Does anyone ever...

[tdrake]

`

... look to see if someone else has already posted about an eBay glitch before they start their own private thread?

.

[tdrake]

In the case of today's "zero" flood of posts there were no less than 7 of them showing on the 1st page when I started this wise guy post, and I think page 2 had many more. So, one didn't have to do a search, just had to actually look at this page.  I think one day recently there were a dozen threads complaining about the new listing tool.  And those keep coming. It makes it very hard to have a real discussion on the subject.

[gurlcat]

Good point.  If a problem just started overnight, the easiest thing to do is look at page 1 (and maybe 2) to see if anyone else is having it.   I do that (in fact it's why I came to the forums today, to see if everyone was having the zero views thing, lol).  But as for a procedural thing like "How can I go about doing ____" or whatever, then trying some key words in search often proves worthwhile.  I've found exactly the answer I needed that way lots of times. 

[chapeau-noir]

I've found search works pretty well here - people just don't use it. 

[femmefan1946]

Apparently very few.

And those few attach their 2022 complaint on to a 2013 post.

[eburtonlab]

But in fairness the example you show has 10,000 responses. And very few of them have "zero" as well as "views".

If you limit the results to posts in the last week, that gets down to a much more manageable hundred or so threads. Although not every results has "zero" in it, most are variations of "no views", "zero views" or "0 views".

While searching is not necessarily simple or comprehensive, a couple of tries at searching ought to answer the basic question that most folks are asking, which seems to be "Is anyone else noticing this problem I am experiencing?" Because of the number of results, finding out whether there is a fix or a workaround may be more difficult; posting the same question again is unlikely to help in that case, either, and actually makes finding the solution among the unanswered questions harder, though it is possible to filter for threads that are marked solved.

[crazystuff4sale]

Many posts are from people who never knew the community existed and were pointed to the create a post link by the help pages to "get an answer from the experts."

I suspect that many might never even view the community after creating their post.

[kds99]

I try, but the search tool is not useful for doing so as most threads that I KNOW I have seen "recently" are not findable. So I've spent hours and hours clicking one at a time to find the one I'm looking for, which is an obvious waste of time.

[crazystuff4sale]

There is proof that some people use the search: Nearly every day a zombie thread from a year ago gets dredged up to the top page...often threads from exactly one year ago.

Makes me wonder if the search deliberately returns results with a date similar to today's date - like "here's some results from November but not necessarily this November."

[eburtonlab]

Nearly every day a zombie thread from a year ago gets dredged up to the top page...often threads from exactly one year ago.

The default sort order is "Best Match" -- which will attempt to find posts that most closely match the search terms. Unfortunately, sometimes the best match is a one year old post, or even older.

[richard1rst]

I'm not the OP but I did want to pop back in and thank all those who responded to my comment about the search feature. I am sure some of you know I have been here a while and I was never really aware that feature existed. Your comments were helpful.

It would seem that eBay should have a squib that says something like - "If you have a problem or question why not check to see if it has already been posted and answered to save you some time." With maybe a specific search box and a hotlink to an "instructions" page to help you navigate.

Thanks again.

[crazystuff4sale]

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@eburtonlab wrote:

Nearly every day a zombie thread from a year ago gets dredged up to the top page...often threads from exactly one year ago.

The default sort order is "Best Match" -- which will attempt to find posts that most closely match the search terms. Unfortunately, sometimes the best match is a one year old post, or even older.

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Yeah but I consistently see this phenomenon with the same top ten topics that keep coming up every single week.

[svva4806]

no

[chrispass918]

Nope and no one just ever looks stuff up anymore