Hi Anet,

I first posted about this back at the beginning of the new site changeover, and while it did gather support from Crew and others, I haven't seen any changes. What I'm about to write details why, to my great sadness, airliners.net has moved from the top to the bottom of my list of preferred sources to find pictures of airplanes.

In order to search for photos of a given airline, we are greeted with a free-type field. Although I prefer the fixed dropdown menu, I guess this is setup isn't inherently bad on its own. [Although I cannot figure out for the life of me why it allows me to select multiple airlines or aircraft when doing so always returns 0 photo results (I thought that selecting, say, B757-200 and B767-300 would give me all the photos in the database of both types - which would be awesome - but clearly this isn't so)].

But here's the problem: there are great inconsistencies as to how photos of the SAME airline were uploaded. Just now, I took a pen and paper and jotted down the various ways one could search for photos of Trans World Airlines airplanes. Here are the results (format = "airline entry" - photos returned) :

"TWA" - 1
"TWA Airlines" - 65
"TWA - Transcontinental and Western Air" - 73
"Trans World Airlines - TWA" - 3330
"Trans World Airlines - TWA Cargo" - 1
"Trans World Airlines - TWA Cargojet" - 16
"Trans World Airline" - 5

That's SEVEN forms of the SAME airline!

Here's another example: searching for American Airlines airplanes:

"American Airlines" - 39413
"American Airlines (AAL)" - 0
"American Airlines Freight" - 1
"American Airlines Freighter" - 36
"American Overseas Airlines" - 14

Another FIVE ways of searching for ONE airline. I hope I'm not the only one who sees how impractical this is!

Thanks to my pen-and-paper "log," I now know that, for the most part, I should enter in "Trans World Airlines - TWA" and "American Airlines" to get the non-inclusive majority of photos available of what I want to see... but is this really the best way this can be done? Do I really have to play guess-and-check with every airline until I find the magic words that return what I want to see?

And this doesn't just end with airlines. In order to look at airplane types, we are greeted with:
-Basic Type
-Generic Type
-Version
-Manufacturer
-Builder

And as if that's not enough, there are also inconsistencies with entries here too: "Airbus A320" returns 178,243 photos while "A320" returns 0.

Furthermore, I cannot find a way to look up all the variants of a given airliner at once in one search. For example, I can search B747-100 and 200 and 300 (etc), but there's no way for me to see ALL B747s. There are "747-..." and "747" options in the menus, but they yield 178 and 0 photos respectively.

Please don't take someone who blindly says "The old way is better! I hate change!" Trust me, I've kept an open mind and tried my best to figure it out on my own. But what used to be the best one-stop shop for quickly and easily finding aviation photos has turned into an unusable nightmare. Google Images is now my go-to. Of course, it's nowhere near as accurate as what I'm sure airliners.net COULD be (a search for "TWA L-1011" will return a few photos of Delta and AA airplanes) but it's infinitely quicker to type in "TWA L-1011" than to guess which one of the 7 TWAs I should select...

Do others share my experiences? Am I being totally stupid and overlooking something simple? Is this on the Crew's radar?

If you made it to the end, thanks for listening!

+1; I experience the same issues and would appreciate it if the developers can do something about this.

Hi
Right now the main priority is getting editor tools in place, when that is done the editors can start the task of registry cleaning that at least deals with some of the issues.

Hi John,

Have the editor tools been put in place yet?

Hello,

Any news on this?

Thank you in advance.

Another no...sorry. Some things have been done to editor tolls, but not enough I´m afraid

I just tried using the photo search for the first time since rejoining the site after a few years break.

Something has gone terribly wrong with the search options, there used to be so many more.

It used to be possible to specify an aircraft type, airline, airport all separately ( eg DC10 / Air New Zealand / LAX ) ...and the search would specifically bring up Air New Zealand DC-10 photos taken at LAX - it was that specific. Now all that functionality has gone, there seems to only be a keyword search and it is, to be blunt, not very good. If I try searching Air New Zealand DC-10 it brings up Air New Zealand aircraft which are not DC-10s and DC-10s which were not Air New Zealand, and aircraft which don't fall into either category. How did the search function get so broken, and are there any plans to actually fix it ?

Kiwiandrew wrote:

I just tried using the photo search for the first time since rejoining the site after a few years break.

Something has gone terribly wrong with the search options, there used to be so many more.

It used to be possible to specify an aircraft type, airline, airport all separately ( eg DC10 / Air New Zealand / LAX ) ...and the search would specifically bring up Air New Zealand DC-10 photos taken at LAX - it was that specific. Now all that functionality has gone, there seems to only be a keyword search and it is, to be blunt, not very good. If I try searching Air New Zealand DC-10 it brings up Air New Zealand aircraft which are not DC-10s and DC-10s which were not Air New Zealand, and aircraft which don't fall into either category. How did the search function get so broken, and are there any plans to actually fix it ?

We moved to a new site platform about three and a half years ago, so that's why everything is completely different. Unfortunately it is highly unlikely that anything with the search will be changed or fixed.

atcsundevil wrote:

Kiwiandrew wrote:

I just tried using the photo search for the first time since rejoining the site after a few years break.

Something has gone terribly wrong with the search options, there used to be so many more.

It used to be possible to specify an aircraft type, airline, airport all separately ( eg DC10 / Air New Zealand / LAX ) ...and the search would specifically bring up Air New Zealand DC-10 photos taken at LAX - it was that specific. Now all that functionality has gone, there seems to only be a keyword search and it is, to be blunt, not very good. If I try searching Air New Zealand DC-10 it brings up Air New Zealand aircraft which are not DC-10s and DC-10s which were not Air New Zealand, and aircraft which don't fall into either category. How did the search function get so broken, and are there any plans to actually fix it ?

We moved to a new site platform about three and a half years ago, so that's why everything is completely different. Unfortunately it is highly unlikely that anything with the search will be changed or fixed.

Thanks for your reply Atcsundevil.

Yes, I suppose my question was a bit redundant, as I remember the platform move ( frustration from all the damage/bugs/security issues was actually the main reason I took a break from the site for a couple of years ) , I guess I was a bit optimistic in hoping that the worst of the damage might have been fixed by now.

It's a shame, because for all the faults with the old site, the search function for photos was great, and it made the database worth having. Now? It's a bit like having a library without any catalogue, essentially the photo collection is pointless because it is no longer a functional database, just a huge random pile of pictures Oh well, there's no way to unscramble a broken egg, I guess.

Kiwiandrew wrote:

atcsundevil wrote:

Kiwiandrew wrote:

I just tried using the photo search for the first time since rejoining the site after a few years break.

Something has gone terribly wrong with the search options, there used to be so many more.

It used to be possible to specify an aircraft type, airline, airport all separately ( eg DC10 / Air New Zealand / LAX ) ...and the search would specifically bring up Air New Zealand DC-10 photos taken at LAX - it was that specific. Now all that functionality has gone, there seems to only be a keyword search and it is, to be blunt, not very good. If I try searching Air New Zealand DC-10 it brings up Air New Zealand aircraft which are not DC-10s and DC-10s which were not Air New Zealand, and aircraft which don't fall into either category. How did the search function get so broken, and are there any plans to actually fix it ?

We moved to a new site platform about three and a half years ago, so that's why everything is completely different. Unfortunately it is highly unlikely that anything with the search will be changed or fixed.

Thanks for your reply Atcsundevil.

Yes, I suppose my question was a bit redundant, as I remember the platform move ( frustration from all the damage/bugs/security issues was actually the main reason I took a break from the site for a couple of years ) , I guess I was a bit optimistic in hoping that the worst of the damage might have been fixed by now.

It's a shame, because for all the faults with the old site, the search function for photos was great, and it made the database worth having. Now? It's a bit like having a library without any catalogue, essentially the photo collection is pointless because it is no longer a functional database, just a huge random pile of pictures Oh well, there's no way to unscramble a broken egg, I guess.

I think everyone misses the old site to an extent — at least some things. Managing the forums is much, much easier on this site from our perspective, but we had things like automated deletion notifications on the old site that weren't carried over. It's frustrating for users to have posts disappear, but we don't have enough time in the day to manually contact everyone. I have to admit that I'm rarely satisfied when attempting to search the photo database though. Given how much they had to modify this platform to get it to even have a photo database, I guess beggars can't be choosers.

Kiwiandrew wrote:

I just tried using the photo search for the first time since rejoining the site after a few years break.

Something has gone terribly wrong with the search options, there used to be so many more.

It used to be possible to specify an aircraft type, airline, airport all separately ( eg DC10 / Air New Zealand / LAX ) ...and the search would specifically bring up Air New Zealand DC-10 photos taken at LAX - it was that specific. Now all that functionality has gone, there seems to only be a keyword search and it is, to be blunt, not very good. If I try searching Air New Zealand DC-10 it brings up Air New Zealand aircraft which are not DC-10s and DC-10s which were not Air New Zealand, and aircraft which don't fall into either category. How did the search function get so broken, and are there any plans to actually fix it ?

Have you tried the "advanced search" button?

dutchspotter1 wrote:

Have you tried the "advanced search" button?

Thank you so much ... I didn't even notice they had a separate 'advanced search' button - appreciate your help

You're welcome. I wish they made the advanced search the default view; I'm sure it's on the developers' to-do-list somewhere, but...