New Search Function

[Host Jazzbeau]

Cruise Critic has implemented a handy short-cut search feature to zero in on threads about individual river cruise lines.  At the top of the main River Cruising forum you'll see a drop-down menu labeled "See posts about: Select Ship..."  [it says 'ship' because that was the label set up for other forums by the external website developer]

 

The drop-down menu lists many river cruise lines and will initiate a search for threads with the name of the line in the title.  [It doesn't search for posts mentioning the line in other threads, but that is an option visible after the search completes.]

 

I spotted one problem: AmaWaterways required that exact wording although many people call it by a variation.  Initially I went back and edited all the recent threads that used a variation on the name, but I realized that I couldn't keep up with this.  So I asked to have AMA added as an OR term and it turned out that this is a simple change and has already been implemented – so now whether the thread says AMA, Ama Waterways, or AmaWaterways the search will find it.

 

Please take a look at the drop-down menu and let me know if there are any other river cruise line name variations that should be added.

 

Also please let me know if there are any other river cruise lines that should be added to the menu.  [I have already asked for the following additions:  Riverside, Saga, Travelmarvel, Tui, Uniworld.]

 

Should we also add the German companies?  [A-ROSA, Lüftner, Nicko, VIVA]  I'm worried about making the menu too long for small screens.

 

 

[CPT Trips]

When searching Grand Circle, a whole bunch of posts with “Grand” that have nothing to do with GCT are displayed. I won’t suggest how to fix it, it needs fixing. Here’s a screenshot example of irrelevant results. 

Edited July 24, 2023 by CPT Trips

[Host Jazzbeau]

2 hours ago, CPT Trips said:

When searching Grand Circle, a whole bunch of posts with “Grand” that have nothing to do with GCT are displayed. I won’t suggest how to fix it, it needs fixing. Here’s a screenshot example of irrelevant results. 

Reported.  Should be an easy fix.

[CPT Trips]

6 hours ago, Host Jazzbeau said:

Reported.  Should be an easy fix.

Great, thanks. It just dawned on me that GCT isn’t displayed in the drop-down. Should it be?

What about Vantage? /s You never know when a law clerk will visit. 

[Host Jazzbeau]

GCT has been added as an option to the "Grand Circle" search

 

Not adding searches for defunct cruise lines – I taught Legal Research for 30 years and any decent law clerk should be able to handle this!!!

[notamermaid]

Cannot make up my mind about the German cruise lines if I think they should be in or not. May be a bit much. If I had to choose one it would be Viva Cruises but not sure about this one as of now. Perhaps one that has not been mentioned should be in - Amadeus (rather than Lüftner). They have co-operations with British tour operators so perhaps that makes them more interesting for a search. Again, not sure.

 

notamermaid

 

[mleng]

I would love to read more reviews on lesser known but possibly better value cruiselines like Nicko and Viva.  So if it's not too much trouble, please add them to the Drop Down menu.  Thanks.

[Host Jazzbeau]

7 hours ago, mleng said:

I would love to read more reviews on lesser known but possibly better value cruiselines like Nicko and Viva.  So if it's not too much trouble, please add them to the Drop Down menu.  Thanks.

The drop down menu doesn't add anything, it just runs a pre-programmed search.  You can do the same search using the Search box at the top of the page.  

[Rebel54]

On 7/25/2023 at 12:48 PM, notamermaid said:

Cannot make up my mind about the German cruise lines if I think they should be in or not. May be a bit much. If I had to choose one it would be Viva Cruises but not sure about this one as of now. Perhaps one that has not been mentioned should be in - Amadeus (rather than Lüftner). They have co-operations with British tour operators so perhaps that makes them more interesting for a search. Again, not sure.

 

notamermaid

 

Viva does have a US Marketed page so I think it would be nice to have more info on them.  I am actually looking at one of their cruises for 2025 Christmas markets.

[gnome12]

The drop down menu doesn’t give any more information than is available by searching for the cruise line.

 

[loriva]

On 7/21/2023 at 3:13 PM, Host Jazzbeau said:

Cruise Critic has implemented a handy short-cut search feature to zero in on threads about individual river cruise lines.  At the top of the main River Cruising forum you'll see a drop-down menu labeled "See posts about: Select Ship..."  [it says 'ship' because that was the label set up for other forums by the external website developer]

 

The drop-down menu lists many river cruise lines and will initiate a search for threads with the name of the line in the title.  [It doesn't search for posts mentioning the line in other threads, but that is an option visible after the search completes.]

 

I spotted one problem: AmaWaterways required that exact wording although many people call it by a variation.  Initially I went back and edited all the recent threads that used a variation on the name, but I realized that I couldn't keep up with this.  So I asked to have AMA added as an OR term and it turned out that this is a simple change and has already been implemented – so now whether the thread says AMA, Ama Waterways, or AmaWaterways the search will find it.

 

Please take a look at the drop-down menu and let me know if there are any other river cruise line name variations that should be added.

 

Also please let me know if there are any other river cruise lines that should be added to the menu.  [I have already asked for the following additions:  Riverside, Saga, Travelmarvel, Tui, Uniworld.]

 

Should we also add the German companies?  [A-ROSA, Lüftner, Nicko, VIVA]  I'm worried about making the menu too long for small screens.

 

 

 

Thanks for the initiative on the new search function, @Host Jazzbeau.  I just tried it out on our two upcoming river cruises, Viking Passage to Eastern Europe and AMAWaterways Douro.

 

It worked great for the AMA search--as there were only 5 pages of results, it was easy to scroll through and find only those that applied to our itinerary.  I love that the new function returns results as the whole thread, not individual posts.

 

The Viking search was less successful as there are so many more threads.  I tried to do a follow-up search adding "Budapest" but those results only narrowed results from 345 threads to 329 and added in a bunch of other cruise lines.

 

One possible refinement, if possible:  After reading a thread and returning to the search results, could it bring you back to the one you just read?  Currently it takes you to the top of the page of results and you need to scroll back down and try to remember where you left off.

 

A very minor quibble!  Overall, I think it's a great idea and very helpful.

 

Many thanks,