Quizbowldb Search not functioning

[Ubermensch]

quizbowldb.com has not been working for the past couple of weeks. What is going on and how long can we expect the site to be down? I am using Google Chrome, so that may be part of the issue.

[pajaro bobo]

quizbowldb.com has not been working for the past couple of weeks. What is going on and how long can we expect the site to be down? I am using Google Chrome, so that may be part of the issue.

I just went on QBDB on Chrome and searched something and it worked for me.

[High Dependency Unit]

I just went on QBDB on Chrome and searched something and it worked for me.

Ditto that.

[Ubermensch]

And now it appears to be working.

[Mnemosyne]

For what it's worth Dan Pechi isn't crazy. I've been checking regularly for the last few weeks on multiple browsers and it's been down.

[Corry]

For what it's worth Dan Pechi isn't crazy. I've been checking regularly for the last few weeks on multiple browsers and it's been down.

Ditto that.

[Hannibal]

This might be branching off a bit, but does anybody know how to make the search function actually find what you're looking for? How can you can the search the equivalent of putting quotes around a phrase in Google? I tried searching "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and literally none of the first 50 hits were at all related to my search. I find it hard to believe that there are no tossups in the database about One Hundred Years of Solitude.

[High Dependency Unit]

I did a search for Gabriel Garcia Marquez and got a tossup on 100 Years of Solitude as the second hit. Sometimes you might need to try alternate searches.

[Mewto55555]

If you ever need to search a large quantity of packets, and if QBDB's search algorithm continues to be totally useless for things longer than one word, then a handy trick is to just google "site:quizbowlpackets.com [thing I am searching for]".

[i never see pigeons in wheeling]

If you ever need to search a large quantity of packets, and if QBDB's search algorithm continues to be totally useless for things longer than one word, then a handy trick is to just google "site:quizbowlpackets.com [thing I am searching for]".

Alternatively, you could mass download all packets on the website and put them into a folder so that you can just do a system search within the folder.

[Stained Diviner]

Somebody already set this up for searches.

[Victor Prieto]

Based on my 5 minutes of testing out the search function, it appears as though the search function searches for the first word, and then displays all the results, and then searches for the next word and displays all results for the second word that didn't already appear for the first set of results. To illustrate:

Searching for "solitude" will return 18 results, 15 of which are one hundred years of solitude and the last three of which are labyrinth of solitude (apparently the search engine has a method of ranking the results).

Searching for "solitude years" wil return 1571 results, the first 18 of which are the same as "solitude." The 19th is My Last Duchess, for some reason.

Searching for "years solitude" will return 130 results, in which somewhere between 30 and 60 are the one hundred years of solitude answers. Dunno why there are only 130.

Searching for "one hundred years of solitude" returns 3411 results, the first three of which have the word "one" somewhere in a word in their name: Tommy Lee Jones, Inigo Jones, ketone. I don't care to dig further.

I guess this proves less is more.

Somebody already set this up for searches.

That one forces you to download the packet and search for it. However, that one also returns results that have the word you're searching for in the clues, not just the answerline. It just depends on what you need.

[UlyssesInvictus]

If Max's idea is still getting you way too many hits (say if you're searching a common word like "sleep"), it's not a far leap to also try a common answerline format like "site:quizbowlpackets.com ANSWER: sleep." Your mileage will vary, but I've found it very helpful.

[mithokie]

I would choose the most unique word in the title, like Solitude and use the Quizbowldb advanced search tool to enter
category:"Literature" condition:"all" solitude.
The first 15 hits were One Hundred Years of Solitude as the answer line. There were approximately 20 other hits (mostly Garcia Marquez questions, although there was an Aureliano Buendia question and a Macondo question). The search engine returned 70 hits in all, so about 50% were relevant to what I was looking for. The majority of the others included The Labyrinth of Solitude by Octavio Paz.

[sbfromcopley]

Just to elaborate a little on previous posts, I seem to be successful in finding the questions I was looking for almost all the time by doing a one-word search. As some other people said before me, just pick the most specific word of the answerline. It works better on some answerlines than others, but I think the most I've ever looked through in order to pick out the actual answerline I was looking for was about 70, and even though that seems like a lot it was actually quite easy just quickly scrolling through each page looking for the answer.

[Corry]

If you ever need to search a large quantity of packets, and if QBDB's search algorithm continues to be totally useless for things longer than one word, then a handy trick is to just google "site:quizbowlpackets.com [thing I am searching for]".

Great tip. Unfortunately, I don't think this works if the packets have been uploaded as a ZIP file, rather than as separate PDFs/Word documents. See: PACE 2012 vs. PACE 2013.

Alternatively, you could mass download all packets on the website and put them into a folder so that you can just do a system search within the folder.

I've already tried this with the 200 or so packets that I currently have saved on my computer, but each search takes over 30 seconds, which isn't fun at all. The instant feedback of QuizbowlDB has its own appeal. Too bad the search feature on the DB is so funky. :P

[Urech hydantoin synthesis]

http://www.skalon.com/untitled does not have this problem, though you can only look at one question at a time and the source of the question is not revealed.

[whaatt]

http://www.skalon.com/untitled does not have this problem, though you can only look at one question at a time and the source of the question is not revealed.

I'm probably going to do some work to make this like what QBDB used to be before the dramatic style change. Watch for updates on the main thread.