FromAtlanta

Annie,

Of course that makes sence ... that is WHY they have a search engine here.

But that wasn't your question. - I was answering your question about seperate forums for different countries ... I was explaining (and very well I might add!) that there isn't any. There is just one forum where all the threads go.

I use the search all the time! If you want to just see threads about London click on or type London ect. (or England -when I want to be more broad) The search is great.

But now you understand it is just for searching and not for seperate forums

FromAtlanta

sheila,

I don't understand what you are talking about.

There are 2 boxes 1 says search this forum and the others says and/or topic

You can type in "France" in the search and not click on anything for topic or you can leave the search box blank and click o France as a topic and you get the SAME LIST of threads. I just did it now to try it.

Anyway, if you would like to email me and explain (I might learn something new) that is fine, but we shouldn't confuse these people any more.

The bottom line is there is only 1 Forum for all of Europe and the boxes that say "search this forum" are only for search.

FromAtlanta

Never mind Sheila - I think I understand what you are saying.

No, the search is not very reliable - but I found that if I post something and stay on Fodors and then use the search to find it and it doesn't show up ... it will if I refresh my screen

Anyway, it doesn't matter

I think we will ALL need that white jacket soon (I STILL think I did a real good job explaining it though! LOL!!)

Eloise

Just a few posts down from this one is an excellent argument for the necessity of this thread. It says, quite simply:

"Help with the trip"

Spygirl

So what do you think, From Atlanta? is "How to Deal with an Immature Poster" sufficient info. for the title? (grin)

jsmith

FromAtlanta, may I suggest you do a little experiment.

1. Start by opening traveltalk and then click on Cyprus. The hundredth thread will have occured on (or about) 5/19/2002 at 6:57 PM.

2. REOPEN traveltalk and enter Cyprus in the search box. The hundredth thread will be at 7/24/2003 at 11:49 PM.

There is a significant difference in chosing a topic and doing a search.

anniladd is correct in the way she uses topics to limit her search only to the country in which she has an interest. Unfortunately, OPs don't always choose a topic when starting a thread.

FromAtlanta

jsmith,

I do not understand the relevance to what you wrote. The question was NEVER how to do a proper search. That is a topic for a thread of its own.

The point of THIS thread is that there is only one forum for every single country in Europe. Every single thread that is written about a country in Europe goes on one thread ... a lot of people don't even bother doing a search. (People who may be traveling to several contries for instance)

The point is (and at has been from the beginning) that it is not fair to write a title like "help me with this trip" and expect the person looking at the title to know they are talking about a trip in Germany (for example)

Even when you a do a search for a particular country (say Germany) when you open one of the threads ...what does it say at the top (above the title)? Does it say Germany? NO! It says "EUROPE"

This is so frustrating!!

Spygirl, I don't understand what you mean...but I want to take this opportunity to tell you that I never found anything wrong with your posts. I am sorry .

jsmith

The relevance, FromAtlanta, is that by choosing a country as a topic you get ONLY threads related to that country provided the OP entered it in that country. Thus the infamous "Water" wouldn't appear in any other topic other than Spain.

If you were planning a trip to the Netherlands, Belgium and France choosing those as topics individually gives you only threads for those countries. You don't have to wade though Germany, Austria and Italy.

It is true you may miss some posts on the countries in which you are interested but at least you don't get the thread in which someone states "I flew over Belgium on my way to Norway. Didn't take long."

That is why I suggested earlier that Fodor's incorporate the topic instead of the generic "Europe". BTW under which topic did you post this thread?

Clifton

I wish it were true that if one chooses a country to search for, that only that country's info comes up. As I've already whined about though, that pretty much only works for the five or six most traveled countries. If you choose any others, you get a wealth of unrelated posts on digital cameras, opinion polls and places not anywhere near your search.

Then again, maybe I'm just picking the wrong places.

FromAtlanta

I agree that Fodors should have individual country forums, but they don't.

Shouldn't we concentrate on how this forum IS set up and not how it should be?

I didn't post this thread under any "topic" I posted it under the Europe Forum!! Now since we mentioned many countries on this thread, where do you think it will end up if we did a search?

I wanted to just let this go. I tried. I tried hard... I just couldn't do it. Since Fodors does not put "topics" next to the title of the thread, what is so wrong with asking people to include a little more info in their titles?

FromAtlanta

Clifton,
I agree with you. I don't use the search or topic very often because of that. And sometimes threads don't show up that I know should be there (sheila was correct in her complaint)

jsmith

Your post, FromAtlanta, doesn't show up in Belgium, France, Netherlands if those are chosen as a TOPIC.

CHOOSING A COUNTRY may not be perfect but it can and does eliminate most posts that are not germane to that country. It does not pick up posts that are germane if the OP didn't enter it as such.

I have a dictionary in my bookcase. If I'm looking for the meaning of xenophobe, I go to the X topic (maybe Z). It may be one dictionary (forum) but I sure can find things quicker by only looking under one letter (country).

Good night, God bless and have dry pants in the morning.

Clifton

I've never been a big fan of the search feature, but the discussion about whether there is one forum or one for each country comes up quite a bit.

I don't have the source code for the JSP script they're running, but I have peeked at the html portion out of curiosity.

There's just one forum for Europe, accessed by the Java program called threadselect. (FID=2, FID meaning forum ID. 2=Europe) The country designator is a separate index field within that forum. Looking at the code, the options for Euro countries start at 115, right where US states drop off (Wyoming=Option 114). But you can choose multiple countries/Option numbers as you post your thread, so allowing the program to put the country name as a prefix for displaying the thread would be impossible as it stands now. Someone choosing to highlight 20 countries would have 20 countries listed before their title. Why someone would have the energy to GO to 20 countries but not enough to make more than one post is a matter to itselfm but one of the reasons I wish they'd change the country option to a pulldown rather than a combo box when posting new messages.

Anyway, when you choose to search by topic (country), the program is searching all threads within the forum that have a "123" within the Options field, not the actual word "Croatia". But, if you choose to put "Croatia" in the search box instead, you aren't looking for option 123, you are now searching for any thread where one of the persons participating in the thread has literally typed the word "Croatia", even if that person is not the OP.

So you if you asked "What there is to do in Paris?", but didn't highlight a country and I said only that, "I think you should go to Croatia instead" - Then a search for "France", whether by topic or by text search, would never cause that thread to appear. (Thank goodness - I'd have been quite rude to reply that way!)

Programming, while it can be quite creative, is not a philosophical question. Programs have answers.

janis

Clifton explained it very accurately - but for us non-techies here is how it works/doesn't work.

Clicking on a country will pull up all threads where the OP also clicked that country. But in my (totally non scientific) survey -- less than 50% of OPs click on a country and some click on "general interest". So clicking on a country to search is woefully inadequate - it will only pull up a fraction of the threads about that country.

And using the word search function doesn't work until some time after a thread is started -- I think topics have to be indexed periodically. So a word search won't pull up the latest threads.

All in all - the only really sure way to find recent treads about a specific country is to scan back through the full Europe list.

sheila

Actually Fodors ran an experiment a couple of years ago with separate fora for the UK, France,and Italy and one for the rest.

Lots of us HATED it. So they stopped.

jmw44

Hi, and a special hello to Scarlett who confessed to topping a thread with a less than productive comment like "I've always wanted to see that place", etc. I do the same, often with something like "have geschnetzelts mit rosti" one evening for me". Dumb, yes. A crime, no. Please, folks. Don't try to make us so efficient that we must forego our idle pleasures for fear of wasting your time.

This forum is such fun. You might stumble upon an interesting comment at the most unlikely thread. You certainly can hold back on sharing your expertise if you choose. I've copied and filed so many wonderful suggestions that I'll never have enough years to follow up on them all. Lighten up. Affectionately, J.

rex

to the top

Scarlett

jmw, Thank you & Hello! Scarlett

rex

It's that time of year, when this bears repeating.

Clifton

This bear has my sympathies, but should probably lay off the chili.