This is a continuation of a long topic, addressed by post number rather than by page. Start at post 1.
The arithmetic in post #30 is right; the assumption feeding it is the part to check.
Search filters: I have looked for the primary source twice and failed twice. Either it does not exist or it is somewhere I do not know to look, and I would like to know which.
Search and findability: if you searched for something and did not find it, report what you searched for and what you expected to find. That helps improve indexing and tagging.
Feedback on the trust-level page: it explains what each level unlocks, and not what a member at that level is expected to do differently. The second is what people actually want to know.
The confident version of this sentence would be wrong, so here is the hedged one.
Logged, and thank you for the precise description. That is a wording problem rather than a logic problem — an empty state that says "no topics match both filters" is a five-minute change and a real improvement.
I would keep search filters and the decision it usually gets used for separate in this thread. They are related and they are not the same question, and merging them is why the last one went badly.
Post #36 and I disagree about the size of the effect, not about the direction.
Where I would push back on the search filters consensus is the confidence, not the direction. The direction looks right. The confidence is borrowed.
Moderation decisions: if you disagree with a moderation decision, raising it here gives it visibility. Staff will reconsider if you make a substantive case.
Right — I had this wrong and I am glad to have read it before it mattered.
Worth separating two things that post #38 runs together.
Adding the boring version of search filters, because the interesting version keeps getting posted and the boring one is usually right.
Check the ordinary explanations, in order, and stop when one of them accounts for what you are seeing. Most of the time the second one does.
Worth separating search filters as a question about the compound from search filters as a question about the documentation. They get answered by different people and only one of them is answerable here.
Feedback on the search: the status filter is the most useful control on the site and it is the least visible one. Solved-only turns a hundred results into six good ones.
That distinction is real and staff have discussed it twice without deciding. The risk is that a topic marked unanswered discourages the reply that would answer it. If anyone has seen it work elsewhere, say so — that is the missing evidence.
One more caveat and then I will stop qualifying: the sample selected itself.
Thank you for taking the time. That was more work than a reply usually is.
Two things can be true about search filters at once: the mechanism is plausible and the evidence for the size of the effect is thin. Most of the argument here is people defending the first against attacks on the second.
Confirming post #45 from a second method, which matters more than confirming it from a second person.
I keep a log for search filters specifically because my memory of it turned out to be systematically wrong in one direction. Six weeks of notes cost nothing and settled it.
On post #50 — agreed on the reasoning, with one qualification.
Reporting rather than recommending, on search filters. What happened is above. Whether it should have is a different question and not one I am qualified to answer.
That is a cleaner way of putting what I was circling around.
Last piece of feedback: the site is much better on a narrow screen than it was six months ago and nobody said so at the time. Recording it because only the failures usually get reported.
Written quickly, so the reasoning may be tighter than the wording.
Staff answer. The behaviour described is intended, and the reasoning is that the alternative failed in a specific way we watched happen. Happy to be argued out of it, but the argument has to address the failure mode rather than the inconvenience.
Search filters came up in a thread eighteen months ago and was answered well. I cannot find it, which is itself the problem, so here is the reconstruction.
Confirming post #56 from a second method, which matters more than confirming it from a second person.
Search and findability: if you searched for something and did not find it, report what you searched for and what you expected to find. That helps improve indexing and tagging.
On balance I think that is right, and I would not bet much on it.
I had written a reply contradicting post #54 and deleted it. Here is what survived.
The honest answer on search filters is that it depends, and the useful part is the list of what it depends on. Four items, in rough order of how much they matter.
Most people get the first two right and then argue about the fourth.
Taking post #56 at face value and following it one step further.
My position on search filters is current rather than settled. I have revised it once already and I expect to again, so treat it accordingly.
Following, with nothing to contribute beyond having asked the same thing elsewhere.