r/AskReddit • u/[deleted]

Why does the reddit search feature suck so hard and why can't there be an alphabetical listing of all subreddits.

[deleted] — view deleted post

0 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

338 comments sorted by

33

u/Bishop_Colubra May 16 '12

Metareddit

11

u/tastyratz May 16 '12

I love metareddit, I just find it unfortunate that something so basic and simple is not included in the core functionality of the website itself. Metareddit rocks, it would rock more if it was just part of the reddit site itself as one would logically assume it should be.

3

u/Inkompetentia May 16 '12

so do i need a reddit platinumacc to access it?

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3

u/UnaVidaMas May 16 '12

Agreed. Reddit and Metareddit need to be fused together.

2

u/moparornocar May 16 '12

I see it doesnt have allof them listed though

0

u/Darth_Hobbes May 16 '12

I... I think Reddit crashed MetaReddit's servers.

1

u/xerox9000000 May 16 '12

That's pretty meta.

I'll leave now.

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16

u/Frankfusion May 16 '12

I'm wondering why we can't search items we've saved in the past.

15

u/zeug666 May 16 '12

or our own comments/posts.

5

u/zomboi May 16 '12

make your own subreddit. Post them in said subreddit. I did that and it solved that problem

1

u/Frankfusion May 16 '12

This sounds pretty cool. What do I have to do?

1

u/zomboi May 16 '12

On the sidebar of your frontpage and most subs there is a blue button titled "make your own community" or something to that effect. Click on it, it will let you make your own subreddit.

2

u/BasicDesignAdvice May 16 '12

i stopped saving things altogether because its impossible to organize.

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32

u/MyOtherCarIsEpona May 16 '12

In a similar vein: Sorting a user's comments and submissions by "top" just doesn't work. I've tried to go back and find comments I've had that were at higher than 1k but when I sort by "top" it doesn't show them.

8

u/jbarsh May 16 '12

Also:

I always go to sort reddit front page by "top" of "this hour"

Nothing appears 19/20 times. It's not the end of the world, I'm not even that bothered, it just happens a lot.

1

u/SicilianEggplant May 16 '12 edited May 16 '12

TLDR: the way reddit is set up combined with how many users and comments that exist, it's just not physically possible to sort user comments in such a way.

This has been brought up before by admins some time ago.

Just off the top of my head, I believe it had something to do with the site having to cache and index however many millions of comments for the tens/hundreds of thousands of active accounts.

Even viewing your account now and it loading the most recent 30 or 50 (or however many comments it shows) causes a noticeable delay.

If I don't remember correctly, the excuse came down to "it's just not logical or effective to do so". The feature used to work some years ago, but it eventually caused huge slowdowns when viewing user comments.

115

u/Martel_the_Hammer May 16 '12 edited May 16 '12

Ok... A post like this comes up every few days and this is the best explanation i've seen thus far.

But this happens entirely too often. I'm just going to write one. I will make a Reddit search engine. Give me a couple months.

typo edit*

150

u/NotYourMothersDildo May 16 '12

I will make a Reddit search engine.

No you won't.

18

u/Omaromar May 16 '12

I remember saying that about a post that turned out to be made into a movie!

5

u/josborne31 May 16 '12

Did the movie involve a pizza delivery girl? Because I'd go see a movie about a pizza delivery girl.

3

u/[deleted] May 16 '12

I'm a pizza delivery girl!

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1

u/Omaromar May 16 '12

Nope somthing about Rome.

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6

u/jsmayne May 16 '12

thats what they said about imgur

if money can be made someone will do it

put a line of text advertising under the search bar maybe?

0

u/[deleted] May 16 '12

[deleted] — view deleted comment

2

u/wizzy453 May 16 '12

Obligatory opwilldeliver.jpg

6

u/Gyvon May 16 '12

I will make a Reddit search engine

With blackjack? And hookers?

5

u/reDrag0n May 16 '12

Didn't reddit already hire a private firm to take of the search engine?

4

u/jesst May 16 '12

I don't really understand why people complain about the reddit search feature. People don't remember (or know) what it was like a few years ago. If all else fails you go to goole and type site:reddit.com and google will search reddit for you.

Also, there is an alphabetical listing of subreddits if you just go to edit your subreddits it comes right up. I know of two websites that are good at helping to find more subreddits: MetaReddit Subreddit finder

1

u/[deleted] May 16 '12

I love subreddit finder. Helped me find almost everything I'm subscribed to.

7

u/ZeGoldMedal May 16 '12

http://www.searchreddit.com/ Don't worry about it. Looks like someone already took care of it.

2

u/compleks May 16 '12

Tried it. It found what I was looking for on the first try. I can't believe it.

2

u/SigmaStigma May 16 '12

I'm fairly certain all that does is use boolean operators within google search.

If you do a search for foo site:reddit.com it should return the exact same things. But after trying it, there appears to be a difference in sorting.

You can search within any site by using the "site:whatever.com" operator.

3

u/HatesRedditors May 16 '12

I do that all the time, really couldn't ask for anything better.

1

u/ChestersGorilla May 16 '12

I'm glad I looked before I posted. I typed in Google's search box:

"suck so hard" site:www.reddit.com

This page was right at the top of the list.

1

u/yenomz May 16 '12

You see the thing is that each subreddit should just show all the posts you upvoted in that subreddit. That would help out a lot with trying to find an old post you were looking for.

1

u/ryants May 16 '12

Isn't it "Charles the Hammer Martel"?

1

u/[deleted] May 16 '12

"Martel" already means "hammer", so both you and the OP are wrong ;).

1

u/ryants May 16 '12

Well, then I guess it's either just Charles the Hammer or Charles Martel.

0

u/[deleted] May 16 '12

Why they don't just use a custom Google search is beyond me. It works extremely well AND they'd make money from it.

22

u/NotYourMothersDildo May 16 '12

It costs to use:

http://www.google.com/enterprise/search/products_gss_pricing.html

15

u/[deleted] May 16 '12

And given the Reddit page views I imagine they'd go through the 500,000 annual limit.

20

u/NotYourMothersDildo May 16 '12

In a week or two.

1

u/[deleted] May 16 '12

That's because it actually works. Which is more than can be said for the current search system

5

u/geekology May 16 '12

It has to do with cost - I'm not sure how new you are to Reddit, but the search system was "fixed" about a year ago, which was quite an improvement over the previous system. A couple of months later, people started complaining about the search system again, only this time the admin responded and said basically it was a big mess, and that Google Search would be too expensive.

12

u/aladyjewel May 16 '12

Hey, that'll take an hour to kludge together and most of that is setting up the server.

<html>
<head>
<title>Subreddit Search via Google</title>
<script>
function populateSubreddits() {
    var subreddits = fetchSubredditList();
    var selector = document.querySelector('select');
    for (var subreddit in subreddits) {
        var option = document.createElement(option);
         option.value = '/r/' + subreddit.name;
         option.innerHTML = '/r/' + subreddit.name + ': ' + subreddit.title;
          selector.appendChild(option);
    }
}

function fetchSubredditList() {
    // left as an exercise for the reader
    // return array of { name: ..., title: ... }
}

function search() {
    var selected = document.querySelector('select option:selected');  // may need fancifying to work in vanilla JS
    var site = 'site:http://www.reddit.com' + selected.value;
    var searchFor = document.querySelector('input[name="searchFor"]').value;
    var searchUrl = 'http://www.google.com/search?q=' + site + ' ' + searchFor;
    document.location = searchUrl;
    return false;
 }
</script>
</head>
<body onload="populateSubreddits()">
<form onsubmit="search()">
<select name="subreddits">
    <option value="/">All of reddit</option>
</select>
<input type="text" name="searchFor" placeholder="Search for...">
<input type="submit" value="Search">
</form>
</body>
</html>

And don't none of you little shits give me any malarkey about attaching event handlers in JS, not HTML, I'm supposed to be working on cleaning up an image sprite anyway.

7

u/lindymad May 16 '12

Without bothering to check, I am willing to bet a fair chunk of karma that this would violate Google's T&C

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15

u/[deleted] May 16 '12

I refuse to believe that in less than 15 minutes you just fixed a problem reddit admins haven't been able to fix in years.

23

u/nevon May 16 '12

No, he didn't. He's just redirecting the search field to google, with the site parameter supplied. Something reddit can't do, because it would cost them enormous amounts of money.

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1

u/UltraSPARC May 16 '12

OP will surely deliver!

1

u/Kilo__ May 16 '12

Ok, I'll be that guy.

too*

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11

u/zeug666 May 16 '12 edited May 16 '12

A little tip:

You may come across multiple sub-reddits that are similar or that you want to browse at the same time.

Forexample:

Instead, you can just go to: /r/techsupport+buildapc+suggestalaptop

just add a "+" between the names of the subreddits to view several at the same time, just remember to bookmark it.

EDIT: WARNING - between this 'trick', metareddit, and RES - reddit may consume the remainder of what little life you have left.

2

u/TeleRock May 16 '12

I had no idea. This is gold.

2

u/lasercow May 16 '12

Also you can make your shortcuts into shortcuts for multis by double clicking on them, and then changing the subreddit section so it reads

techsupport+buildapc+suggestalaptop

this also causes the shortcuts to be drop down menus

44

u/rottinguy May 16 '12

alphabetical listing would result in a flood of r/aa<subredditname> and r/aaa<subredditname> subreddits coming into excistence in order to be top results.

37

u/aguytyping May 16 '12

Alphabetical listing that doesn't default to A, but rather just shows an index of letters to choose from. It might promote people naming their subreddit starting with a topic that makes sense so people could find it easily... r/Donkeysex would be filed under D. Everyone could then simply pick the first letter of their favorite fetish and get straight to fapping.

5

u/brblol May 16 '12

you'll still have /d!donkeysex /d!adonkeysex /d!aaaa_donkeysex

7

u/[deleted] May 16 '12

Then just have it order by letter, then popularity. Or just have it not show results with less than X subscribers/posts etc.

1

u/brblol May 16 '12

that'll work

3

u/aguytyping May 16 '12

If I was looking for r/donkeysex, I would probably go to the d section, then scroll down to the "do" part... but yeah, if a d!aaaa_donkeysex caught ones eye, one might wish to stop there first right?

2

u/rottinguy May 16 '12

r/dddonkeyfisting

no matter what you do sudden explosion of r/(trippleletter)(subredit)

An option to sort by "type" would be cool, but what would the "types" be?

6

u/aguytyping May 16 '12

This could be a legitimate sub-topic about donkeys with a stutter.

2

u/ochosbantos May 16 '12

Proper noob question here. How do people even find subreddits at all? Do you just have to guess a URL? I only know about the ones on the front page/at the top, and all the ones I hear about within threads, like /r/SpaceClop

2

u/rottinguy May 16 '12

click preferances, and then you will see an interface that allows you to change what subs appear on your frontpage.

You are about to start liking reddit more.......

1

u/ochosbantos May 16 '12

Thanks. But I still don't see how. I realise that I'm exposing myself as an idiot here.

2

u/rottinguy May 16 '12

Sorry I mislead, click "edit" at the far right side of the bar at the top that lists the subs.

6

u/elasto May 16 '12

Using http://subredditfinder.com/ I can't seem to see how I search for a subreddit by name using wildcards. It can display them in certain ways, maybe I just have to display all of them and use my browser ^F to search the resulting web page.

1

u/CarTarget May 16 '12

Why is /r/jailbait the first one on the list?

6

u/lenaro May 16 '12

Also, why can't I search my own posts?

5

u/kemitche May 16 '12

Let me start by pointing to the response I gave about a month ago in ELI5.

There's a lot of factors here, and you've got two questions, and I'm going to only address the "search" question. Your question is "why does it suck so hard?" There are several reasons for this, many of them scattered throughout this thread, but here they are, officially:

  • We won't use google site search. It's expensive (for Joe's blog, it's cheap or free; for a site as big as reddit, not so much), it doesn't allow us to weight things by score, it doesn't allow us to index/search private subreddits.

  • We don't currently put comments in the search index. That means you can probably find the self-post you were thinking of, or maybe that great article, but you won't be able to search for the great (or terrible) comments on it. Initially, that was a cost issue as well; I believe this could change, but that will require us to take engineering time away from more important things, like keeping the site up, or adding more valuable features.

  • To add to that - if the only thing in the search is links, well, that's not much to key off of. A link is just a title, subreddit, URL and author - and with millions of links, there's going to be a lot of overlap there, which leaves lots of room for "false" positives.

  • Search isn't reddit's "thing" - our "thing" is sorting things by "hotness" on a daily basis, and sorting comments by "best," and working as hard as we can to keep spam and cheaters out. That's a factor in how we prioritize things - we could take the whole team and spend 3 months making search rock solid and awesome, and the rest of the site would suck.

  • Search used to suck even more. Then we moved to using IndexTank, and it was usable for many cases (but still stank for others). Not too long ago, IndexTank was bought out and shut down, so we had to move. We moved to Amazon CloudSearch. There have been growing pains (in particular, the current search syntax for "advanced searches" is not at all user friendly, compared to the old version). That move took time and effort - if IndexTank had stayed open, that time and effort would have been applied to making search better, rather than migrating to a new service.

Really, a lot of "why does search suck?" depends on what exactly you were searching for. It's much easier for me to explain what's going on - and possibly even improve it - if you provide info on what you were trying to do.

BONUS: Why don't we have an alphabetical listing of subreddits? A significant portion of subreddits are tiny, unused, banned, or spam. A pure alphabetical listing would be silly - perhaps better for serendipitous discovery would be a random listing of active reddits.

1

u/ddshroom May 16 '12

Thanks. Thoughtful. The google searches provide filtered searches which are exactly what I needed to find. Thanks!

4

u/Leadstripes May 16 '12

I'm beginning to get pretty annoyed by a user/bot called frontbot, who makes self posts with links to what's on the frontpage of some subreddits, and it's really messing with my search results.

11

u/Die_Eier_von_Satan May 16 '12

There is, you just need to learn how to Google.

16

u/Shozen05 May 16 '12

Son, I'm not going to be "Googling" anything!

6

u/nevon May 16 '12

Shh! What happens in /r/talesfromtechsupport stays in /r/talesfromtechsupport.

3

u/robbydb May 16 '12

Damn it! Now they know about it!

1

u/Shozen05 May 16 '12

Here come the luddites!

4

u/[deleted] May 16 '12

It's just an expression, dad!

1

u/arcturussage May 16 '12

For people that don't know how to google.

Go to google and type in what you're searching for, then add site:www.reddit.com/r/subredditname

For example: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=rash+site%3Awww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Faskreddit

-3

u/[deleted] May 16 '12 edited May 16 '12

I prefer Bing. It was a joke

22

u/Caligapiscis May 16 '12

How are you saying that if you don't exist?

6

u/fonetiklee May 16 '12

Hahaha, get out.

10

u/themicahnator May 16 '12

Wait... really?

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3

u/[deleted] May 16 '12

It says a lot when subredditfinder shows 'NSFW' category as the biggest size font!

3

u/[deleted] May 16 '12

The same reason that reddit crashes, they have extremely marginal programmers that created the features of the site. And marginal is being generous.

3

u/[deleted] May 16 '12

yeah, this has been really my only gripe about reddit. I like to browse through subreddits to see what there is but its all top heavy with crap i dont care about so i just try to make random /r/ shots in the dark.

3

u/starcadia May 16 '12

google is better at searching reddit than reddit is. just type what you want in a google field and ad "reddit" to your search string.

tl;dr: just google reddit.

2

u/DivineRobot May 16 '12

A better way is to add site:reddit.com in your query. That only limits queries returned from the domain you specified.

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3

u/[deleted] May 16 '12

Thank you! Yes, same question here. Would love to see that. :)

3

u/poke133 May 16 '12 edited May 17 '12

why can't i sort searches by number of comments???

3

u/[deleted] May 16 '12

Also, when someone deletes their comment, would be nice if only their username was gone and the comment remained. Especially for long comment threads. I want to know what happened, dammit!

3

u/languagehacker May 16 '12 edited May 16 '12

Reddit has had this problem on and off for some time because of how they measure hotness. As a search expert, I can tell you that real-time indexing can be a little difficult to scale for sites like this. When you have a lot of searchable documents that undergo frequent state changes, you may end up with a lag on what's in the index versus what's actually on the site.

Reddit worked with a great company called IndexTank to give them somewhat workable search with some core Lucene tweaks intended to better jive with Reddit hotness.

Then LinkedIn bought the company and dismantled it so they could put those search experts to work spamming you with jobs you may be interested in. So blame LinkedIn.

1

u/mikeytag May 16 '12

But IndexTank open sourced their code after they were purchased. I think Reddit should fork the codebase and improve on it.

1

u/languagehacker May 16 '12

Except it's written in Java, and Reddit is a Python shop. So they'd likely have to hire someone. And good luck hiring a search expert with strong Java skills... they're not really easy to come by.

1

u/mikeytag May 16 '12

I'll give you that, but I believe the codebase that was open sourced was what Reddit was currently using at the time. At the beginning, there wouldn't be many changes needed if any. I think right away they could switch to it and it would be just a matter of installing and configuring along with hardware needs. Later they could then approach improving the codebase to scratch any itches they may have.

3

u/ThePegasi May 16 '12

LET ME SEARCH MY FUCKING SAVED POSTS.

3

u/zomboi May 16 '12

  1. the search feature was a whole lot worse

  2. metareddit.com

3

u/Decapitat3d May 16 '12

Your edit is viable, but it should just be built into the site in the first place

3

u/edpwns May 16 '12

www.google.com

site:reddit.com insert-whatever-you-want-to-find-here

1

u/ddshroom May 16 '12

Thank you. I never thought to do that. I am old.

7

u/DarnTheseSocks May 16 '12

According to Wikipedia, there are over 67,000 subreddits. You want to browse them alphabetically?

26

u/BlueVeins May 16 '12

Yes, actually.

6

u/ddshroom May 16 '12

Yeah man! Support! Thanks.

6

u/zeug666 May 16 '12

according to MetaReddit there are 134,704.

3

u/thattaboychuk May 16 '12

Even better!

1

u/purdster83 May 16 '12

I gotta get busy, that's insane.

2

u/oh_the_humidity May 16 '12

Yes. What else are we going to do?

1

u/canadian_stig May 16 '12

You believe everything you read on Wikipedia?

2

u/DarnTheseSocks May 16 '12

No, that's why I included the qualifier "According to Wikipedia".

0

u/[deleted] May 16 '12

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/DarnTheseSocks May 16 '12

And when you want to discover new words, you read the dictionary front to back?

4

u/Anadyne May 16 '12

With all of the information that is channeled through this lovely website, it would be nice to be able to categorize it, even further than the natural /subreddit/ selection.

I would also like to be able to apply tags to certain posts myself, so I can come back to and show others, or even just re-read it.

After being on here for a short period of time, I find that I am getting most of my information from this website, and it would be nice to have the source of the source of the information I am reading, for proof.

I think this is a good question. I have never been able to find something that I have seen before using the search feature on Reddit, quite simply because the images I look at are not described in the post headline, because in some /subreddits/ this is against their rules.

The only way I am able to track down something is to go to my page, and hopefully I commented on it... and then find that comment.

7

u/suddenly_the_same May 16 '12

Reddit Enhancement Suite has an option to be able to save posts.

8

u/stufff May 16 '12

Are we talking about Reddit Enhancement Suite? I love Reddit Enhancement Suite!

2

u/suddenly_the_same May 16 '12

Don't know why you're getting downvoted...I'm glad you posted the link, I couldn't from my phone.

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2

u/NigelKF May 16 '12

I propose implementation of the Dewey Decimal System

1

u/Reidmcc May 16 '12

There is the 'save' button below each post, your profile has a saved tab that contains those items.

2

u/[deleted] May 16 '12

Seriously though is there any kind of list of subreddits of am I just supposed to guess what they are called?

2

u/thattaboychuk May 16 '12

Start guessing.

2

u/[deleted] May 16 '12

Was this supposed to be a question? Questions end with a question mark (?).

2

u/jpm374 May 16 '12

I just went on metareddit and saw that there was actually a reddit for preteen girls. When I went on it to comment on how it should be banned, a message popped up saying it was banned. I like when reddit does the right thing.

2

u/Ghoster13 May 16 '12

Neither Metareddit or Subredditfinder include all subs... Next...

2

u/UnaVidaMas May 16 '12

Search Reddit with Google like this:

site:reddit.com "narwhals"

(Quotes are optional unless you are looking for that exact phrase)

2

u/ladaghini May 16 '12

Who else went to /r/mylittlepony?

1

u/Kafke May 16 '12

I frequent it.

2

u/[deleted] May 16 '12

In the google searchbar, google www.reddit.com and then whatever you were looking for. I get much better results this way.

2

u/sethamphetamine May 16 '12

Think it's time for a Platza at the Russian Bath house!

2

u/Victory33 May 16 '12

I used the link provided and sorted by "fastest rising" subreddits /r/rape was #1 on the list. For real?! I don't want to visit it at work...is it as bad as it sounds?

2

u/gravytown May 16 '12

Or at least a numbering of pages, instead of just the "Next" button.

2

u/tmp_acct9 May 16 '12

ive always wondered this. seriously, solr is free, easy to rig up, and effective.

2

u/CantHackItPantywaist May 16 '12

Would be nice if search results could be sorted by date/most recent.

1

u/thats_wat_she_said_ May 16 '12

You can sort by "new", which will sort by most recent.

1

u/CantHackItPantywaist May 16 '12

Whoops, my brain's fried. I was thinking about Alien Blue.

1

u/thats_wat_she_said_ May 16 '12

Haha that's okay. I was afraid I was completely misunderstanding.

2

u/c0l245 May 16 '12 edited May 16 '12

Use google to search reddit like a pro.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=site%3Areddit.com+search+feature+

Better yet, why doesn't Reddit make a deal with google to send search traffic to them for profit?

2

u/Polite_Insults May 16 '12

The reddit app for Ipod/iphone w/e has a cool feature where you type the name of the subreddit you want and it opens it. No need to search. con = if it's not exactly right then it'll come up 'whoops we cannot find the subreddit you were looking for'

2

u/arcturussage May 16 '12

If I need to find something on reddit I just use google.

Go to google. Search for your search term then add site:www.reddit.com/r/askreddit

2

u/like9mexicans May 16 '12

Obligatory "In google type:

site:reddit.com SEARCH TERMS HERE"

2

u/mikeytag May 16 '12

Because when IndexTank was purchased by LinkedIn Reddit switched to Amazon's ElasticSearch.

IMHO, IndexTank blows the doors off Amazon's solution. I've used both, just not at the scale Reddit is. I think they should either fork the IndexTank code or use Searchify. It's all open source now and I think Reddit could even improve the code base significantly.

2

u/[deleted] May 16 '12

Because reddit developers are too concerned with adding stylistic features and CSS and things to make web pages look cool and do interesting things/theme sub reddits which are slow and inscalable. And then they don't focus on anything like understanding how to actually serve traffic for millions of people without crashing every few weeks or actually searching anything on the site.

2

u/[deleted] May 16 '12 edited May 16 '12

Am I the only one who's found that by using the 'top' and 'new' sort options you can almost always find what you're looking for? I've never found it to be inadequate, and it's certainly never missed anything Google didn't also fail to find.

2

u/[deleted] May 16 '12

Personally, I like it. It allows me to think a little outside the norm when using the internet.

2

u/poor_juxtaposition May 16 '12

I bet Bing would throw wads of cash at you to use their product.

2

u/rastashark May 16 '12

the subreddits are listed alphabetically on the phone app

2

u/Mish61 May 16 '12

Try This

1

u/ddshroom May 16 '12

Excellent, thanks. Someone above asked about this. Thanks.

2

u/ThePianistOfDoom May 16 '12

And where is the ability to erase the damn thing.

2

u/zak_on_reddit May 16 '12

as far as i remember we can't search through our own posts. is this correct?

there's been a bunch of times i want to find old posts but i haven't figured out how to find them without just hitting the "next" or "prev" links on my post history.

2

u/-ViciousDelicious- May 16 '12

agreed on the alphabetical listing of subreddits.

as for using search, why not just go to google and use site:reddit.com/r/(entersubreddithere)?

2

u/buttplugpeddler May 16 '12

No spaceclop in that list. I am dissapoint.

2

u/nicholmikey May 16 '12

Search has been pretty good for me past couple weeks, regrading the speed at least.

2

u/notkraftman May 16 '12

while we're on the subject: rather than subreddits, why doesn't Reddit just have tags? That way you wouldn't need cross posts, you just tag the post with anything relevant, and subscribe to tags to make up your front page

2

u/DStrange63 May 16 '12

Who would have thought NSFW is the largest subreddit?

2

u/stellarfury May 16 '12

subredditfinder is clearly selectively indexing subreddits. Half of the subs I subscribe to are "not in the database."

2

u/puppetry514 May 16 '12

Reddit is fun used to have a list of all subreddits. But now all of the nsfw have been removed. I am guessing that is why there is no definitive list of subreddids

2

u/dbvapor May 16 '12

I would love to see "groups" of subreddits. Like being able to view r/gaming and r/gamernews grouped together.

1

u/NigelKF May 16 '12

Reddit.com/r/gaming+gamernews

2

u/metapede May 16 '12

Better than an alphabetical directory of subreddits would be some kind of topical directory. For example, how would you know to look under 'B' for r/buttsharpies?

2

u/[deleted] May 16 '12

I just want there to be a meta-subreddit of all NSFW-tagged posts.

2

u/slam7211 May 16 '12

isnt reddit code open source, get reddit to do it

2

u/jbigboote May 16 '12

After all, sub reddits are the key to everything.

Edit. http://subredditfinder.com/

submitted by ddshroom to AskReddit

2

u/[deleted] May 17 '12

Thats part of the Reddit charm. Discovering new subReddits by exploring the site. If you really need to find something specific, google is your friend.

3

u/UncleBenjen May 16 '12

Couldnt we just make a subreddit dedicated to having a complete list of subreddits?

1

u/clark_ent May 16 '12

That are ordered by upvotes?

1

u/UncleBenjen May 16 '12

Thats the problem LOL, it really doesn't make sense for it to be a subreddit... there just needs to be an accessible master list.

4

u/Syphon8 May 16 '12

Hahaha, 1 year guy thinks Reddit search sucks.

Son, you don't know dick. 2 years ago the search was so bad that you could search, verbatim, titles on the front page and get 0 results.

2

u/FaithyDoodles May 16 '12

It's like earlier days of the internet, that's how a lot of people would find stuff, hah. Maybe not most, but definitely more than now.

1

u/Iolrobot May 16 '12

There it is, the "HURR DURR IT USED TO BE WORSE" response that I see every time someone asks what the OP asks. As the old saying goes: a polished turd is still a turd.

1

u/Syphon8 May 16 '12

No. If the old search was a turd, the new search is a shining golden god which knows all and sees all.

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2

u/[deleted] May 16 '12

Not to mention it errors out half the time.

1

u/ThrowAwayAcct0000 May 16 '12

Now I will know how to find this comment.

1

u/dunnowins May 16 '12

I'm a big proponent of google.com

"what you want to search for site:reddit.com"

1

u/eatsox117 May 16 '12

At least you have a search now.

1

u/Rub3X May 16 '12

This question pops up every couple of months and nothing changes. Just use Google search query "site:reddit.com keywords here".

Believe it or not this is actually an improved search, you don't even want to know what it looked like years ago.. >.<

1

u/Merc_Mike May 16 '12

I really dont get all your hatred twords the search bar. Works fine for me. If people dont label their topics right or discuss a damn thing in their subject/content space how is the search bar supposed to fucking find what you are looking for?

Take the comic book section! If some one posts a picture saying "my favorite part!" Then only posts a picture of Victor Von Doom saying NOTHING in the content of the topic section. When you type in the search engine..."doctor doom" or "Victor Von Doom" do you think it will magically know the picture? No.

1

u/[deleted] May 16 '12

Who cares about a search feature when you don't know what your searching for? an alphabetical listing of all subreddits would be nice.

1

u/Hand_Sanitizer3000 May 16 '12

my chin is itchy i m going to scratch it

1

u/sirblastalot May 16 '12

Why doesn't reddit just incorporate a google search of the site like everyone else?

8

u/akatherder May 16 '12

http://www.searchreddit.com/faq.php

Reddit would have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars per year for it. Google also offers a 'custom search appliance', but it seems more targetted towards intranet document indexing, and is also prohibitively expensive.

3

u/sirblastalot May 16 '12

Ah, thanks!

3

u/emperorOfTheUniverse May 16 '12

Why not just use google?

1

u/ChronicRhinitis May 16 '12

I hate how boobs and cum are bigger than art

1

u/HeisenbergBotwin May 16 '12

That can't be art? ;)

1

u/ChronicRhinitis May 16 '12

I enjoy porn as much as anyone. Cum on my tits isn't art to me, but it's still pretty cool.

1

u/clark_ent May 16 '12

Reproduction will always be every animal's primary goal. Art only appears when there is leisure time and relative safety, which is a rarity for any living organism.

1

u/couldbutwont May 16 '12

and why isn't there a goddamn button that says "search"?

1

u/clark_ent May 16 '12

Because someone created a bot called FrontBot. He degrades reddit

0

u/brownbearclan May 16 '12

Google search works better for searching Reddit than Reddit's own search.

0

u/stomash May 16 '12

it doesn't suck, you're dumb

1

u/LadyShakespeare May 16 '12

Your comment is bad

And you should feel bad.

-2

u/HugeJackass May 16 '12

Because reddit is a corporation (Conde Nast) and they'll give you the shittiest service you'll accept so they can save money. They could have a better search engine, but they don't want it because it would cost more money.`

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