Re: searching the archives

["Sean Ford" <sean@nwh.org>]

I don't think the problem lies with the search engine, I think the basic
problem (if you can call it that) is that the archives are stored in a
digest format. When searching on something like "ISV" or "rough idle" the
searcher is then forced to manually search through a number of archived
files that contain numerous topics that are unrelated to the search
criteria (and God knows ISV problem posts occur daily around here).

I hate to ask Dan to do MORE work for the list, but I do agree that
improved archive searches would cut down on the number of "I can't find
anything in the archives so I'll just ask the list" messages. In a previous
life, I was a member of the Mercedes mailing-list and their site had a very
useful archive with search engine and only because the individual messages
were stored by subject title and with related [next] and [previous]
messages in the thread.

Now, back to a previous post I sent concerning a web based list archive for
any and all lists... is this Dan's skunkwork way of addressing this archive
search shortcoming?

Sean Ford
sean@nwh.org
Newton-Wellesley Hospital
Newton, MA  02162 (USA)
'92 Audi 100CS 5spd  20K mi
'89 Suzuki Katana 600 14K mi

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