Hello,

 

a few of my subscribers have brought to my attention an issue with searching our list archives, where the search will fail with the message:

 

Your search contains only "overflow words" - words that occur so frequently that they are not indexed. Please refine your search.

 

This was first noticed when our host switched from 16.5 to 17.0 but I am not sure that is related.

 

I can’t find much information about this error (zero results for “overflow words” on this forum!), but in testing it myself, I have found that many words common to our list will cause this error. Our topic is wild birds so, for instance, sparrow, wren, gull… all are unsearchable. Restricting the date range does not prevent it, nor does enclosing several common words within quotes, like ‘American tree sparrow’. If all three individual words are overflow words, even the specific and far less common combination is rendered unsearchable.

 

I am hoping for more information about this, and ultimately a way to return basic functionality to our archive search.

 

Thanks,

Dave Scheu

MOBIRDS-L list owner

St. Louis, MO, USA