Search Function Doesn't List Member Name

[Lucid Lunacy]

Earlier this morning, I was looking for a post in one of Slayer Anderson's threads. I forgot the title, so I opened up the Search function, and in the By: [Member] field typed out the requisite name. Usually, by the time I'm partway through, the name pops up in the list. That did not happen. Several similar names will pop up, but not the one I searched for. I tried multiple times with other names, including my own, with the same result.

 

[AztecCroc]

Earlier this morning, I was looking for a post in one of Slayer Anderson's threads. I forgot the title, so I opened up the Search function, and in the By: [Member] field typed out the requisite name. Usually, by the time I'm partway through, the name pops up in the list. That did not happen. Several similar names will pop up, but not the one I searched for. I tried multiple times with other names, including my own, with the same result.

Click to shrink...

Search function doesn't like names with spaces. It can recognize that it's an actual member's name, but it won't show it on the list. It will still search it properly if you just manually type it out,

 

[Lucid Lunacy]

Search function doesn't like names with spaces. It can recognize that it's an actual member's name, but it won't show it on the list. It will still search it properly if you just manually type it out,

Click to shrink...

Prior to today, there have been zero issues like the above. And I tested other names that don't have any spaces, so it's not that. Some names work fine, and some don't. It's weird.

 

[magic9mushroom]

Earlier this morning, I was looking for a post in one of Slayer Anderson's threads. I forgot the title, so I opened up the Search function, and in the By: [Member] field typed out the requisite name. Usually, by the time I'm partway through, the name pops up in the list. That did not happen. Several similar names will pop up, but not the one I searched for. I tried multiple times with other names, including my own, with the same result.

Click to shrink...

Happened to me too, with my username. Tested logged in and out, same results. (Also affects the Find Member box in the Members screen.)

I suspect some sort of glitch may have set the "unperson" flag on a bunch of accounts (I don't know what it's called in the backend, but there's something that does exactly this effect to banned members - it's a valid username but will never autocomplete).

EDIT: I suspect this has hit about 10-20% of all QQ accounts. Staff usernames that have become un-autocompletable that I've found so far: Megaolix, YiteWrite, Legend of Ruina and tehelgee.

 

[Lucid Lunacy]

I suspect some sort of glitch may have set the "unperson" flag on a bunch of accounts (I don't know what it's called in the backend, but there's something that does exactly this effect to banned members - it's a valid username but will never autocomplete).

Click to shrink...

Huh. I didn't realize there was a function for that. If that's the case, then you're likely correct.

 

[magic9mushroom]

@ultima333 @alethiophile @tehelgee

I think something of this scale probably needs the admin tools to fix (my guess is thousands of accounts with the "name doesn't autocomplete" flag erroneously tripped), so I'm tagging you all.

 

[Drak4806]

I was wondering why my name didn't pop up anymore when I was searching through old posts of mine

 

[Prevaric]

Huh, I noticed this issue just yesterday. The search works if you type it in manually, but the autocomplete doesn't. It's a pretty minor problem, but it's made more annoying by the fact that if you carelessly hit enter after typing it in, it'll 'correct' your search to the first autocomplete it can find.

 

[LurkingInTheDeceit]

This problem is still developing: My username was autocompleting on Monday, when I tested others which weren't, but I noticed it isn't today.

 

[havefeith]

Search function doesn't like names with spaces. It can recognize that it's an actual member's name, but it won't show it on the list. It will still search it properly if you just manually type it out,

Click to shrink...

I just tried tagging StreamingViking in their own thread using the usual drop down menu... similar names appeared, but not theirs, even as I had it spelled correctly, but without capitals. Something has broken the member search function.

 

[magic9mushroom]

This problem is still developing: My username was autocompleting on Monday, when I tested others which weren't, but I noticed it isn't today.

Click to shrink...

Continues to grow. Used to show me a false autocomplete of @vmagicmushrooms for my own username, but now he's an unperson too.

I just tried tagging StreamingViking in their own thread using the usual drop down menu... similar names appeared, but not theirs, even as I had it spelled correctly, but without capitals. Something has broken the member search function.

Click to shrink...

As I said above, it's probably the "unperson" function, although why the hell it's being applied to large swathes of QQ members in multiple incidents is beyond me. If you type the name in exactly correctly without help it still works, as I'll demonstrate.

@alethiophile, @ultima333, @tehelgee: I think it's probably like 30-40% of QQ members affected now. If you can't figure out what's causing this or a way to re-person people en-masse, I'd suggest turning off the unpersoning feature entirely. Whatever benefit there might conceivably be from not making it easy to look for banned members (a tiny fraction of all QQers) is far outweighed by the annoyance of being unable to easily search for/tag a large chunk of the userbase.

 

[BlackCoat13]

Tried to search my own name in a thread to see all my own posts, my own name is not listed in the site member search engine. Searched through the profile / account stuff to see if that was a toggled option I enabled somewhere, didn't find it. I was able to search myself a month ago, and I don't recall having actually changed any options to make this happen.

 

[JadeKaiser]

I've noticed this with autocompleting user names in a post as well. It's definitely a bug, and it's included at least a few users who are frequently mentioned in some threads. Such as Kinkrow; in the General SI thread, people are supposed to ping them any time they post a snippet there, for threadmarking purposes. But the autocomplete for their name is broken.

@alethiophile, @ultima333, @tehelgee: I think it's probably like 30-40% of QQ members affected now. If you can't figure out what's causing this or a way to re-person people en-masse, I'd suggest turning off the unpersoning feature entirely. Whatever benefit there might conceivably be from not making it easy to look for banned members (a tiny fraction of all QQers) is far outweighed by the annoyance of being unable to easily search for/tag a large chunk of the userbase.

Click to shrink...

I doubt it's some sort of 'unpersoning' plugin. As far as I know, we just don't do that here, and those plugins cost money that the admins wouldn't have wanted to spend on something we won't use. If it's built into baseline Xenforo2, that could be a different matter, and would likely be harder to get rid of than simply turning the feature off entirely. I don't think it has anything to do with such an option though; it's most likely just a bug with the autocomplete part of things.

As a side note, there's not much point in pinging Tehelgee for anything at this time. They're still on staff as an admin, but they haven't logged on in several years. Probably best not to have too many random, long-since-irrelevant pings clogging up their inbox when/if they ever do return.