I notice that different people come to nairaland and repeat the questions that have been asked and answered in the past. I belong to other forums and the first thing they tell you as a new member is to use the search bar before you ask any questions. That is, you type your question in the search bar of the forum to know if that question has been asked and answered. If it has, your question has been answered anyways so there's no point repeating it.

On nairaland, the search feature has not been updated to search for phrases instead of searching for words. If i type "how to make money" for example, the search results would list every post that has "how", "to", "make" and/or "money" and that is mostly not what i would need. The search result should include the particular phrase i'm looking for, not the individual words. So when people repeat the same questions, it becomes understandable.

Having said that, here is what i do when i want to search for anything on nairaland. I use google.com. I type the phrase i want to search for and add nairaland at the end of it. So if i want to search for "money making ideas" for example, I go to google.com and type "money making ideas nairaland." Because google uses semantic indexing, it gives me all posts that contain my phrase on nairaland plus other related phrases. And even better, I could add the date or year and get latest posts instead of old posts. this method works great for me so I don't have to go through the pains of making a new thread for an old question.

I still think the team at nairaland should update their search feature though. It'll make the community a much better place to learn.

cc: lalasticlala

U Try

Apart from your suggestion the moderators should make things easy by linking old thread-links to duplicate questions and close the thread immediately. Many people genuinely post questions not knowing they've already been answered - these types appreciate the effort done by closing the thread while trolls go ahead and repeatedly open new threads asking the same question over and over again.

charix:
Apart from your suggestion the moderators should make things easy by linking old thread-links to duplicate questions and close the thread immediately. Many people genuinely post questions not knowing they've already been answered - these types appreciate the effort done by closing the thread while trolls go ahead and reopen a new thread asking the same question over and over again.

Exactly. I agree.

delivite:


Exactly. I agree.

The funny part is moderators on the politics section always do this but other sections' don't follow suit, laziness maybe.

maybe hashtags and tag clouds can also help?

EnterPRO:
maybe hashtags and tag clouds can also help?

Yea, if people knew how to use them