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Date:         Wed, 29 Jun 2005 21:27:15 -0500
Reply-To:     Jim Felder <felder@KNOLOGY.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Jim Felder <felder@KNOLOGY.NET>
Subject:      Re: Searching archives - 50 most discussed topics
Comments: To: Jon Brown <jbrown510@GMAIL.COM>
In-Reply-To:  <002d01c57d03$0f8c8b50$7d6e0a0a@W05560>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed

I don't think you can correlate the most useful information to a vanagon owner with the most common information in the archives. That would make tire size, tire manufacturer, synthetic vs petro oil and top speed the four most important topics.

What I have found helpful is to go search the archives--but more often to ask around for relevant links--when a problem arises. There's almost always someone who's doing the same job or just did the same job that you are about to do, and they have collected the most relevant information, and will often offer it to you. Brake master cylinder replacement, diesel to turbo diesel conversion, steering rack replacement, waterboxer head gasket replacement are some that come to mind where I just asked, and was handed a nice bundle of links in the replies. When I find stuff that I like, I print it out and stick it in a ring binder, especially if its something I know I eventually will have to do. That way I can at least find the terms used, author's name, etc.

So maybe just ask about the main areas of the car: westy stuff, head leaks, steering rack, CV joints, transmission pulling, engine pulling, coolant system bleeding, replacing coolant pipes, etc. The stuff everybody has to think about within the first 300K miles : )

Jim

On Jun 29, 2005, at 6:34 PM, Jon Brown wrote:

> Brilliant idea... don't have a clue how it could be done based on > what is > readily available, but one could easily enough write a program to > download > ALL the messages into a database and then add up how many times each > word > appeared. Take that list and discard the top common words like "the" > "vanagon" "etc..." but even then I'm not sure that would get you what > you > want... > > The "best" solution would probably just be to post a poll or take a > survey, > then use those results to query the archives and develop some sort of > meta-FAQ linking to relevant posts, or just authoring a concise > answer... > > The other thought would be to manually comb through the last one year > of > posts and then "assume" that it is representative of multiple years. > It's > not like tires were only talked about in 2003 :) >


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