>>>>>Have we lost the ability to search previous messages as a non PUTM?
>>>>>
>>>>>When I tried to do a search for one of my previous messages (so I could answer someone's question) I get a list of the messages but the date of the message is 'Only available to PUTM members'
>>>>>
>>>>>So how can we search & retrieve a message?
>>>>
>>>>Are you talking about the Search icon from the toolbar?
>>>
>>>Yes,
>>>
>>>Press the search icon of the toolbar (the little world picture with a magnifying glass)
>>>all the results it returns have the message subject but both the date and link says only available to PUTM
>>
>>So, what you are telling is that you were using the search results (no link available to non PUTM members) as a workaround to get the date in order to use another mecanism, such as the calendar, to get access to a specific message by the use of that date. Is that what I understand?
>
>Yes you are correct. It makes search useless for BUTM.

Well, see. This is what we've been working on since several weeks in order to find one of the biggest mysteries of the Universal Thread. It was consisting of finding why non PUTM members kept using the search engine even if the result was not including any link. Why analyzing our logs on and on we finally found yesterday that some members were using that workaround.

For us, at first, we realized that couldn't be a situation. I mean, we couldn't believe some members were using that trick to bypass the search result and move up to the message content by using that approach.

But, then, by looking at each search done by non PUTM members one after the other brought us to the point that this is really what was happening.

At first, that date information shouldn't have been displayed. We hid it yesterday.

Some of us here should really understand that the Universal Thread relies mostly on the search engine for its ongoing existence. So, this doesn't help us at all when such situation is done. Of course, I'm sure those people now understand why we hide the date now in the search result to non PUTM members. Basically, we offer the search result to non PUTM members to let them see the speed of the search result and the type of result which would be available in PUTM mode. At no time, a link was available in there but some non PUTM members did use that trick to reach specific messages. For us, it's a not acceptable situation.

Secondly, the search feature has always been a feature for PUTM. So, those who complain really have no justification to complain. However, it did confirm us what we found yesterday.

I replied to you as you confirmed me what some steps some members were doing. It is not focusing on you personally but mostly to make some people realize some points here and this is why I am CCing others in this thread as well as this message contains valuable information.