Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related searching and searching and searching for fanfic

I have a fic search question, I'm having trouble finding stories in the Archive and I son't know if it is a "me" thing or a Google thing.

First, I have to say that I have never knowingly used Google except on this site. Using my normal search engine I find articles I read 10 years ago within the top 5 hits without fail, so I know how to build searches.

Many, many times I know enough unique information that I should be able to search and pull up a story. For example, I remember one fic where:

*Lois's father is an avid Superman fan and Lois was named for the comic book character. She loves journalism though and to overcome the stigma has taken on very tough assignments. She has just done a stint as an embedded reporter in Iraq for CNN.
*Clark Kent saves a plane full of people in 1995, somehow cross dimensions and end up in our post 9/11 world. Clark only finds a swamp in Maryland where Metropolis should be.
*Lois gets video of the the plane landing and thinks she sees a man hanging underneath the plane.
*Clark loses his wallet.
*Many people from the plane are duplicates of people here. Fearful of infiltration, the government is holding people from the plane at Walter Reed Hospital.
*Flocks of many thousands of (extinct) passenger pigeons are seen migrating after the incident.
*Laptop computers from the plane are running NanoSoft operating systems.
*Lois eventually meets and tries to convince Clark to become Superman and takes him to the Superman Museum in Metropolis, Illinois to get one of Christopher Reeve's suits.

The story was good but finding it is irrelevant at this point. If this story was on the internet or on my harddrive I could combine unique words from the story and construct a text search like:

< Iraq AND embedded AND plane AND "passenger pigeon" AND Nanosoft AND "Walter Reed">

Other unusual words I might use would be "comic book", wallet, Illinois, extinct, museum, Maryland.

I know these words were used in the story. Even if half of the words were wrong I should be able to find the story by making a few substitutions in a few minutes. Searching for "Iraq" returns 7 entries (none are the right one). Searching for "passenger" returns 21,000 entries. Searching for "pigeon" returns 19,300 entries but "passenger AND pigeon" returns nothing.

This is very frustrating to me and it wastes a lot of time. Is this my issue, a Google issue or something else?

Thanks,

It's Shayne's Veritas which is not on the archive at this point. You can find the TOC over in the TOC forum though .

C

Thanks Carol, This is the story I was thinking of. I've only read a half-dozen stories that weren't on the archive and I know this isn't one of them. Was it recently removed?

The search problem has been an ongoing issue though. I had the same issue with your On The Other Hand. It's on the Archive and I searched for it at least 20 different ways.

Making a "Searching for a fic" post works well but, honestly, why is there a search function if it doesn't find?

Nope. It was only recently submitted to the Archive by Shayne. In December, in fact. For a story to be uploaded to the Archive it has to be submitted by the author first. Yes, authors, that is a hint. We can't just magic them up ourselves out of thin air.

Co-incidentally, the final version of the story was returned by the GE this morning, nicely in time to be sent off for uploading this afternoon. So it should be on the Archive this weekend.

As for the search function - it has been intended for some time now to install a searchable database on the Archive, but, sadly, it's proved to be a project which has proved more problematic than anticipated, for a variety of reasons.

For the moment, you can search the raw data for stories here with a variety of criteria as your search words. Which might prove more fruitful for you.

LabRat

Hi Shallowford. I just did a test. If you would have searched using this page (upper right corner)and the Fanfic thread and put in "Walter Reed Hospital", you get the feedback file for "Veritas 7." This gives you the name of the story (which I assume you didn't know) and you can then go to Fanfic TOC and find all the parts and the name of the author. The stories are usually here before they go on the Archive. I use this search engine more than the one on the Archive.
Happy Reading!
Artemis

So the Google search is looking at the database and not the stories? That would explain why the keyword searches aren’t working like I thought they would. Disappointment = expectations minus reality. I’ll change the expectations part. Knowing how it works is half the battle.

I haven’t tried searching the TOC page in the past—I’ll give that a shot next time and avoid a rant.

Thank you all.

Actually, the google search is searching the stories, not the database. The issue with the google search is that it only searches so far into the file. I'm not sure where the limiter is, but I've run across it when doing Kerth quizzes. Also, quoting phrases don't help when the phrase has a line break in the middle.

I have no clue on the techie stuff, so I don't know if it's a case of going with the best we currently have, imperfect as it may be, or if there's a way to change that and make it better.

I've emailed Lauren, so if she knows the answers, I'm sure she'll post.

LabRat

I'm so glad to hear that Shayne has sent Veritas to the archive. It's a great story and deserves a wide readership.

I think it already has. I just took a look at its stats on Twisting the Hellmouth - currently it has 150,059 hits, 643 reviews, and it's recommended by 79 readers. One of the most popular non-Buffyverse stories there - and in the top hundred for the site as a whole.