It has come to my attention that the links to documentation for search on the search page aren't particularly conducive to convincing people to look at them, and the docs are so spectacularly snore inducing that no one actually makes it to the tasty bits.
Here's a draft cheat sheet for searching for stories and diaries for your comments and critique. Would something like this, linked from the search page, be an improvement?
Another cheat sheet covering comment search may be needed as well.
Update [2007-1-22 17:30:19 by jotter]: Thanks to an illuminating discussion with ct, I'm now able to correct misinformation I gave below re the format of story ids, sid. It turns out that there is time information encoded them. The format is as follows.
yyyy/mm/dd/hhmmss/junk
The problem is that zero's are suppressed, so a diary with a time of 11:01 looks the same as one of 1:11. In addition, if a diary is published the same day it was drafted, the time given is the time the draft was started, not the time the diary was published. So the time info in sids is a bit difficult to work with. But it is there!
WHAT TO PUT IN THE SEARCH BOX
EXAMPLE
| FINDS Stories CONTAINING...
|
Iraq election
| the words Iraq and election.
|
primary OR election
| either the word primary or the word election
|
"the buck stops here"
| the exact phrase the buck stops here
|
(here buck stops)
| all the words buck, stops, and here in any order
|
primary NOT color
| the word primary but NOT the word color
|
"red st* blue"
| the words red and blue separated by a word beginning with st. (no naked wild cards)
|
ADVANCED
EXAMPLE
| SEARCH
| WHAT TO TYPE INTO SEARCH BOX (& DESCRIPTION OF RESULTS)
|
tag=meta
| tags
| tag=meta (stories with tag containing "meta".)
|
title=Chicago
| story titles
| title=chicago (stories with Chicago in title.)
|
author=kos
| authors
| author=kos (stories by kos.)
|
sid=2007
| story ID
| sid=2007 (stories with ID containing "2007", ie year of publication = 2007.)
|
sid="2007/1"
| story ID
| sid="2007/1" (stories with ID containing "2007/1", ie month of publication = January 2007.)
|
sid="2007/1/2"
| story ID
| sid="2007/1/2" (stories with ID containing "2007/1/2", ie day of publication = January 2, 2007.)
|
site=washingtonpost
| urls
| site=washingtonpost (stories that link to the Washington Post web site.)
|
images=nytimes
| image tags
| images=nytimes (stories that link to an image from The New York Times web site.)
|
Really ADVANCED
EXAMPLE
| SEARCH
| WHAT TO TYPE INTO SEARCH BOX (& DESCRIPTION OF RESULTS)
|
author=hunter tag=(meta OR metajesus NOT troll )
| author and tags for indicated text
| author=hunter tag=(meta OR metajesus NOT troll) (Find story by Hunter tagged "meta" or "metajesus" but not "troll".)
|
Don't forget to set these appropriately.
Find: Stories/Diaries/Stories&Diaries (When I refer to stories above, it means whatever you selected here)
Sort By: Relevance/Time/Impact/Recommend/Comments/Title/Author
Results: 10/20/30/40/50
From: hours/days/weeks/quarter/6 months/years ago
To: hours/days/weeks/quarter/6 months/years ago
(see the search docs for more detail)