"Search Sucks." You know you've thought it. You may have said it. In a recent meta diary, a few people said it out loud. And jotter -- who, I hadn't realized, programmed search on DK3 and is doing the same for DK4 -- came to the sub-thread and said "hey, it does not!" He made a challenge to people: name me three searches you want to do and can't figure out and I'll explain them to you.
I've always found Search hard to use, but I thought that it may have to do a lot more to do the interface and the documentation than the underlying programming. Still, I assumed that I could stump the search maven. I said:
I know that one thing I'd like to see (if it's not there): an "in reply to" field. Sometimes I'll know that I said something on some topic in reply to Armando, for example -- but looking that up (unless I mentioned his name in the comment) appears to be impossible.
And in reply, jotter taught me about "pauthor." And boy, is it cool!
The pauthor option probably won't be news to some of you out there, but it certainly was to me. I've had questions from time to time about the time or content of the first interaction I had with someone, or the last one (say, with a banned user), or what I may have said in Cheers & Jeers, etc., or whether I really said something bad to someone that someone thought I said, or I just know that I said something to some person once -- I know who it was, but I can't remember exactly what or when.
Could I search my comments? Well, theoretically, but I've been here for 5-1/3 years as of today and have somewhere around 45,000 comments so far. (Yes, I know that this is not good.) But the inability to search for a particular discussion has long saddened me. DKos has been, among other things, about relationships that we build over the years, and it's just not worth paging through that many comments, hitting "parent" on each one, to find out, say, the first interaction I had with my DKos friend RLMiller back when she was "indigoblueskies".
Except that, with pauthor, it's really easy. You see, pauthor is a record of to whom you were replying: either another commenter or, if yours is a top level comment, a diarist.
So: using this syntax: <pauthor=indigoblueskies author="Seneca Doane">, I find this: in an old diary of mine about being part of the field of law (and my misgivings regarding same), she posted this:
My story: (2+ / 0-)
I decided to study law because I majored in political science and everyone with that major was either going to law school or going to Wash DC, where they realized that bright college grads were a dime a dozen and had to get jobs delivering pizza; IOW, I drifted into it.
At first, I just wanted to make money. I worked for a creditor's rights firm (we represented a lot of banks, so I had a birdseye view of the S&L crisis), a business law firm, and a couple of insurance defense firms. I started getting very uncomfortable with the last two; tort "reform" and a boss who liked defending child molesters were motivators. I saw an opportunity to start my own practice. SenecaDoane, my first year on my own I ate dog food and earned $14K, but the second year the plaintiff cases paid off big and I made more money than I had over six years being an underpaid insurance defense associate.
95% of my practice is representing homeowner-plaintiffs in suing developers, insurers, and the like for defects to their homes. Ideologically I'm much, much happier on this side. Every so often I'm able to explain to homeowners how the deck is stacked against them, and how they need to vote Democratic to change that.
The law, particularly contract and real property law, is strongly biased in favor of stability and the status quo. I know that. I'm not trying to change it. Rather, I'm just trying to keep property insurers from taking my clients' money, giving nothing in return, and using the fine print of their contracts to keep it that way.
now known as RLMiller
by indigoblueskies on Mon Dec 08, 2008 at 10:57:40 PM PST
Which I found by clicking "parent" on the earliest comment I found in my search:
That's a lovely response (0+ / 0-)
If I were looking to respecialize, I might come to you for advice.
Soon on DK4: Chit Cheat and Undisputed Facts!
Daily Kos and Soylent Green are made of the same thing!
by Seneca Doane on Tue Dec 09, 2008 at 06:22:14 PM PST
(Of course, sig lines weren't yet sticky then!)
What about my first top-level comment ever in Cheers & Jeers? Well, I know that BiPM is the author, so it's easy to find my first reply to him (which is most likely going to be a top level comment):
on this account
Cheers to this Geraldine Ferraro/Pastor Wright (27+ / 0-)
week being over, and double cheers to ending it with a FISA win!
Soon on DK4: Chit Cheat and Undisputed Facts!
Daily Kos and Soylent Green are made of the same thing!
by Seneca Doane on Fri Mar 14, 2008 at 04:25:58 PM PST
and on my previous one!
Now if Colbert can just introduce his show (4.00 / 21)
for the first time every night, he'll be golden! That was a great debut. Stone Phillips was a great sport.
If somebody writes a book and doesn't care for [its] survival, he's an imbecile.
~ Umberto Eco
by Major Danby on Tue Oct 18, 2005 at 06:01:49 AM PST
Whoa -- it was the first day of The Colbert Report!
Did you or your friend contact each other first? Just reverse "author" and "pauthor". The first time I ever insulted had the guts to reply to Markos? Got it! (Disagreement about a press shield law.) The first time he ever replied to me? When we were all conspiring to push Glenn Greewald's first book up the Amazon rankings. And then, um, there was this. Oops.
We remember things in part based on who were were with. The pauthor function lets us find some of them again. That's really, really cool.
Update: of course, this is just if you sort by "time". You can also sort by recommends, to see your highest rated reply to someone.