Can the default search preferences be changed?

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I can't quite work out exactly how search results are ordered in the basic search function, but it appears to be mainly in order of oldest thread first.

Can this be changed to newest first? I think most of the time (not all, I appreciate) people want to read the latest discussion about a topic, or see the most recent classified advert for a piece of equipment, rather than something from a few years ago.

I know that users can go into Advanced Search and change the parameters but that's a bit of a faff, and it seems like the change I'm suggesting would save most users time, and save the forum servers a bit of work too.

As I say, I can't quite work out how search results are ordered - so there might be a bit more to be done/that can be done.