Date:         Sun, 10 Mar 1996 01:41:12 -0800
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Steve Hoge <steveh@emu.com>
Subject:      "Archive" Hell

For the confused (of whom I am sometimes one) -

The term "archive" seems to be tossed around fastly and loosely within 
our vanagon@lenti context. Check to see if I've got this straight:

When I read Skip's web page version of the list (you don't have all this 
correspondence cluttering up your in-box, do you? ;-) at the URL:

http:/www.automatrix.com/~skip/volkswagen/vanagon-list

there is always a link at the top of the page labeled "Other mail 
archives" which simply points to the HTML page that contains the 
previous few hundred mail messages.  Each of those has a "Other mail 
archives" link which points to *its* previous page, and so on ad 
infinitum, or ad filesystem, as it were.

So that's ONE kind of "archives."  Then there's the way-cool searchable 
gopher archives that Gerry maintains at:

gopher://halfdan/med/umn/edu:70/11/Miscellaneous/Vanagon

These are *all* the mail messages since the list started (right? I'm a 
relative newbie...) These are organized in, I guess, chronological 
order, but I never browse them that way: I use the gopher search engine 
to locate "keywords of interest" (ie, "Syncro"!) so I don't have to slog 
through thousands of FFFFriday funnies, for instance.  These archives 
have often saved me from re-posting the same tiresome questions that 
have already been answered numerous times (ahem.) In addition, under 
Gerry's gopher site there's also:

gopher://halfdan.med.umn.edu:70/11/Miscellaneous/Vanagon/Files

which *I* think of as an archive of all kinds of great resources: model 
summaries, test drive reports, how-to articles, technical bulletins, and 
horror stories.  I sometimes (erroneously) refer this collection to 
people as the Vanagon list "FAQ", but Skip has another FAQ page at:

http://www.automatrix.com/~skip/volkswagen/faq.html

He also has a Technical Tips page which is a collection of links back 
into the halfdan gopher site "Files". Of course there's plenty of other 
Volkswagenabilia that continues to sprout all over the web, including 
yet another VW "archive" at:

http://www.oden.se/~fh/TVWA.HTML

So if you *really* want to do the thorough research on your own before 
asking a YAFAQ (Yet Another Frequently Asked Question), there are plenty 
of places to look.  Or, heck, just post it to the list anyway - we're 
friendly! 

Steve Hoge
'77 AutoLoaf
'89 Syncro GL