hms123: Jul-10-09
chessgames.com: NEW SEARCH FEATURE
The Search Kibitzing has a new feature... two new features actually. You can now use a special syntax to search for posts by a specified member, or to exclude posts by specified members. SYNTAX
To specify a certain member, you type
+user:<username>
Where <username> is a screen name at Chessgames. If the username has spaces in it, you have to put quotes around the name, e.g.
+user:"Chessgames Bookie"
To exclude a member, you use the negated form with a minus sign (-) like this:
-user:<username>
That will show you posts NOT by the specified user. You use this in conjunction with some other search terms.
EXAMPLES
• To find out what User: cu8sfan says on the subject of baseball, you can type
+user:cu8sfan baseball
• To find out what User: Chessgames Bookie says on the subject of "juice" you type in
+user:"Chessgames Bookie" juice
• To find comments about Fischer that were not posted by Sneaky, type this:
Fischer -user:Sneaky
• To find comments about Fischer that were posted by somebody other than Sneaky and Honza Cervenka, type this:
Fischer -user:Sneaky -user:"Honza Cervenka"
• Suppose OhioChessFan wants to find posts addressing him (or mentioning his screen name) but he doesn't want to see his own posts in the search results. He could type this
OhioChessFan -user:OhioChessFan
TECHNICAL NOTES
1. Although you can only have one +user clause, you can have as many -user clauses as will fit in the form.
2. The plus (+) in the +user clause is optional; if you leave it out, the plus is assumed.
3. You can use the +user clause all by itself, but when you use the -user clause you must also include at least one search term.
4. The position of the +user and -user clauses don't matter; they can be at the beginning, middle, or end of the other search terms.
5. The syntax should be slightly forgiving, e.g. inserting extra spaces before or after the colon (:) should still work.
6. Usernames are case insensitive. Don't worry about whether it's "acirce" or "Acirce", it will work either way.
7. Member names with spaces need to be placed inside quotation marks for clarity. Alternately, you can replace spaces in the username with underscores (_) or dashes(-) to avoid needing the quotation marks. For example, all of these searches are equivalent:
+user:"Honza Cervenka"
+user:Honza_Cervenka
+user:Honza-Cervenka
8. If you mistype somebody's username you will not get a special error message, so watch your spelling.
DOCUMENTATION
These enhancements to our Search Kibitzing are in "beta mode" and undocumented. We will update our Premium Membership Help Page later this month to provide official documentation.
Kibitzing
