I’ve been trying to search search on the forums in hiragana and kanji and it is not working. Has anyone else had this issue or am I doing something stoopid?? Can you guys reproduce the issue?
Because this seems like it may be a major issue in a… Japanese learning forum. 
I am also having this issue, on Android chrome.
Looks like search is not UTF-8 enabled by default. Can’t do it on our end, but I am reaching out to the Discourse team to make it happen. Will report back when I hear from them.
Fantastic. Thanks for the quick reply.
I also noticed this problem, but it was more because I received the message that my search has to be at least 5 characters long.
Well that’s weird. Especially for a forum solution “for the new era”. Also, I thought Jeff Atwood had a good grip on the fact that people use different languages… 
Yeah, that’s the worst when you’re trying to search just a couple of kanji or something. Wonder if that can be changed… If not, it’s definitely something the Discourse team should fix.
That minimum number of search character requirement should be fixable by changing a setting in Discourse, right?
Minimum character search is controllable in admin, but no point in altering it until UTF-8 gets enabled.
Yeah… Right? The Postgres DB just needs UTF-8 enabled and the forum needs to be reindexed. I could do it myself, but I don’t have SSH access.
Ahhh - you went for the hosted option, and not the self-hosted one. I see. Well, hope it isn’t too much of a slog sorting this out then. 
I haven’t attempted any searches in/for Japanese yet. But I shall do so to see if I can help crack this!
I do want to write something in Mami’s 最近夢 thread… I should search for that since I think it’s no longer on the main page of Japanese.
Hope we can have this fixed!
Edit: oh I see I should wait until after Viet gets the good news from the people at Discourse.
Thank you thank you!
Can you give me examples of terms you are unable to search for @AnimeCanuck @alexbeldan @SandshrewMcD
It looks like our version of Discourse does have UTF-8 enabled on the DB. I was testing out a bunch of phrases and got zero results globally, but was able to get results if I scoped it to Japanese Only. I changed the search character limit to 1 and it looks like I am getting results globally now.
I haven’t run across any myself yet. The way this thread sounded I thought it wouldn’t work at all. I’ve just successfully searched 夢、こんにちは、and 皆… However I did notice (at least in the case of 皆) that only results since the move to Discourse came up. Perhaps it’s not searching archived threads as well?
Ahhh!!! AHA! That is true! I just now searched 助けて expecting to see my thread about becoming sect Gurppies come up (and it being in the thread title to be number one on the list) however there were only 4 entries - two where I was referring to said thread myself - all from within the last 4 days. All from after the move to Discourse.
I see. I think you are on to something…
If I search for あなた it looks like I am only getting results from posts made after the migration. If I search wanikani I get results from old posts.
That’s why I’m a bug tester. I poke holes in things.
(Care to employ me from afar?)
I can try a few more things… 猫 should have a few hits… But will it bring up the old catgirl thread?
Hmm, this is odd, Viet. While there were only 5 results, two of the threads were from before the migration. Now, the Table of Contents thread was recently turned into a wiki, and also has new replies, so that could be why (either reason) but the last or second last result is merely from 11 days ago. I haven’t looked to see if there are replies to the thread from after the move or not.
The Cat (and Catgirl) appreciation threads from before the move (the first being mentioned in the Table of Contents) do not appear, although one of them was referenced in the chunk of Table of Contents (and how that result was chosen).
Odd.
So basically any old (pre migration) post which have been edited sometime post migration is showing in the search results?
If this is the case, then I have a pretty good idea what happened…
Hey! I found this bug! Give me the job! 
Actually, I think the main reason I wasn’t getting results was the lack of enough characters in my search query. But @viet lowering it to one seems to have fixed that issue. If we found another problem because of this then that’s a good thing, right?
@viet
AHA! I’m right! The Sentence Challenge Thread had 猫 in it and replies from after the move. That is how that older thread was able to populate the list of results. There are 5 or so replies from after the move starting with https://community.wanikani.com/t/Example-Sentences-Challenge/16223/13
The search for some reason will not recognize any old kanji or Japanese! O.o