Date:         Wed, 16 Jul 2003 18:59:53 -0700
Reply-To:     Mark Dorm <mark_hb@HOTMAIL.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Mark Dorm <mark_hb@HOTMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Re: Organizing Vanagon Maintenance Information
Comments: To: wilden1@JUNO.COM
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed

then forgot the archives, start it fresh, and use input from existing
members so its made collectively...

it would be nice to be able to type your own info online and have it
saved... like 180,000 miles for the oil change, air filer change...

>From: Stan Wilder <wilden1@JUNO.COM>

>
>I'm not trying to quash your program.
>Several of us decided to scour the archives and take the contents for
>specific subjects and create a hot list of the life saving subjects that
>most Vanagon owners would truly treasure because they constitute
>methodology and techniques that are not in the Bentleys, not properly
>covered or simply are not correct.
>This was about a year ago and although I got the assignment started that
>I chose the project died from lack of activity.
>One person downloaded the archives onto CD roms and it consumed three
>900meg CDs. That is a lot to deal with when you consider it is all in
>ASCII text.
>The King James version of the bible will fit on a 1.44 floppy in ASCII
>text.
>Using that comparison it's enough to scare the bejesus out of you.
>We speculated that 80% of the archives are trivia and the remaining
>content is duplicated many times, by many contributors.
>Ultimately I think we could have reduced the whole thing down to a 1.44
>floppy by saving only the very critical information not covered by
>Bentley. That would have been straight ASCII without pictures.
>
>Stan Wilder
>
>On Thu, 22 May 2003 21:31:47 -0400 "Tom F." <fourwdvw@YAHOO.COM> writes:
> > Stan,
> >
> > Your points are good, but if the annotated Bentley comments were
> > available
> > 24 hours per day, and even commented on my others, you would not
> > have to
> > depend on the right person being on vanagon at your precise time of
> > need.
> >
> > I agree that all the answers are in the archives already, but the
> > searches
> > take time, and then you find that you needed to rephrase the search,
> > and
> > that takes more time, and the system times out often just as well.
> >
> > Picture yourself broken down in a little town in Maine, the Bentley
> > covers
> > the system you are concerned with, but not everything. The public
> > library
> > is the only source of Internet access, and they are only open for
> > three
> > hours a day. That is when the annotated Bentley would be
> > invaluable.
> >
> > As for some others comments, I'm not so sure about drop down
> > menus-what I
> > like about the Audi page is that I can take my Audi Bentley (three
> > volumes
> > each the size of the Vanagon volume, by the way) and compare the
> > index
> > directly to the webpage, and I immediately know where to go.
> >
> > Just some more thoughts
> >
> > Tom F.
> >
> >
>
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