Forum Posting and Searching

[Claire]

With over 1,100 posts on SCM now I have to ask an obvious question – How can we help everyone to not ask the same questions over and over?  I’m as guilty as the next person when I want a fast answer.  But maybe there is a better way to make our forum more effective and efficient?  Is my OCD really obvious by my question?! 

I see the “cloud” on the side but are those topics there based on the tags in our posts?  Should we make sure to tag our posts with a relevant tag so that when a person is asking questions about History before they ask they can click and search old posts on History?  Is there a way to make searching in that cloud or searching old posts more effective so that we find the type of information we are interested in faster without re-posting?

 

[Claire]

I already have a question as I wander around in that “cloud thingy” … what if I tag something as ART and HISTORY where does it fall?  What is the best method for acurate retrival?

[missceegee]

Does this help, Claire? https://simplycharlottemason.com/scmforum/topic/tag-your-posts-pretty-please

[LindseyD]

I’ve never had success searching on here. If I type a word or words into the search, it usually pulls up the recent forum posts, whether they have anything to do with what I’m looking for or not. Certain words like “history”, “narration”, or “dictation” are so broad in this CM space that I think it’s difficult to narrow it down to what you’re really looking for. Even tagged posts are pretty broad. Any help with this would be great!

[sarah2106]

I find if after the first search request, if I scroll to the bottom of the search screen and select “search at Google” I get much better results

[sheraz]

BTW, I found these threads by first entering ‘jump in’ in the search box on the forum topic page, then scrolling down the results to the bottom, where I clicked on ‘try your search at Google.’ That usually helps me find trickier-to-locate threads.

HTH,

Sue

That is how I do it too. Much better results. The tags would be great as well.

[Claire]

Yeah, I am thinking now that one of the TOP posts that stays on the forum (like the welcome post) needs to be one about posting and tagging and searching the forum.

I’m with you Lindsey.  I can’t find what I want specifically when I search.  Say I want to know something about narrations … I’m searching through over 10 pages of posts to find anything I want.  I won’t do it.  And so I do the horrible RE-POST thing that has made the forum an unending cycle of History questions on how to use the resources or what books or how to combine the modules in to less years!!! LOL. 

I’m going to try this Google thing … not sure I get that yet but let me see what I can do.