So, the search I think it horked.
Another forum I used transitioned to XenForo, and there's is horked as well.
Simply, the site says I have > 3000 messages. If I search for posts "by me", I get...2 pages.
I also noticed on the other site that there's no stemming of the words. Thus if you search for "word" vs "words" they're treated differently.
Going to the XenForo site, I see they making "advanced search" a premium addon
. That needs an external service (ElasticSearch), further complicating it.
Thats...disappointing, as search is fundamental to the value of the board.
I don't know what could be done about that.