[AskLibO] Searching through user's log

It is sometimes necessary to search through own answers (and questions) to find relevant information.

The obvious way is to step through the 10-answers-per-screen list in the hope that the question-title will ring a bell. This is not satisfactory when there are more than say 5-10 screens as it involves skimming over many screens.

Is there a way to show more then 10 answers with perhaps a few lines in the way Activity provides?

Hello,

Thanks for the patience - just got back in.

Have started quite a while ago using Base for storing Ask info. With over 1200+ answers and 2000+ comments finding something through the site is next to impossible. Even searching on my user name only returns 100-200 results - a far cry from what I have. So built the Base program (when only abt 500 answers) and manually went back and copied the data (question & answer & originally karma info) and have maintained it since. Added a search for to it and also the link back to the question. Using a push button can easily jump back to the original post. Have since given up on the karma portion and never did anything about comments. You can find this Base file in my answer on this post → Request: .odb Database for own Questions and Answers on Ask.LibreOffice.

Now I understand this is not ideal but along has come another method.

Apologies to TDF if this adds to the workload with requests (hopefully only those really in need will request).

Recently (about 2-3 weeks ago), there appeared a new option in your User Profile. The last item on the right is account and selecting are two buttons - ask to remove your account and request your data. This latter I did about two weeks ago.

The following was generated for me (based on only my entries) and made available through a secured download:

  • all comments

  • all questions

  • all answers

  • user profile information

  • all uploaded images and samples

With the exception of the last item, the other information was given in the form of a JSON file. I was able to immediately use this in Firefox on my Mint system:

image description

You can see in the upper right where limited filtering is available. Comments, questions and answers are all typically in the same format:

image description

User profile contains all your personal information. The uploaded images and sample posted files are in a directory of its own. The only connection at this point is via a number in comment/question/answer & filename itself (used same numbering as when you download sample posted by someone.

I have just begun (yesterday), in some spare time, to write Python code to read these files and create a Base system for them with search forms & whatever relations I can come up with. Results will actually take some time. In the meantime, the JSON file appears to be something you can use for now to fulfill your question.

Keep in mind, this is VERY new and subject to change in who knows what ways - possibly content, delivery method, selection or who knows.

Also to all reading this, don’t request if you don’t have much info to be gotten. You can just as easily go to your user profile for that. I need hundreds of answers before it became too much of a burden.

Hope this is informative!

P.S. After initial select of button, it was a few days before I received an email. This presented possible download and responded to it. A few days later I received another email with the actual download instructions. Please don’t expect immediate results for this request. Again, it is quite new.

Hope this is informative!” Absolutely! And it seems that all the aggro over GDPR produced something worthwhile after all. Thanks for writing this up.

Facebook are also providing a download of everything they have stored about you. As @dajare said a good result of GDPR.

This drives me a bit bonkers, given the much more sophisticated search tools available on the StackExchange (“SE”) network where I am also active. It’s frustrating to have such limitations with this AskBot software.

Having said that, you can at least search your own (and other users’) questions, as noted in the AskBot help page. You can use any of these formats:

[user: somename] or @somename or @"some name"

although this will only find you questions from that user, but not answers.

You can use a site-delimited search in e.g. DuckDuckGo or Google (those links use “ajlittoz” as example) with this search line:

"ajlittoz" site:ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/

…so there is at least that possibility. Of course, it doesn’t allow for combinations of tags, and various sorting possibilities (date, activity, etc.) the way the SE tools do. Nor does this differentiate between questions, answers, and comments. But it’s something.

I would love to know if I’m missing something, and there are other, better ways of interrogating AskLibreOffice.