Just tried doing a Advanced Forums Search and returned no post for that User later than Dec 28.
My guess is that date is approximately the time the Forums’ URL structure changed and the Advanced Search function hasn’t been updated.
This is the search:
From this URL Network/Internet
BTW - Noted that no Forums Search is possible at all from the parent page to that URL
Clicked on the “Search Forums” link which drops down the input field
Clicked on the “Advanced” link
Entered the parameters
Username: ab@novell.com
Search in Forum(s): “Search all Open Forums” with “search all child forums” checked
Find post(s): 3 months, and Newer
Clicked on “Search Now”
That’s not a valid username - that’s an e-mail address. Unless Aaron’s
tied his NNTP user ID to his forums ID, he’d show as a “Guest” user (and
given that it’s an e-mail address and not the “no-mx.forums.opensuse.org”
address, I’d say that he’s not done that.
I double-checked, that’s his actual displayed username…
I’d guess that unless you’re implementing some kind of error-checking that should have blocked the name it should be considered valid.
In any case, because a search does return results using that as a username prior to Dec28, it’s a valid username when searching the database data prior to that date.
You might be confusing the actual Novell User, his first name seems to be “Abe”
> hendersj;2285999 Wrote:
>> On Thu, 03 Feb 2011 18:36:01 +0000, tsu2 wrote:
>>
>> > Username: ab@novell.com
>>
>> That’s not a valid username - that’s an e-mail address. Unless Aaron’s
>> tied his NNTP user ID to his forums ID, he’d show as a “Guest” user
>> (and
>> given that it’s an e-mail address and not the
>> “no-mx.forums.opensuse.org”
>> address, I’d say that he’s not done that.
>>
>> Jim
>>
>>
>>
>> –
>> Jim Henderson
>> openSUSE Forums Administrator
>> Forum Use Terms & Conditions at ‘openSUSE Forums FAQ’
>> (http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C)
>
> I double-checked, that’s his actual displayed username… I’d guess that
> unless you’re implementing some kind of error-checking that should have
> blocked the name it should be considered valid.
>
> In any case, because a search does return results using that as a
> username prior to Dec28, it’s a valid username when searching the
> database data prior to that date.
>
> You might be confusing the actual Novell User, his first name seems to
> be “Abe”
I know the person who uses that e-mail address, and his first name is
Aaron.
Can you provide a link to an example post where that shows as the name?
If you’re right about the person’s true name, I might learn something new about that very helpful poster, over the years his posts have revealed some very unusual info.
But, isn’t it more relevant that a search using that username doesn’t fail completely, it does return <some> results?
On Sat, 05 Feb 2011 19:36:01 +0000, pistazienfresser wrote:
> hendersj;2286765 Wrote:
>> On Sat, 05 Feb 2011 16:36:01 +0000, tsu2 wrote:
>>
>> > hendersj;2285999 Wrote:
>> >> On Thu, 03 Feb 2011 18:36:01 +0000, tsu2 wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > Username: ab@novell.com
>> …]
>> Can you provide a link to an example post where that shows as the name?
>> …]
>>
> Example given:
> ‘How to Persist TCP Congestion Control algorithm change?’
> (http://tinyurl.com/4cgxtgr) (2011/02/03 18:20 GMT+1) found with:
> 'Google Search: “ab@novell.com” site:forums.opensuse.org ’
> (http://tinyurl.com/47b8mkx)
Interesting, I hadn’t realised that @ was a valid character in a Novell
website login ID.
> If you’re right about the person’s true name, I might learn something
> new about that very helpful poster, over the years his posts have
> revealed some very unusual info.
I know him personally.
> But, isn’t it more relevant that a search using that username doesn’t
> fail completely, it does return <some> results?
Yes, that is an issue - I wonder if the @ in the username is causing a
problem. Though searches have been known in the past to not return a
complete answer set, I thought we had a fix in place for that - seems
that’s not the case, so I’ll raise that issue with Kim.
On Mon, 07 Feb 2011 23:04:22 +0000, Jim Henderson wrote:
> Yes, that is an issue - I wonder if the @ in the username is causing a
> problem. Though searches have been known in the past to not return a
> complete answer set, I thought we had a fix in place for that - seems
> that’s not the case, so I’ll raise that issue with Kim.
I’ve gotten confirmation, the issue is with names that have non-
alphanumeric characters in them. It seems that @ isn’t a problem, but
“.” is, if you search for “ab@novell” and tell it not to search by exact
name (uncheck that option), it should work just fine.
Another option is to go to his user page (click on the user ID) and do a
“find all posts by this user” - that will search using the internal user
number rather than the name, and will find the posts as well.
Does not work for me - vBulletin makes of it a search for ab@novell.com with two results [the latest is from 21-Nov-2010 16:40 (GMT+1); the other from 06-Aug-2010 17:22 (GMT+1)].
Does not work for me with the example user: the post first shown is from 21-Nov-2010 16:40 (GMT+1).
On Tue, 08 Feb 2011 21:06:02 +0000, pistazienfresser wrote:
>> I’ve gotten confirmation, the issue is with names that have non-
>> alphanumeric characters in them. It seems that @ isn’t a problem, but
>> “.” is, if you search for “ab@novell” and tell it not to search by
>> exact name (uncheck that option), it should work just fine.
>
> Does not work for me - vBulletin makes of it a search for ab@novell.com
> with two results [the latest is from 21-Nov-2010 16:40 (GMT+1); the
> other from 06-Aug-2010 17:22 (GMT+1)].
…]
>> Another option is to go to his user page (click on the user ID) and do
>> a “find all posts by this user” - that will search using the internal
>> user number rather than the name, and will find the posts as well…]
> Does not work for me with the example user: the post first shown is from
> 21-Nov-2010 16:40 (GMT+1).
In both of these cases, I wonder if that’s because that user hadn’t
connected the accounts using the no-mx e-mail address. You would only
find posts that were correctly identified by linking the addresses in the
way outlined in the FAQ - for those that are from ab@novell.com but not
connected with a no-mx.opensuse.org address, the results wouldn’t come
back properly because previous posts would be from e-mail address ab@novell.com which would be identified by vBulletin as “Guest”.
On 02/08/2011 11:19 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> would be identified by vBulletin as “Guest”.
not certain, but i believe i have seen him post occasionally via the
web interface…so those posts, and any he may have made with the
no-mx.[magic] would be the only that search could find…
hmmm, i just found numerous nntp posts from with a “From” of
“ab@novell.com <ab@novell.com>” which, as you say, the searcher won’t
find…
[Jim, you might consider next time you bump into him on campus, to ask
if would use the no-mx.[magic]…my rational is: his posts are far
too important to not be searchable…
hmmmm, never mind “maybe”: with this string google returns 33,000
hits: site:forums.opensuse.org “ab@novell.com”…
too bad the built in searcher can’t do as well…]
–
DenverD
CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD
[NNTP posted w/openSUSE 11.3, KDE4.5.5, Thunderbird3.0.11, nVidia
173.14.28 3D, Athlon 64 3000+]
“It is far easier to read, understand and follow the instructions than
to undo the problems caused by not.” DD 23 Jan 11
On Wed, 09 Feb 2011 09:39:48 +0000, DenverD wrote:
> hmmm, i just found numerous nntp posts from with a “From” of
> “ab@novell.com <ab@novell.com>” which, as you say, the searcher won’t
> find…
Actually, I spent some time yesterday doing some tests, and it seems that
if the address is the magic no-mx.opensuse.org address or the actual
address on the account, it’s linked properly to the user. So it seems I
was misinformed about how that works. :-/
I’ve done a couple other searches as well and found that there’s
something missing, so apparently that issue has returned, and I’ve
escalated it to be investigated further.
