better way of searching?

First, not complaining at all. The mods are wonderful about letting us know if a topic is already being discussed and directing us to it if a thread is closed. It's very much appreciated

I started a thread after I did a search to see if it was already addressed and didn't find anything, so, I went ahead and started a thread (Twinkie Armageddon).

My question is, can there be a better way to see if something's already being discussed? I don't want to clutter things with topics that are already out there, but I really did look for it first and didn't find anything. It happened to be in a different forum, which is often the case.

I also know it's not an easy question to answer since there are many members, many threads, many forums and there are overlaps from time to time.

Maybe I'm not searching properly and that's why I didn't find anything

I don't want to cause more work for the mods by starting threads that are already being discussed, so are there any helpful hints out there to make my searches more effective or to make the search function itself more effective?

Will the new tldr plugin help with this perhaps? Does it give a summary of topics as well as summarize threads? (haven't tried it yet, but really should give it a go)

Thanks for any helpful comments that may come from this

When searching ATS, use key words.

I entered 'Twinkie' in the search engine and got tons of responses, including the current thread shown on the 1st page.

reply to post by masqua


hmmmm I think my problem may have been with spelling it "Twinkee" when I did the search....



OK, I feel stupid now


Thanks Masqua!

Another huge issue for search is the browser you use. Opera isn't supported and likely won't return anything useful. Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and later versions of IE should do fine.

Springer...

reply to post by Springer


I don't always get useful returns from the search either. And I do use both the original article headline and if that returns nothing I use key words. I am a FireFox user so maybe this is my problem...