Search subscription not working correctly.

[tst]

I have a search subscription configured to search for yair OR tst -"tst wrote", which ideally should return mentions of me where people don't quote me directly. The idea is to get an email if I'm mentioned in a thread I haven't participated in.

My problem is that a considerable portion of the emails I get from this search are about posts which don't match the query. Here are the examples I still have in my trash:

https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/Static-Com-Port-Assignment/m-p/3309523#M968845

https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/Trace-Web-method-to-retrieve-the-trace-data/m-p/3309777#M968936

https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/Error-85-The-input-string-does-not-contain-data-in-the-expected/m-p...

http://forums.ni.com/t5/media/gallerypage/image-id/184036i519FA7CAE5BC2DB0

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/Pilot-a-power-supply/m-p/3301501

I haven't been able to find a common reason for why it sends these false positives. You can also see that one of them is an image in a gallery and that they're not common (~1 email a week on average), so it's not super critical. I might even unsubscribe, since I haven't seen the results I'm looking for. Another minor point - the emails seem to be sent hours after the actual messages are posted, but I'm guessing this is being run as a scheduled job or something similar.

[crossrulz]

Makes me wonder if the search is trying to be smart.  ie tst=test

[tst]

That was my initial guess, but then I would expect to see many more hits.

[RavensFan]

To slightly paraphrase what a wise person has recently told me

instead of searching for your name, "you could just go over the boards and read all of the old threads..." 

[LiliMcDonald]

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@tst wrote:

That was my initial guess, but then I would expect to see many more hits.

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Also, some of the false results don't even mention the word "test".

I'm looking into this and will let you know what I find out.

[LiliMcDonald]

Lithium Support has recommended you use AND NOT instead of the minus operator.

yair OR tst AND NOT "tst wrote"

Can you please try this and report back?

Thanks,

[tst]

I set it now. The only way to see if it has an effect is if it fails, so hopefully there will be no more replies on this thread.

[tst]

Nope, didn't work. I just got a batch of seven emails (sent around 9:40 GMT), which don't match the intended result. They were from two threads I participated in (which is basically the opposite of what was needed, but is probably an improvement over random threads), but they don't seem to have any real consistency. Some observations:

1. They only started a few hours after I changed the settings.
2. In one of the threads I got an email for each reply from point X forward. In the other I got an email for one reply, but not for the one following it.
3. They are at least consistent in that they both don't do what I want.
4. The link in the email doesn't actually work. For example, one email has this link, which should take me here, but instead resolves to this link, which takes me to the top of the last page of the thread. Note that I didn't get an email for the reply following that reply.
5. The emails are sent in a batch rather than when the reply is posted, presumably because it's a scheduled job of some sort. I can live with that.
6. The emails are sent in a weird order. The expected order would be ascending post time, but they were sent in a jumbled order, where this reply, which is the earliest reply in the emails, actually came in almost last, which would have caused me to think it's reverse chronological order, but then I saw that the last email was for the reply immediately following it. To be fair, this could also have something to do with all the emails being sent together and when the mail server recieves/processes them, although I'm pretty sure that's not the case.

For the moment, I'll leave this new query in place, but I expect I will just get another batch of emails when the job runs again.

[LiliMcDonald]

Thanks for the feedback. I've reported this back to Lithium Support for them to continue investigating.

[LiliMcDonald]

We have another update from Lithium Support. They state it is best if you try using an older syntax and refrain from quoting a phrase.

You can use parentheses to scope search results as appropriate So, the search query you would have to use is more of the form:

yair OR tst NOT (tst AND wrote)