A better title would be "Reddit search is now powered by IndexTank". As it stands right now, it sounds like Reddit launched a new general purpose search engine.

I checked the Reddit post, the FAQ and the IndexTank website, and there was no mention of the underlying technology implementation. It says that it uses a subset of Lucene, but no further details.

Is this basically hosted Solr with some tweaks for speed and features?

No, the old search was Solr based, this one uses only the lucene index file structure. Not even the scorer is lucene-based.

Anyone else been having wierd issues with reddit lately?

For long periods of time I get "the service you request is temporarily unavailable. please try again later." on my home internet connection. From other boxes in the UK, it's fine and from friends on the same ISP, it's also fine. It's quite bizarre.

I have been getting messages that say "Reddit is currently under heavy load. Please try again later." or something to that effect.

I'm pretty sure they are just having trouble dealing with the level of traffic they're getting.

I'm with you, I'm in London. On the plus side, I'm enjoying this place a lot.

There are tons of sites like reddit. Digg, delicious, Hacker News itself...it's not a good sign that Reddit needs to outsource its search to IndexTank, when literally every other site like it can handle search themselves.

What search does Hacker News do itself?

I don't think it's a bad sign at all. Good search is HARD, and plenty of companies outsource it.

This said from someone who was part of a search startup acquired specifically to power a larger site that couldn't do a good job themselves.

Whoops, forgot that HN doesn't have search. >.<

You know what you're talking about, so I'll agree that you're right, but the simple action of searching titles of submissions on Reddit didn't work. That makes it seem like that there's something wrong with their code or database setup. Reddit's source code is pretty disgusting.

Their problem, as I see it, was mainly that they were using Solr, which requires an inordinate amount of time to configure and maintain (time they didn't have), and also isn't good at handling frequent updates, like the up and down votes.

Just in case pg sees this: it might be good to change the CSS so that the links in downvoted comments are light-gray as well. Right now, the link unfortunately stands out.

Even better: remove the <a> tag altogether when a comment hits -4, like it is in self posts (Ask HN). Just light-gray on less-light-gray, someone might click on it inadvertently, because it becomes almost invisible.

What relevance does that have to this story? He beta tested something, he isn't in charge of it.

Although his subreddits are extremely creepy and he has a penchant for trolling, he's generally a good member of the community. He's got a great guide for new mods, and moderates several non-pornographic subreddits as well. I can't defend his choice in content on his subreddit, but I will say that he's an excellent and helpful mod in /r/ideasfortheadmins.

Take it to email, this isn't the place for this.