Reddit launches a new search engine

Reddit launches a new search engine(blog.reddit.com)

36 points by obsaysditto 15 years ago | 17 comments

acangiano 15 years ago |

A better title would be "Reddit search is now powered by IndexTank". As it stands right now, it sounds like Reddit launched a new general purpose search engine.

briandoll 15 years ago |

I checked the Reddit post, the FAQ and the IndexTank website, and there was no mention of the underlying technology implementation. It says that it uses a subset of Lucene, but no further details.

Is this basically hosted Solr with some tweaks for speed and features?

jhandl 15 years ago | |

No, the old search was Solr based, this one uses only the lucene index file structure. Not even the scorer is lucene-based.

sadiq 15 years ago |

Anyone else been having wierd issues with reddit lately?

For long periods of time I get "the service you request is temporarily unavailable. please try again later." on my home internet connection. From other boxes in the UK, it's fine and from friends on the same ISP, it's also fine. It's quite bizarre.

zweben 15 years ago | |

I have been getting messages that say "Reddit is currently under heavy load. Please try again later." or something to that effect.

I'm pretty sure they are just having trouble dealing with the level of traffic they're getting.

TimeForThis 15 years ago | |

I'm with you, I'm in London. On the plus side, I'm enjoying this place a lot.

giantfuzzypanda 15 years ago |

There are tons of sites like reddit. Digg, delicious, Hacker News itself...it's not a good sign that Reddit needs to outsource its search to IndexTank, when literally every other site like it can handle search themselves.

timcederman 15 years ago | |

What search does Hacker News do itself?

I don't think it's a bad sign at all. Good search is HARD, and plenty of companies outsource it.

This said from someone who was part of a search startup acquired specifically to power a larger site that couldn't do a good job themselves.

giantfuzzypanda 15 years ago | | |

Whoops, forgot that HN doesn't have search. >.<

You know what you're talking about, so I'll agree that you're right, but the simple action of searching titles of submissions on Reddit didn't work. That makes it seem like that there's something wrong with their code or database setup. Reddit's source code is pretty disgusting.

AlekseyKorzun 15 years ago |

That's pretty funny that their beta tester 'violentacrez' is the same guy who was sending me personal threats because we removed his borderline child-pornography images from imagesocket.com.

Not only that, he seems to be a top member of /r/jailbait reddit community.

Nice one.

Timothee 15 years ago | |

Just in case pg sees this: it might be good to change the CSS so that the links in downvoted comments are light-gray as well. Right now, the link unfortunately stands out.

Timothee 15 years ago | | |

Even better: remove the <a> tag altogether when a comment hits -4, like it is in self posts (Ask HN). Just light-gray on less-light-gray, someone might click on it inadvertently, because it becomes almost invisible.

icey 15 years ago | |

What relevance does that have to this story? He beta tested something, he isn't in charge of it.

jokermatt999 15 years ago | |

Although his subreddits are extremely creepy and he has a penchant for trolling, he's generally a good member of the community. He's got a great guide for new mods, and moderates several non-pornographic subreddits as well. I can't defend his choice in content on his subreddit, but I will say that he's an excellent and helpful mod in /r/ideasfortheadmins.

violentacrez 15 years ago | |

Ah, good old irrelevant Aleksey. I trust you and your site are doing well? It's always good to hear from you. I glad I was able to provide you an opportunity to advertise your website. Have an excellent day! :)

alnayyir 15 years ago | | |

Take it to email, this isn't the place for this.