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As it says in the title, how do I search through comments of Hinduism.SE or meta.Hinduism.SE?

E.g., I'm interested in finding out all answers that lacked references or citations of a credible source to support the answer. So I want to search for "cite sources" (and leave another reminder there ;-)

But when I search for "cite sources" in the main search field at the top-right, I only get a handful of results. These results are not really the comments I was looking for but questions containing those words and it doesn't solve my problem.

Another and more useful use case is you often remember reading a helpful comment somewhere under a question or answer and a few days later you want to go back to it but can't recollect where exactly you saw it .

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  • How is it a feature-request
    – Ankit Sharma Mod
    Commented Feb 9, 2016 at 20:08
  • @AnkitSharma The question is about a feature lacking on the main site or something SE doesn't inherently support. I posted a similar question here, also a feature request. I think you meant to link to this feature-request.
    – Say No To Censorship
    Commented Feb 9, 2016 at 20:20
  • i got that one but for this one you already suggested a way using data explorer query and even accepted the answer. So looked like a closer to me. So just wanted to clear.
    – Ankit Sharma Mod
    Commented Feb 9, 2016 at 20:22
  • @AnkitSharma Yes, this issue is closed (or feature request is complete) and can be marked status-completed if that's what you meant to ask. (FYI, only mods can mark status-completed, else I would have already done it so :-)
    – Say No To Censorship
    Commented Feb 9, 2016 at 20:26

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Turns out, it's real easy using the following search-comments query of StackExchange Data Explorer**.

http://data.stackexchange.com/hinduism/query/114513/search-comments

Just type the search term++ in the parameters field and hit Run Query.

(For quick reference, direct link to results of "cite sources" is this.)

enter image description here

++search term is case sensitive.

**DISCLAIMER:

How often is the Stack Exchange Data Explorer updated?

The data is updated early every Sunday morning around 3:00 UTC. The last update was Jan 24 at 6:30. [Today is Jan 29, 2016]

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  • 1
    Thanks, I'd never heard of this before. Another tool I find useful is the one that generates a list of the most recent comments that have been posted on the site. I use it so often that I've created a shortlink for it: tinyurl.com/hcomments
    – Keshav Srinivasan Mod
    Commented Jan 29, 2016 at 21:23
  • (I added a disclaimer) Nice. How do you use the data from the API? You have it e-mailed to you everyday? Is it up-to-date unlike the data explorer?
    – Say No To Censorship
    Commented Jan 30, 2016 at 1:30
  • Yeah, the API accesses data in real time, so even comments that were just posted immediately show up. There's probably a way to search the comments using the API rather than the Data explorer, but I'm not a programming person so I'm not sure how. I don't do anything fancy like have the data emailed to me, I just load the url every so often and see the latest comments. I do it both for moderation purposes, like finding out about questions or answers that need my attention, or just personal purposes like seeing interesting comments I might want to respond to.
    – Keshav Srinivasan Mod
    Commented Jan 30, 2016 at 3:22

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