No problem, drftng. I, too, have been a longstanding user of many different forums, so I understand the the whole search before fuss deal-io.
No, the search here isn't all that great. Unless you know how to use it and narrow your results. The function works very similarly to how Google, Bing, and Yahoo's search engine's work, except this one is designed to search a certain directory within a network... not the network itself. Believe it or not, there is a right way and a wrong way to search for things whether it be on a website or on a search engine. Certain methods will narrow down the return so you can find the answers you're looking for.
In my opinion, if you're too crunched for time to search for answers, you're too crunched for time to grow, also, as it takes a hell of a lot more dedication than searching something up on a forum. If you don't have the time to learn thoroughly, you're going to make a lot of mistakes, because I'm telling you both right now, that these people don't want to sit here and answer the same questions every day. Your post will sit there until someone gets bored enough to answer you in depth.
Go reread a lot of the new posts. Most of the answers are from people who are experienced and don't mind replying to the same thing everyday, or they are also newbies, regurgitating information they learned from the experienced growers here.
Having said all this, I've never not found information I was looking for, whether it be on these forums', Dutch Breed's forums, or RIU's forums. And if I can't find the information on any of those forums (ie, some strain information), I can generally find it on google. I believe in the last few weeks that I've been here, I've had maybe 3 or 4 topics requesting information. And half of that information was regurgitated as well, I'd just overlooked it.
Take care guys, and don't let me dissuade you from posting here in the future! Just do some research first, so that the people who are helping us out don't have the repeat themselves so much, imo!
-nasty