whats happend to ATS?

reply to post by bodrul


I agree the search if really bad. Hint,hint.....Skeptical overlord.



But on the up side it is a great place to find the cold hard truth. With so many posters from all over the world you get a vast amount knowledge all in one place.


Just like America the reason ATS is so great is diversity.




I do have one other problem and I believe TPTB are starting to use ATS to push agendas using paid posters and this is a real problem and a tough one to tackle.

Deferred Payment

Originally posted by SubTruth
I do have one other problem and I believe TPTB are starting to use ATS to push agendas using paid posters and this is a real problem and a tough one to tackle.

Funny you should mention that...

Solid State Society

A bit off-topic, but we all have our theories, and I'm no exception.

reply to post by Majic

I've never understood (completely off-topic) why you have so few stars. Perhaps most of your responses are posted in areas where stars may not be applicable or...I think I now realise. Your answers are usually cerebral. In fact, I sometimes doubt you are human, your command of the English language seems too....clinical. Spock-like, for want of a better analogy. I remember attempting to start your My Little Brony (?) thread. I don't think my synapses have been the same since. It is exactly people like you (and at least one other Mod I had the good fortune to be afforded benefits of doubts by...I won't name names) that make this site what it is, along with many respected members of course. A certain welcoming lady, often with cookies or cake jumps fondly in my mind but my mind is not what it used to be, thankfully...I only remember the nice things now.

Light Out. And peace.V

PS This seemingly slime-ball post was sponsored by good vibes, good sounds, and Miller Lite. Well, the local, cheap, possibly semi-toxic variant in any case. But that should not detract or dilute the honest emotions I try to convey via this unwilling and sometimes fiercely resisting keyboard.

New search can't find anything. Pretty much need the exact title of a thread if you're looking for one. No wonder there's a million copy cat threads flooding the site.


ATS as a whole has gone down hill and is slowly turning into a yahoo.com forum.

reply to post by bodrul


I agree on the search...I never use it because it is so painful.

I don't understand how it can be that hard...a search function is such a basic basic feature of any forum.

The new search engine is just awful.... it looks awful and it works even worse.



Here's a tip.


It's actually easy to search on google itself than it is to use the ATS search feature.

For anyone who doesn't know how, just go to regular google search, and to search only ATS on google type.


site:abovetopsecret.com

and then whatever you're searching for..

Could be
members names
Thread names
Subjects
Keywords
Old threads
Certain individual posts


Whatever

That way is so much easier than using ATS samuru or whatever it's called.

There used to be a google search bar actually on ATS, up in the right hand corner/section of the screen.... no idea why they got rid of it.

ETA: I see it's now samaru seach instead...

reply to post by bodrul

whats happend to ATS?

Only good things.

why must you guys have entire section at the top dedicated to topics

Of genre.

Hello everyone.

First, let me reassure all those in this, and other threads on similar topics, that we would never inject sub-standard services into the mixture that delivers ATS -- at least, not on purpose.

Several people have given us some very high praise for the Samuru.com search engine, one from a highly regarded technology blog: Big Data Search Engines Are Big Right Now, and several discussions on "Hacker News" (not "hacker-hacker," but the discussion forum for Ycombinator, the biggest technology incubator) have shown people are getting good results. Even Matt Cutts, Google search evangelist, liked what he saw and will be watching.

But you don't care about that, you care about search on ATS. And I think I discovered why Samuru is doing much more poorly than when originally launched.

Back when we were the target of some attacks, we consolidated our IT infrastructure, and improved a few areas as well. It looks as though that caused a problem with our auto-generated site maps, which are XML files that assist search engines in finding new content on sites, as well as understand the structure of a site.

The new maps are being generated now, after some code updates. Once Samuru has everything re-indexed -- might be 2-5 days for completion, there are more than 3 million pages on ATS -- we'll see if there's an improvement.


Sorry for the issues, please be patient, we have ever expectation that this will eventually blow away any other site search in terms of quality of results -- we're working on the appearance.

reply to post by SkepticOverlord


Props on the positive press, Bill. I've seen a few glitches in the new search engine, but overall, it looks to be an improvement, and largely because you (the empirical you) can control the results.

To that end, can we please, please, please, get the returned results sorted by date, or at least have that option once the results are returned? Duplicate threads are almost always the result of a generic term searched for, which returns eight million results, and the exact same thread shows up on page three or something. If it showed up at the top, because the results were sorted by date, it would eliminate that problem immediately.

It's probably not as simple as an SQL sort (unless you're checking the ATS db directly ) but there must still be a way to tag off first post date or something to accomplish it.

I also dislike the new search engine. I wasn't going to say anything until now, but here is why: I wanted to find a thread that I know exists to post an update. After going to Samaru, I used at least a half a dozen queries with various keywords from the subject/title and story, and NOTHING came. Frustrated, I went to Google and queried just ONCE with a few keywords and added abovetopsecret and it was the FIRST result to pop up.

Not cool, Samaru.