, do they have to be typed in as well?

Yep, it's a character match. If you were looking for someone named Chris-WA, the - would be as significant as the letters and numbers, spaces too. If you type in Chris, it's taken so it will show only me, but when you type the -, then anyone with Chris- and anything following will appear in the drop down.

The first thing to establish is why you would use a list to look someone up, because there is probably a better way to get there depending on what the answer is. If you want to look at more information on a member, it's right there by hovering on their username or avatar in the post and then clicking to get more info. When you do that, you'll see all the information they want to give out shown in several tabs below the header information. You can immediately go to all their posts, their albums and everything they have chosen to share with others.

It strikes me that a member list would only be needed by someone looking to compile information in bulk on a site's users which you and I wouldn't be doing. In that case, such a list would be a good tool for spammers programming their bots, getting ready to send conversation spam to all users with a certain demographic (a certain age group or geographic area). For that reason, having such a list would be undesirable. Forums used to allow that but it's not a 2023 sort of thing that's safe to have. In other words I can understand what a full member list would be a liability and not something to include.

If the use of such a list is to look up someone you've forgotten and they haven't posted for long time, I can understand the dilemma. Without a member list that lists everyone, I don't know a way to do that. But even if there were a list, it's over 190K people and that's hours to find the person you are looking for even skipping around in the list.

If this last use case is correct, then I will look around and see if there is anywhere you can do what is called "substringing" (the computer term for how to form vague searches, google allows this in advanced search capabilities). What that means is to find a small fragment of a name as a search, like if you want to search for all usernames with "john" at the beginning, at the end or somewhere in the middle. I don't know of a way, but there may be.

BTW, the puzzles should be up very soon.

 

[kcm.MN]

Yep, it's a character match. If you were looking for someone named Chris-WA, the - would be as significant as the letters and numbers, spaces too. If you type in Chris, it's taken so it will show only me, but when you type the -, then anyone with Chris- and anything following will appear in the drop down.



It strikes me that a member list would only be needed by someone looking to compile information in bulk on a site's users which you and I wouldn't be doing. In that case, such a list would be a good tool for spammers programming their bots, getting ready to send conversation spam to all users with a certain demographic (a certain age group or geographic area). For that reason, having such a list would be undesirable. Forums used to allow that but it's not a 2023 sort of thing that's safe to have. In other words I can understand what a full member list would be a liability and not something to include.

If the use of such a list is to look up someone you've forgotten and they haven't posted for long time, I can understand the dilemma. Without a member list that lists everyone, I don't know a way to do that. But even if there were a list, it's over 190K people and that's hours to find the person you are looking for even skipping around in the list.

If this last use case is correct, then I will look around and see if there is anywhere you can do what is called "substringing" (the computer term for how to form vague searches, google allows this in advanced search capabilities). What that means is to find a small fragment of a name as a search, like if you want to search for all usernames with "john" at the beginning, at the end or somewhere in the middle. I don't know of a way, but there may be.

BTW, the puzzles should be up very soon.

The first thing to establish is why you would use a list to look someone up, because there is probably a better way to get there depending on what the answer is.


BTW, the puzzles should be up very soon.

As it turns out, I used the Member List on the old forum many times, and for the exact reason you cited. Many times a member has been MIA and, when trying to find out the last time they posted, ...well, that makes the task more difficult. Additionally, if the member has not been posting much in the past several months or so. Many times I have seen someone ask if so-and-so had been on lately, and when nobody can remember seeing the member post lately, I would go to the Member List and go through the myriad of pages (that IS a long list!!), and then would report back, as well as posting the link to that member's info -- just in case someone else wants to look up the info, last posts, etc. Many of those times I wouldn't know how to spell the Username in question, as I may not even know who that person is (though usually I did), but mostly I was having to use the list because special characters were being used, or in the case of very common names, there might be several pages of similar usernames. Just gonna take some gettin' used to is all. Heck, I'm amazed at how much progress ya'll have made already!!

Thanks for getting the puzzles up and running again! That has been a good resource for people to have, doing something fun, on-topic (usually), and a nearly endless supply.

 

[cpratt]

As it turns out, I used the Member List on the old forum many times, and for the exact reason you cited. Many times a member has been MIA and, when trying to find out the last time they posted, ...well, that makes the task more difficult. Additionally, if the member has not been posting much in the past several months or so. Many times I have seen someone ask if so-and-so had been on lately, and when nobody can remember seeing the member post lately, I would go to the Member List and go through the myriad of pages (that IS a long list!!), and then would report back, as well as posting the link to that member's info -- just in case someone else wants to look up the info, last posts, etc. Many of those times I wouldn't know how to spell the Username in question, as I may not even know who that person is (though usually I did), but mostly I was having to use the list because special characters were being used, or in the case of very common names, there might be several pages of similar usernames. Just gonna take some gettin' used to is all. Heck, I'm amazed at how much progress ya'll have made already!!

Thanks for getting the puzzles up and running again! That has been a good resource for people to have, doing something fun, on-topic (usually), and a nearly endless supply.

You're welcome on the puzzles, but in the end, I didn't do it. A brilliant fellow we have taking care of Cloudflare and the servers, came up with a way to do it that is far less intensive on the servers. His name is @RRankin but he's not the type to have any acclaim (my deceitful way of giving it to him). Anyway, they came right up and I wasted 10 minutes I shouldn't have, putting mostly together an old Allis B! My recollection is that it took me a lot longer when I put the real thing together ... I guess who needs a shop, tools and a paint gun when you can do it online . Just kidding, those are fun and rather addictive.

Now on the other issue. Before I lost myself in one of your puzzles, I searched and found that there is an option to turn on the member list alphabetical listing. Under it is a big warning for sites with a lot of usernames saying it will hurt performance of the site when someone uses it. Just what that means I'll have to find out, if it's a 2 second blip, that's probably doable, if it's a 10 second blip every few minutes, that's another story. I've got it on the list to research and will get back to you.

 

[kcm.MN]

RRankin -- Why does that name sound so familiar to me??

 

[stevieb49829]

RRankin -- Why does that name sound so familiar to me??

If I'd lost someone on the forum, and couldn't remember their exact handle, I'd probably browse the alphebetical list on the Member Map, knowing that not all handles are listed on that resource.

 

[kcm.MN]

Thank you Stevie. I had already forgotten about the Member Map.

Nope, not there. But maybe I was thinking of R Aiken??

 

[J Hamilton]

Thank you Stevie. I had already forgotten about the Member Map.

Nope, not there. But maybe I was thinking of R Aiken??

Yes there is a member by the handle of R Aiken. If you go to the magnifying glass icon you have the option to search by member name. Type it in there and hit search and you can find their posts

 

[DoubleO7]

On Find Member, if you start typing a name, it will give you the list of people that match

The other day someone was wanting to know if Big Dean was still here.

And the answer was not found via the search window because his last post was in 2005.
And currently the forum change over goes back to 2007.
But eventually will go back further in the near future (that don't read right lol).
Then maybe his username will show via a search.?

 

[cpratt]

The other day someone was wanting to know if Big Dean was still here.

And the answer was not found via the search window because his last post was in 2005.
And currently the forum change over goes back to 2007.
But eventually will go back further in the near future (that don't read right lol).
Then maybe his username will show via a search.?

No, it wouldn't. His username was never actually a username. He posted "anonymously" before the days that usernames existed. It means he never entered a password and the username wasn't recorded as anything but a "word" that was part of the old classic post. It would appear in a search engine because they pick up the text and classify it with the rest of the text of his posts. His posts will still be here, but they will probably show up as Anonymous-0 when they are loaded. Since we haven't loaded those yet, I'll probably be able to take note and to create usernames for old users in that category. Haven't started that project yet though.

Many old posts loaded already fall into this Anonymous category. There are a few thousand from 2007. It tapers off until we finally made a rule that people had to be registered to post. It eliminated this type of problem.