Hello AmigoJack, and my apologies if your post was NOT (grin!) replying to my post suggesting a decent logical search facility, as in "{remove | reduce } AND { Click | Hiss | Noise | Pop | Notch}".
The issue of special words for operators, or reserved words in an expression is usually handled by symbols, as I did in my example, using the <vertical bar> for the inclusive-OR operator, and <wiggly braces> for embracing lexical atoms of the search.
I suspect that most people in this Topic are programmers with years of experience in different languages, so determining the syntax of the expressions will not be a problem.
Greatly related to the topic, I suspect, too, that it will be those with advanced education in logical expressions who would take advantage of a better interface.
I suspect that a great many people use the Advanced Search in a simple sense, then pore over the 183 results by hand, and that is good and it works for them and saves them time. Just like someone driving to the store using only first gear because but is much faster than walking, and changing gears is complicated.
But then someone like me, who is interested in setting up a search URL that will serve thousands of members of a board for dozens of years would use the ability to design a complex logical expression, knowing that the time spent by one person setting it up is repaid in time by the time saved by thousands of users.
And
that means benefits for people using phpBB software, and
that ought to be good for phpBB.
Cheers, Chris