The Goblins Fan Forum

The following words in your search query were ignored because they are too common words: bear.
You must specify at least one word to search for. Each word must consist of at least 3 characters and must not contain more than 14 characters excluding wildcards.

What exactly did I do wrong here? It's a 4-letter word, so why wouldn't it get searched?

Probably because of common phrases such as "bear in mind". It's probably just an issue with phpbb

Many search engines ignore too common words....
Then there are the more formal requirements of at least 3characters...


Alas, "bear" seems to be of the "too common" kind.... (as the error tells you)

You can still use google with "bear site:goblinsforum.com"

Krulle wrote:You can still use google with "bear site:goblinsforum.com"

I was searching a specific user's posts and/or a particular thread.

willpell wrote:

Krulle wrote:You can still use google with "bear site:goblinsforum.com"

I was searching a specific user's posts and/or a particular thread.

Then please bear in mind that you cannot use very common words in your search!



You're welcome.

Why is this thread here instead of Forum Stuff?

willpell wrote:

Krulle wrote:You can still use google with "bear site:goblinsforum.com"

I was searching a specific user's posts and/or a particular thread.

You can add them to the google query as well.

Glemp wrote:Why is this thread here instead of Forum Stuff?

Because I couldn't find such a section and didn't remember exactly what it was called. Feel free to move the thread.

Changes_everything wrote:Then please bear in mind that you cannot use very common words in your search!

Given that what I was searching for was the word "bear" (which is more than 3 letters), this isn't helpful.

The trick was the word "bear" in the sentence "please bear in mind"...

Not only does your search term need to have at leadt three digits, it may also not be a common word.
And apparently, for the phpBB search algorithm, "bear" is a too common word to be used for searching. Just add more terms and observe that the forum does search, but may ignore some of your searched words. The info about ignored search terms is not very well visible.


A few days ago, I failed with a "too common" word of 5 letters....
I can't remember the search term anymore, though.

If the user whose post you've searched doesn't post much, you could also go through the profile of the user and search his posts specifically.... They are also listed in reverse order in his profile, so if you approximately know the date he's posted, you can scroll through the corresponding posts....(replace "he" and "his" by the "she" and "her" if necessary and where appropriate)

willpell wrote:I was searching a specific user's posts and/or a particular thread.

You can use the advanced search engine, where you can search for thread titles and username of poster.
The same restrictions for "too common" words still apply, as the "blacklist" likely is the same.