

Reddit launches a new search engine - obsaysditto
http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/new-search.html

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acangiano
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.

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briandoll
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?

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

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sadiq
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
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.

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giantfuzzypanda
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.

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timcederman
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
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.

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jhandl
Their problem, as I see it, was mainly that they were using Solr, which
requires an inordinate amount of time to configure and maintain (time they
didn't have), and also isn't good at handling frequent updates, like the up
and down votes.

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AlekseyKorzun
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.

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Timothee
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
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.

