[Wbo2] RE: [Gmecm] comments on reorganizing lists

[Steve Ravet]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: gmecm-bounces at diy-efi.org 
> [mailto:gmecm-bounces at diy-efi.org] On Behalf Of Tomas J. Sokorai Sch.
> Sent: Tuesday, February 07, 2006 3:36 PM
> To: gmecm at diy-efi.org
> Subject: Re: [Gmecm] comments on reorganizing lists
> 
> On Tuesday 07 February 2006 17:14, Ryan Hess wrote:
> > We have no search function as of now.
> 
> http://www.diy-efi.org/diy_efi/archive_search.php
> 
> It's still a bit beta-quality.

I dropped the ball a little bit on this one.  Tomas has been helping me
out for a couple years at least, writing some perl code behind the
scenes to automate various parts of the list like creating archives.  He
did put together the search engine above, which includes some of the pre
crash archives.  It's not yet automated to index the ongoing archives,
and I haven't gotten around to adding a link to the main pages yet.  Our
current setup requires some ongoing maintenance like this which is one
reason that I started thinking about the forum setup.

So thanks to Tomas (or props, as the kids say) for getting the search
function back together.

I think it's clear that if a forum is created it needs to be in addition
to, not instead of, the current email setup.  The ability to post
pictures is a pro for the forum that I didn't mention that can't really
be done via email, and I'm not going to pretend that the anonymous FTP
site is a comparable replacement.  Here are some thoughts that I've had
that might improve the current situation:

1)  Get the search engine finished up.  It needs to be tied into the
current archives, and the old archives need to be installed and indexed.


2)  Mailman is the mailing list software, and it creates threaded html
archives.  If every posting contained a link back to itself in the html
archive then a single click could allow you to review the context.  For
example, Tomas' post would have included this link at the bottom:

http://lists.diy-efi.org/pipermail/gmecm/2006-February/001275.html

I don't know if mailman can be configured this way but I'll check into
it.

3)  pictures -- the the html archiving software I think already takes
care of saving attachments and creating links to them.  The outbound
email may be able to be modified to include this link instead of the
attachment, or if nothing else then if 1) can be implemented then one
further click after going to the html archive will show the attachment,
if you know to do that.

4) the wiki suggestion is a great one -- I can let you guys create the
FAQs.  For those who don't know wiki is a WWW page that can be modified
by anyone with a browser.  you can edit existing pages, add new ones,
etc. and it's simple.  You don't have to know html or anything other
than being able to type, although there are some simple formatting
commands you can use.

I'll send an email to the DIY list shortly with a small jpg attachment
to see exactly what happens to it.

--steve

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