Lost

Am I just missing it, or is there now no way to narrow the forum down by country?

Rex

See my post "Posting a new message no longer asks"...<BR><BR>I think this "had to go" - - at least for the time being - - it was part of some problem, and it may have been the better thing to do to get rid of it.<BR><BR>I never believed that people were using it in a predictable fashion anyhow.<BR><BR>Threads like "want to rent a car in Spain to take to Portugal" were - - I suspect - - rarely, if ever - - "double-coded".<BR>

Carol

But I'm having trouble with the search function...searching on "scotland" brings up zero postings, even though I know that there are postings that explicitly use "scotland" in the text. Other countries seem to work, as does other text.

Rex

My initial take, Carol (carol.kulik), is that they have focused on improving display and navigating the site - - and they have achieved some of those objectives, even if they are modest.<BR><BR>Improving "searching" remains for another day.<BR>

Sheila

No, Carol, Rex is wrong. The search function is much quicker and fuller too.<BR><BR>I just did what you did and there it was...everything you always wanted to know about Scotland but were afraid to ask

Rex

How, Sheila?<BR><BR>I tried it too - - even tried both scotland and Scotland, thinking it might be case-sensitivie.<BR>

Ed

I just got 50 (or more) threads from a search for "Scotland". Very fast results as well. We'll have to play with it some more, but that was impressive!

Rex

I agree. Works for me now too. What a bizarre thing - - makes me wonder if certain "stop words" were on a list (of, and, the, etc. - - this is common with many search engines) - - and somehow the list of countries got included on the stop list - - albeit briefly?<BR><BR>We'll probably never know.<BR>

ziggy

No reason to eliminate country forums--Italy had so much traffic. Bad deal!!!!!!1

s.fowler

Folks. There never were separate country forums. The only way to separate out posts by country, city or otehr topic is to use the search function.

Anna

The above poster is right - there never were country specific forums. They were always a figment of the search function.

Triple-O

i guess people's memories aren't that good. there *were* separate forums briefly last fall for (if memory serves me correctly) italy, france, and britain, plus three things in the u.s. (probably cali, fla, and hawaii). but everyone protested, so fodors removed them after a week or so. since then (and before then) there was a list of countries in the europe forum and states in the u.s. forum. now all you have to do is type the name of the state or country into the search engine. seems to me like the results are better but in any case they certainly are quicker.<BR><BR>ooo