It is possible to configure or alter the code to make YaCy return data or return a blank value within a time-limit? YaCy will typically manage to respond if just one word is given. It will always time-out if a search query has more than 3 words. This is of course a problem in of itself. I use YaCy as a back-end at https://searx.everdot.org/ even though it’s useless crap which provides zero value. That it always time-outs to it’s limit, which I’ve found it’s best to set low. It would be better if a respond-limit would be set in YaCy so it would either respond within a time-limit with what it’s got or return nothing. As of now it can wait minutes before responding if the query is 10 words long.
On a somewhat related note, I do recommend against using YaCy at https://linuxreviews.org/YaCy and I don’t like doing that. The truth is what it is. I would like to be able to actually recommend using it. And I will if the software merits it, which it doesn’t.
Under System Administration > Advanced Configuration you can search for timeout which there are multiple of. Try to change one of these values and see if it works out
Btw, on my end I don’t have YaCy give up after typing in over 3 words. Your search example just seems to be very very specific in this case. Searching for something like “What Is the Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow?” which is 9 words long gives me results in a timely fashion:
1 Like
It’s not something that happens in some “specific case”. It’s something that happens about 2 out of 3 times, more often than not. It really isn’t very hard make YaCy freak out.
There’s no point in trying to BS me on this, I actually use Searx with Yacy as default search-engine. I may drop the YaCy part, it’s crap but it’s also the only free software search back-end.
I’m not seeing anything that would help under ConfigProperties_p.html (System Administration>Advanced Properties), is there a specific setting I should change there?
I can’t replicate your problems on my search engine. I have tried with your keyword who is the cutest pristin member and I’m not getting a timeout.
Essentially what searx is is doing is doing a API request to /yacysearch.json?{query}&startRecord={offset}&maximumRecords={limit}&contentdom={search_type}&resource=global which is 1:1 the same when searching on the search page of YaCy itself.
So if you’re having problems finding stuff on YaCy already with the search page failing then there is something with your instance. Seeing the screenshot on the linuxreviews wiki page shows that your instance is never connecting to any other peer. Is it for every search result?
I’m not sure which one of the timeouts change does to the API one. You can try changing clientTimeout which is default set to 10s. Restart after changing to let it take effect.
In response to the opening post, I’ve only just discovered YaCy a few days ago, but I can say already that it has quickly become my favorite search engine by far. What I can only assume are your edits (in bold) at https://linuxreviews.org/YaCy such as: “… it is totally unusable and a complete waste of time.” is absolutely untrue. As a new user, YaCy blows my mind. It is incredible and in time, I’m sure, will blow everything else out of the water.
Care to elaborate on exactly what kind of research purposes you find YaCy useful for? Others may find that information useful.
You should know what I did not discover YaCy a “few days ago”, if you peak at that history of the page you mention you’ll notice it was originally written in 2007 and that it was last updated in 2019. I know how YaCy works and what results it tends to produce and I absolutely stand by the assertion that it is, in fact, a utterly useless piece of garbage as a general-purpose search engine. I also know what kind of bugs you run into, how it will crash if the crawl queue is too long and other bugs/issues that aren’t even mentioned. Anyway…
You have clearly found some use for it in your area. That it could be useful for whatever it is you are doing is absolutely worth mentioning on that page. So please share how you find it useful.
You should also know that you are plain wrong about me having some kind of ax to grind. I don’t. I would absolutely love to praise YaCy and recommend it. But I am not going to lie. However, if I can point to some specific area(s) where it works fine, and you’ve apparently found some, then that’s worth including.
I do internet research in many areas. Primarily Alternative Energy, Organic Agriculture and Esoterica. What I love about YaCy is what you apparently consider one of its many flaws.
If I want to see something on one of my favorite subjects, Stirling Engines, Google always returns the same websites in the same order so I have to navigate through several pages of results and in actuality han’t seen anything new on the subject from Google in some years. It’s just too time consuming to bother with.
With YaCy, because results are random, or hand picked by other peers, I immediately found several new links chock full of interesting information about Stirling Engines on the first page of results. Another search sometime later had the same results. More new stuff I had never seen before searching page after page of the same old prioritized, commercial oriented Google results such as where to buy some cheap knock off Stirling engines on Amazon or Ebay.
With YaCy I found more of the kind of information I want to find. Projects and ideas from other Stirling Engine enthusiasts and Stirling Engine model builders, further, I could spider entire domains about Stirling Engines and quickly locate dozens of other good recommended links and all my favorite sites would be saved locally making them easy to find with a subsequent search without bookmarking.
Doing research I’m generally looking for new information, With YaCy, finding some new quality information is easier and faster.
2 Likes
heh, I tried to balance that page I have a bit more and I added basically your whole reply as a quote. I’ll remove it if you mind; I just assume it’s fine.
You(?) or whomever wrote " This is not the kind of review we like to write. The first revision of this page was written in 2007 . We pointed out it’s performance-problems and the fact that ***“it doesn’t do a very good job at sorting the pages according to relevance”***. In 2019, 12 years later , we have no choice but to conclude that YaCy is a completely useless piece of software. And that’s just sad because there is a rapidly increasing need for a uncensored unbiased peer to peer based search engine." (emphasis added)
This is completely untrue and unfair. Using YaCy as some sort of back-end to a searx meta-search does not allow anyone to tweak and configure YaCy according to their own needs and yes, to work well and get “good” results it does need to be configured by the user.to produce the kind of results they want. The above comments are “biased” and just wrong in that YaCy is being used in a way that makes it impossible to configure or use according to individual user’s preferences.
1 Like
