Re: sub lists

[John Cunningham <johnc@together.net>]

Peter:

Peter Berrevoets wrote:

> The archives are broken.

yes, and before being lost in the move they didn't work very well.  and this is
NOT a flame of our hardworking listmeister by the way (more on that later)

> frustration than productive.  The only way to make them work without giving
> the entire burden of that job to one person is to create some kind of
> standard that makes sense, is easy to use and is accessible to anyone
> regardless of their abilities or knowledge.

respectfully disagree.  trying to get people to comply with a standard would be
impossible, particularly trying to keep newbies updated etc.  they have a hard
enough time with 'bombs', 'UFO's and ETKA's.

the real problem with the archive is that it searches digests.  it is painfully
annoying to search for, say
"200TQ and AC and compressor", only to have results (whole digests each time
remember) that include:
- a post or posts with 200TQ in someones sig
- a post or posts about AC in a Coupe GT
- a post or posts about air compressors in somebody's workshop
and not a single post about AC compressors in a 200TQ.

if the archive searched individual posts it would quickly become more useful.
if additionally, once you got a post you were interested, you could then follow
a thread up and/or down that would be even more usable (the way you can browse
the archives now for instance) try the A4.org search engine for an example of
searching that works like this: http://www.a4.org/search/
yes i know the A4 site isn't a mail server, it's a bulletin board type forum,
but still the functionality is cool.

the PROBLEM is (this is the more later part) that setting up something better
and cool like that is a big job, especially with little to no clams, which means
that you need _ltime_ and either capable cheapware/freeware, or to be handy with
a UNIX text editor and development language (oh, and then lots more time).   Dan
has the whole Web site overhaul in the works, which is really when you want to
implement a change like this.  in the meantime, does anybody know anything about
good free listserver search/archive software?  in a quick scan of a Linux list
or two turned up a few things, generally add-ins that sit on top of a standard
listserver/majordomo.  but real world experience using one is the key....
anybody?

JC