Tuesday, September 07, 2004

Bug alert - The Union's "Search Archives" is silently defective

Update: No longer silent; helpful warning has been added as of sometime on or before before Nov.21.

Local post; will appear mind-numbingly tedious to nonlocals...



Update: as of Oct. 7, editor says:
Swift Newspaper techs in Reno (where our site is hosted) says it is a problem with Publicus, our Web software. Publicus needs to reindex our archive. Problem is, Publicus tells us it has no time because of something to do with the Florida hurricanes...In any case, we are still working on it...


The results given by The Union's Search are incomplete. For example, typing Beason functionaries into the Search window brings up no hits, although both words are present in this piece; typing Weismann does not bring up his most revealing letter.

The Union staff is aware of the problem - "We are working on getting this fixed" - but haven't put any sort of caveat on the Search page that I can see, and I don't know how long it's been a problem, or what priority is being placed on fixing it, or if there's any pattern (be it devious or structural or ?) to which items don't come up on a search...

Caveat seekor.

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