13 Jun
2018
13 Jun
'18
8:45 p.m.
Noel Chiappa via cctalk wrote:
So someone mentioned this to me:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/222941705847
Now, the crazy thing is that I religously do a search for "PDP-11" for newly
listed items on eBait at least once a day - and this never showed up! I just
did a search for sold "PDP-11" items, and it's not showing up there either
-
although a search for sold "PDP-11 parts" turns it up!
Anyone have any idea why it didn't turn up? That is a regular '-', not an
mdash or anything, and those are 1's, not lower-case l's. And it does show up
in the search for "PDP-11 parts". So I can only conclude that somehow
eBait's
search function blew out somehow?
Anyway, someone got a total steal: at least _3_ H960's, a TU10, and an -11/45
(can't tell if there's an FP11) - and who knows what else is hidden!
> Ebay's search engine is unusable here in
europe for years now.
The URL works for me.
Then, to SEARCH for it, I need to go to "Advanced", and include
"completed".
It does NOT come up using "PDP-11".
BUT, it comes up with "Digital PDP-11"!
Yes, eBait's search function blows.
I have experienced a number of cases where adding an "OR" (eBay's
punctuation for that is a comma delimited list in parentheses), will
REDUCE the number of hits, which it absolutely shouldn't do.
And, I have encountered situations (like this), where an extra ANDed term
increases the number of hits.
Yes, it IS broken. You can still make it work. Most of the time. But,
several aspects of it do NOT work as they are intended to.
It also, like Amazon, will try to be "helpful", and include synonyms that
you did NOT want.
They discontinued wildcards ("comput*"), so you now have to include both
singular and plural. SOMETIMES. Sometimes it will "helpfully" match with
the other that you didn't include for you. Sometimes not.
If the bulk of the hits are in one category, it may switch from "ALL
CATEGORIES" to that category, in defiance of your request. For example, a
search for "Nextec" switches from a requested "All Categoires" to a
category of "Power Tools", cutting out numerous legitimate hits. (I have
been looking for the POLE PRUNER that was very briefly part of the Nextec
(Sears) line, and in the rare cases where there is one, it is usually NOT
in "Power Tools".)
I suspect that ONE of the problems stems from use of the same character
to mean both hyphen and minus sign, depending on apaces, other puntuation,
or context.
Could it be that when using "Digital PDP-11" or "PDP-11 parts", it is
functioning correctly, but "PDP-11" by itself is causing it to
misinterpret as a minus sign, to exclude "11". It certainly SHOULDN'T be
doing that, but that screw-up coulod account for the behavior.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com