The fewer items the search has to look at the better its chances of working should be so culling isn't that pointless.
The thing is with modern browser features you only need to find the tracker once after that bookmarks etc will take all the frustration out of the business.
Culling is good for two things.
1. Other humans looking through the list by eye.
2. Finding the duplicates
and getting the information into one place for the team resolving the problems.
The difference for the platform itself searching through 1,000 items instead of 50,000 is negligible, so from that point of view it is pointless.
I think I know where you are going with "modern browsers help" but the magic of those depends on the platform itself using proper semantic URI patterns, which, again, this platform seems to utilise up to about 10% of capability at best.
Modern browsers do not help with the problems in navigating around the search space once you've found one that works, because whilst you can git gud with client-side frameworks now to make this really easy, again, this platform has chosen not to do that.
I simply do not understand why everybody feels the need to defend this awful platform.
