Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 14:08:45 -0400
Reply-To: Sam Walters <sam.cooks@VERIZON.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Sam Walters <sam.cooks@VERIZON.NET>
Subject: Re: Was "How do we remove" now searching the archives again - long
In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.2.20060913101356.02891a78@mail-hub.optonline.net>
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If a person has trouble making the vanagon.com archives work, it is
because she or he doesn't understand how to effectively search free form
databases. They work very well for those who know how to use them.
This database has powerful capabilities that let you control the search
and get what you want. And what you learn in mastering them is the same
type of skills that you can use effectively on many other databases.
Frequently one person says here that she or he can't find anything and
another immediately gets 89 hits searching for the same information.
This happens frequently when I search for something that someone else
says isn't to be found in the archives. If the info can be found that
quickly and easily, it isn't that hard to do. Usually I get the info in
less than one or two minutes. Then I would need to start reading. Only
rarely will I encounter a problem for which I cannot find information in
the archives. Only rarely will the posts that come back to a inquiry in
the first few hours be as good and detailed as the information you can
find with 10-20 minutes of searching and reading.
However, don't get defensive. It isn't an indictment of you if you
don't know how to use a free form database well, it is just something
you don't know. Learn how to do it, just like you would be willing to
learn how to do a new repair on your Vanagon. You can do it.
(And my continued emphasis on using the archives isn't that I "miss the
point" of the interaction on this list. You can search the archives,
learn something about your van's current problem and then ask questions
to pin down the solution from an informed position. And, if you have
some basis information from the archives, you will know which replies
are wrong.)
The archives weren't designed with key words. In fact, they aren't
organized in any significant way. That is what the search engine is
for. That is the way most online databases are set up these days.
Mike Collum's post of a few minutes ago has some very good advice and
one very critical point. Don't make the search term too specific or
long because you will cause the search program to pass over many, or
maybe all of the posts that have the information that you want. I'll
comment on the one point where I have a different view later in the post.
Tim Demarest repeats the same points and adds some other tips that are
very good. I posted some tips about searching in the last two weeks
that are similar but that have a few other points I think are useful.
I disagree that the archives are a primitive database. The hardware is
a constricting factor so speed is a problem. It is the downside of
having the archives on one private computer. It isn't a fatal problem.
See my comments on Gmail, which I think is overrated, below. But you
can get your vanagon list email in Gmail and combine it and the
vanagon.com archives as two ways to access the information.
The info is there for you in the archives. I find this search engine to
be better than most that I use because of the ways it lets me control
and refine my searches. I sure wouldn't want to see this list be on
Yahoo or anything like that.
The archives are a free form database. It is just much like searching
the Internet with Google, only the search engine on the archives is much
more powerful, and, user friendly, if you know what you how to use it.
The search engine lets you organize the search. Search systems built
around keywords are becoming a thing of the past and for good reason.
The judgment of the person(s) who assign the keywords will greatly limit
what you retrieve with a keyword system. (See P.S. below for example
and experiences from almost 30 years of doing legal research.)
The free form database will find much more for you, if you are just a
tiny bit patient and know how to use it. Read the tips people are
posting and have posted in the past. You have to be willing to use
several search terms if that is what it takes. You have to be willing
to make several searches perhaps, it isn't like going to McDonald's. At
least every other week someone writes in with the complaint that he or
she used a very specific search term, always way too specific, and can't
find anything or much. It will happen almost every time. It is not a
bad idea to start that way and hope that you hit the jackpot. But if
you get little or nothing, then it is up to you to revise you search term.
With free form databases, you will usually get more results, whether
posts or court decisions, or web sites via Google, than you want, but
you will be more likely to not miss what you want. (I hate to throw
Google in here as it gets way to much and you can't do much when you get
75k hits even with refined search terms.) But the archives are a
limited database, with an extremely high percentage of post being about
Vanagons, whereas Google is searching everything for any conceivable use
of the words in your search term. The archives are much more "friendly"
in this regard than almost any database I search.
Back to Mike's post. I do use the subject line often when I begin a
search. You will miss some posts describe a problem without identifying
what is broken because the original poster didn't know what was wrong.
But searching the body of the messages takes much longer and results in
"time outs" if you don't search backward in 6 month or similar time
increments. (One of the major problems with the archive database is
that so many of you contribute to exponentially swelling its size and
thus search terms by sending layers of posts in a thread back with your
reply. The search engine then ends up reading the same message many
times and the first reply almost as many times and so on.)
If I don't get any hits from just using the subject line based search
term, then I switch to putting the terms into the part of the search
setup that reads through the body of the messages in the archives.
Sometimes when I search for something, it might take 5 or more searches
to get the useful term or terms. Sometimes I find good information from
several different terms depending on what words were being used in a
particular thread. I can't understand why having to do this befuddles
so many people. It is just the way good research is done on free form
databases. But in the long run you can find more information.
When I know that something has been discussed repeatedly I usually can't
remember what precise terms were used to describe it. I don't have that
knowledge to inform my own search or to suggest to someone else if I
recommend that he or she go to the archives. I save at least a dozen or
more useful posts each week as text files and have hundreds in a
relatively organized set of subject based folders and subfolders on my
hard drive. I often send these to people and offer to share them with
the list. I have less on problems I haven't encountered and more on
what has impacted my various vans.
So, learn to use the archives. As I said above, you can do it.
A few people keep touting Gmail. Well that is nice for whenever you
started on forward to the present, but some of the best material in the
archives is from several years ago. Many list members are not going to
keep writing detailed posts containing the same information over and
over. Many of the most informed people have largely quit posting
because they got tired of doing it over and over on the same topics.
Most, but not all, of the people who criticize this reaction don't post
intelligent detailed posts like many of those did.
Gmail organizes posts as threads, so does Gerry, the archive server.
Gmail has advanced search options and they are very similar to those of
the list search engine in appearance, but aren't as powerful. Last
night, just to test Gmail, I asked Gmail to find posts in my limited
inbox from Dennis Haynes and it found a post where his name was in the
body and was sent by someone else. So the engine didn't do what it was
told to do, a limited search of senders' names and email addresses, but
rather searched the body of all the messages. This is a serious flaw
which weakens its functionality in the long run when the database is
large. If you can't control the search, you will not get what you want
and will get too much which is the big problem with Google. This would,
for example give me any post which mentioned the Haynes manual, which I
didn't want. So, Gmail doesn't have a capability that it seems to have
from the template for the advanced search terms. What if a username had
"brake" in it and I would get back every post that contained "brake"
instead on only those that had brake in the user name, when I knew that
this user posted some great posts on brake repairs several years ago. I
would have way too much garbage that the search engine should have been
able to discard.
I often use the sender's name when I know that a person has written on a
topic in a detailed knowledgeable way in the past. Why read dozen or
hundreds of emails when the right answer will definitely be found in one
person's posts. So to not have this as a true search controlling
function is a substantial flaw.
I imagine that we will always have people who aren't willing to search
for the information they need and expect it to be handed to them. I
imagine that many people will continue to bloat the archives by
resending one, and usually several, previous post(s) from the thread,
thus slowing the archive searches greatly.
But, these archives do work and you can make them work if you learn how
to use them.
Sam
P.S. - I have been doing legal research on a variety of database formats
for almost 30 years and keyword systems are very limiting, even though
on the surface they seem to be more friendly. Many court decisions that
had important rulings about certain areas of law that weren't the main
focus of the case, but that were critical in that "secondary" to the
case ruling, would not get assigned to the cases to be found in
searching the keywords or key system of that area of law. It would be
as if the Court didn't say anything about that area of law. Some areas
of law were difficult to put in a category. Were cases of Voting Rights
Act violations by a municipal government about civil rights - voting
rights, or did they belong in municipal government, or in election law
which is about procedures for voting? Well, often they didn't end up in
the Voting Rights or Civil Rights sections in the key word and key
number type databases. Those systems will find you lots of info
quickly, if you know the right key word or key number, but they will
miss a lot. And they are very expensive to create and maintain. (How
could any expect that database like this could be organized? Who would
sit and read each post and somehow assign it to the keywords to which it
relates? Who could pay for that? And people would still complain
because they wouldn't know the key word. Or they would stick a word of
no functional value like assembly on the search and miss the information.)
After telling you how to log on, use of search terms and how to
conceptualize them is the first or second thing they teach in every
beginning legal (or any other subject) research course. It was when I
went to law school in 1977 when we only had key word systems and no
computers and it remains that way now with all the free from data
bases. Go to the Supreme Court, or any other court's database of its
decisions (think, the Court's posts). It will be a free form database.
--
Sam Walters
Baltimore, MD
89 Syncro GL, Zetec Inside
85 Westy Weekender
85 Mercedes Benz 300D Turbodiesel - to become veggie oil powered
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