There have been enough times that I've wanted to find a post and been unable to remember anything about it other than "Posted by Betsy about a month ago" that a user search function would be really useful. I can see the stalkery side, but it's outweighed by my own self-interest.

I think stalkers will do the work, and non-stalkers just looking for info are the ones who'll feel frustrated by the lack.

Honestly, the reason I left it out is because it looked ugly on this page -- Jon, if you style it, I can enable it. The code is 90% there.

Well, I suppose the first instance of stalking that I encountered (not myself, but a friend) was being done by someone with very serious intent, but not very serious technical skill. Suck & search would have been beyond their abilities. So that's probably the baggage that's banging around back there.

But then, you know, whatever. Don't suppose you could code it so I could opt out, eh? It could still default in.

What Jessica said.

Also, those of us stalking ita would still run into the "has to be more than three letters" and the "can't appear in more than 50% of the posts" problems anyway, so at least I am out of luck she is safe.

Don't suppose you could code it so I could opt out, eh? It could still default in.

The searching was part of what broke the board in terms of peaking the usage way back when. Adding this extra SQL code in makes me leery because of that.

I trust that you get it, but I think it also creates a false sense of security for those that might not. It protects nothing, in the end. It's all there for threadsuck, or in archived and zipped threads.

I'm very "don't say it if you don't want it found."

>those of us stalking ita would still run into the "has to be more than three letters" and the "can't appear in more than 50% of the posts" problems anyway, so at least I am out of luck she is safe.

Nah, wouldn't apply.

Different searching mechanisms would be in play here. The barrier would be remembering if it's Betsy HP or Betsy H.P. or Betsy H-P. Only one of those would find you her posts. And again with the leeriness, from a back-end PoV, about making searches on "Betsy" pick up all the Betsy-ish monikers.

Heh. I didn't mean to start a thing.

There are certainly instances where a search on user names would come in handy for non-stalkery purposes, but not all that often. I could've used it yesterday, but I can easily live without it.

Reporting a maybe-bug: Message Center is saying I have unread posts when I have actually read the whole list.

(Firefox 1.5, Windows XP Pro)

The same thing happened to me, using Safari 1.3.1, OS 10.3.9, both with the F2F thread and Gus's post here.

eta: And Natter, as well.

it also creates a false sense of security for those that might not. It protects nothing, in the end.

Yeah. It's true.

And yeah. It's not a thing. It's fine.

And also, yeah. The usage problem was mostly with huge massive results, right? From people like me who just defaulted searching the whole board for like, porn, thus bogging everything down? Would the username search still be thread limited like the search we have now? How has the usage been with the single thread searches?

And right, makes sense not to add extra checky-checky code for something that's ultimately just vanity. I mean, if I really felt strongly about it, I could scribble. But I don't. And I won't. So yeah, right.