What is meta? ×

Why does the search on this site find posts I made three months ago using my user name as the search criteria, but not the one I posted three hours ago? Very frustrating.

Then I have to play the "what is the CAPTCHA" game 20 times, along with the "you can't add a new tag" game. As you can probably tell, I'm not having a fun time right now.

share|improve this question

migrated from stackoverflow.com Nov 23 '10 at 4:06

This question came from our site for professional and enthusiast programmers.

2 Answers 2

Here's your recent question: MySQL refuses to work with Apache 2.2 and PHP 5.2 on Windows 7 or Win3k

Here's your older one: PHPMailer question

Normally, I'd tell you to just look in the list of your questions in your profile, but it looks like those posts weren't made by the same account. You posted with the same e-mail address, which is why the identicon (that colorful crazy geometric icon thing) is the same on both posts, but you didn't register. If you use a different computer, or the same computer with the cookies cleared, the system can't tell you're the same person.

You actually have at least three accounts: here's one, here's another and here's the third. There are five other users named Beauford, too. If you have more than one e-mail address, some of them may also be you.

The reason the search doesn't find you is that you only have your name in one of the posts. Search doesn't look at author names, just the post bodies. Even if you type your name into the body every time, other people may edit it out; it's even encouraged for them to do so. We don't like "Hi guys," or "Thanks, [name]" here; it's just clutter.

share|improve this answer
good find, I merged them all. Note that unregistered users CAN recover their cookie using the "forgot my account" link on the /users/login page.. assuming they gave us a valid email (this user did) –  Jeff Atwood Nov 27 '10 at 9:29

If you enter user:516947 into the search box, you should have more luck. Although, since you only have one question there, it's probably more to do with you not necessarily having a proper OpenID account.

And, if you want to get rid of the captchas and be able to add tags, I think that just requires a little more rep.

As with all worthwhile things, it takes a little effort :-)

share|improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.