I need a clue!!

On occasion I want to check what pictures I have posted of a certain genus or even of a particular plant. Like now, I want to find the name of a particular begonia I posted sometime in 2007. For me to look page by page thru the many pictures I have entered in PlantFiles makes me nuts, so I try (but usually fail) to use the "limit to: " on this page:

http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/imagesbyuser.php?user=Kell

I put in the word begonia and up comes nothing. I know I have added some begonia pictures so there are some in there. LOL.

Anyone know what I am doing wrong? I would appreciate some direction!!

Thanks

Here ya go Kell. http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/search.php?forum=&search_text=begonia&limit=pdb&search_area=body&limit_poster=kell&Search=Search

Thanks for sharing that little tip. I didn't think to do that.

Egads, I've been looking for plants page by page like Kell. What an embarrassingly simple way to find my own plant photos.

Something funny is going on with that "limit to" search though--I tried putting in a couple of the other genera and common names that I saw you'd posted pics of and they all came up fine, but begonia came up with nothing. Very strange!

Geez, I was not even on the right page. Well, it should have been the right page but it turns out it wasn't. LOL THANK YOU, PEGGY!

Geez how dumb are we, Equilibrium? Lets not tell anyone. LOL. If I had to go thru my pictures one more time I was going to stop entering anymore so there would not be more to look through. LOL

Liz, I rarely get that search to work for me. I admit though that often things do not work for me. LOL

Here was the one I was looking for to show Butch!
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/fp.php?pid=4124139

So prettty!

You're both very welcome.

I just wish the general search engine was more reliable and consistent. For example, type "mt airy" (lower case, no period) in the cultivar field and you don't get "Mt. Airy" as a suggestion, even though it is a named cultivar for two different plants in PF. You get "White Fairy" and "Little Fairy". You do get it if you use the period.

Now type in "mt fuji" and you do get "Mt. Fuji". Why??

That's just one example.

Because that's the way they were originally entered into the database believe. I do think it should be less sensitive to commas and periods though, you'd think it would at least offer up further suggestions, one of which would be the correct one.

I don't follow, Sue. There is no 'mt fuji' listed. Only 'Mt. Fuji.' But it comes up as a suggestion when you enter 'mt fuji'. The same does not happen for 'mt airy.'

Ahhh, well, it is a sometimes frustrating database then. I was just assuming it was there but entered one way in the database and not showing up for you without an exact spelling. My bad. Hopefully someone can come along and give an answer.

I just went and experimented with this...here are the results I got:
searched on Mt Airy...suggested Mt. Airy and Nite Air
mt Airy...same two suggestions
Mt airy...Mt. Airy and Mary
mt airy...White Fairy and Little Fairy
mt. airy...actual results came up for the cultivars called Mt. Airy.

Based on the results I got, it appears that if you spell things exactly right the search is not case sensitive, which I already knew because I type in small letters all the time in there. But it seems like the "suggestion maker" function is somewhat case sensitive, so when you have a capital letter for either the "m" or the "a", then it recognizes that it's close to Mt. Airy, but when you don't have any caps, it doesn't realize that's what you were looking for (also note that when I searched on Mt airy, it suggested Mary as an option rather than Nite Air, which tells me it noticed that the "a" wasn't capitalized and modified its suggestions because of that).

My guess is that the system is set up to only give you the couple closest matching suggestions when you mis-type something, and the best way to make sure the couple it gives you are the closest match to what you were looking for is to make that matching feature case sensitive. Of course those of us who don't bother with caps in the search will have worse luck when it works that way, but now that we know part of the secret, all we need to do is start capitalizing things properly! But of course when you move away from the weird cultivars with periods as part of their name, then all my detective work may be completely worthless!

Thanks for going through all the combinations, ecrane. A couple of things. To be a truly useful search engine, it must allow lower case searches. Second - my main complaint was inconsistency. Your theory does not explain 'mt fuji'. There have been a number of times where I searched for a cultivar, received no recommendations, but found it later while going through the species list one by one.

I too have been experiencing exactly what victorgardener is describing above only not just with cultivars but with subspecies. I give up.

Inconsistency is an issue with me. ecrane3 has found plants that I couldn't find for myself. I have no problems admitting that I have been sending her my "problem plants". I don't know what's up with search but it sure acts up from time to time when I use it and I certainly can't figure it out.

For what it's worth, I generally capitalize and use periods when appropriate to do so out of habit. I do realize I don't need to when I'm searching but it's force of habit.

My theory does explain Mt. Fuji...my theory is that the system looks for what it thinks are the closest matches, and it uses things that you've capitalized (among other things) to help it decide what's the best match. For Mt. Fuji, there are probably not very many other words that "fuji" could be a mis-spelling of, so Mt. Fuji rises to the top regardless of whether it's capitalized or not. For Mt. Airy, there are a lot of other words that closely resemble Airy, so then the case sensitivity becomes a factor.

But type 'airy' and Mt. Airy is the third of the 'exact matches' to appear! And by the way, leave a space first, inadvertently, before 'mt airy' and you get 'Sweet Fairy' and 'Stair'.

Victor, are you having trouble trying to add to the PlantFiles? I have trouble all the time and lately I've even been having trouble trying to add photos to the PlantFiles and can't seem to find existing entries that are probably out there. I've had some luck clearing all my cache and restarting the computer. Why this works sometimes is beyond me because I have a program that does this for me automatically every night at 3am.

No - never any problems adding.

leaving a space either before or after a word will cause problems for the search engine. This most often happens when you cut and paste something. It's easy to get that space copied also and not even notice it.

Also, I believe the problem with mt fuji versus mt. fuju may be in the period (or not) after mt. It appears that some of you are using it and some of you aren't.

If I search without using the period, I get this http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/adv_search.php?searcher%5Bcommon%5D=&searcher%5Bfamily%5D=&searcher%5Bgenus%5D=&searcher%5Bspecies%5D=&searcher%5Bcultivar%5D=mt+fuji&searcher%5Bhybridizer%5D=&search_prefs%5Bblank_cultivar%5D=&search_prefs%5Bsort_by%5D=rating&images_prefs=both&Search=Search

If I search using the period, I get this http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/adv_search.php?searcher%5Bcommon%5D=&searcher%5Bfamily%5D=&searcher%5Bgenus%5D=&searcher%5Bspecies%5D=&searcher%5Bcultivar%5D=mt.+fuji&searcher%5Bhybridizer%5D=&search_prefs%5Bblank_cultivar%5D=&search_prefs%5Bsort_by%5D=rating&images_prefs=both&Search=Search

It appears that searching in all caps doesn't affect the search
http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/adv_search.php?searcher%5Bcommon%5D=&searcher%5Bfamily%5D=&searcher%5Bgenus%5D=&searcher%5Bspecies%5D=&searcher%5Bcultivar%5D=MT.+FUJI&searcher%5Bhybridizer%5D=&search_prefs%5Bblank_cultivar%5D=&search_prefs%5Bsort_by%5D=rating&images_prefs=both&Search=Search

Using the general search and searching for mt fuji brought no results http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/search.php?q=mt+fuju&Search=Search+PlantFiles

Using the general search and searching for mt. fuji brought these results http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/search.php?q=mt.+fuji&Search=Search+PlantFiles

I've run several different searches using both the general and specific search, and other than the period, I can't see anything else that might be causing the problems. Any ideas of what else I can try to see if we can pinpoint the problems you're having?

Not really. I knew about the period - that's why I brought up that example. I had just discovered it a few days ago when I was adding a photo. ecrane surmised that it was the 'airy' part causing the problem - that there were not as many close matches as there were for 'fuji'. However, as I stated in my last post, leaving out 'mt' entirely gets me to my result faster than including it! As far as the space goes, I just did a search on Google on a baseball player. I then put a space first and the exact same result page came back. Thanks for helping!

General search for mt. airy http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/search.php?q=mt.+airy&Search=Search+PlantFiles

General search for mt. airy with a space ahead of the name. http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/search.php?q=+mt.+airy&Search=Search+PlantFiles

So, in the general search, the space doesn't seem to be an issue

Field by Field search for mt. airy http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/adv_search.php?searcher%5Bcommon%5D=&searcher%5Bfamily%5D=&searcher%5Bgenus%5D=&searcher%5Bspecies%5D=&searcher%5Bcultivar%5D=mt.+airy&searcher%5Bhybridizer%5D=&search_prefs%5Bblank_cultivar%5D=&search_prefs%5Bsort_by%5D=rating&images_prefs=both&Search=Search

Field by Field search for mt. airy with a space ahead of the name http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/adv_search.php?searcher%5Bcommon%5D=&searcher%5Bfamily%5D=&searcher%5Bgenus%5D=&searcher%5Bspecies%5D=&searcher%5Bcultivar%5D=+mt.+airy&searcher%5Bhybridizer%5D=&search_prefs%5Bblank_cultivar%5D=&search_prefs%5Bsort_by%5D=rating&images_prefs=both&Search=Search

In the Field by Field search, the space DOES make a diffference.

I'm just trying to replicate some of the problems you all are talking about, in an effort to find out if there is something not working right in the search engines.

If anyone is seeing something that I'm not, please let me know.

Cultivar search on 'mt airy' with a space first, returns 'Sweet Fairy' and 'Stair'.

Okay, I see. It doesn't actually bring up those plants as a match, but it brings up those two as questions of if that is what you meant to search for. http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/adv_search.php?searcher%5Bcommon%5D=&searcher%5Bfamily%5D=&searcher%5Bgenus%5D=&searcher%5Bspecies%5D=&searcher%5Bcultivar%5D=+mt+airy&searcher%5Bhybridizer%5D=&search_prefs%5Bblank_cultivar%5D=&search_prefs%5Bsort_by%5D=rating&images_prefs=both&Search=Search

If you put the period in there though, and take out the space, you get these results http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/adv_search.php?searcher%5Bcommon%5D=&searcher%5Bfamily%5D=&searcher%5Bgenus%5D=&searcher%5Bspecies%5D=&searcher%5Bcultivar%5D=mt.+airy&searcher%5Bhybridizer%5D=&search_prefs%5Bblank_cultivar%5D=&search_prefs%5Bsort_by%5D=rating&images_prefs=both&Search=Search

Unless I'm missing something, or not understanding what the problem is, I think if at first you don't find what you are looking for, then take a look at how you typed it in and see if there's a space where it shouldn't be, or if there's a place for a period that you didn't put in and try again. I know I have to search more than once sometimes to find what I'm looking for, and most times it's because I typed something wrong the first time.

Sure - if I type it exactly right I will most likely get it. But search engines should anticipate variations such as omitting a period, using lower case, adding a space, etc. Google does. Also, consistency is important. Omitting the period with 'mt fuji' resulted in the correct suggestion, while for 'mt airy', it did not. I am not saying this is a heavy burden to bear! Just hoping to make small improvements - that's all. Thanks.