Advice for newbies

[Paul Mackin]

Hi
I don't have to consult  the archives that  often. Think I know by  
now what everyone here thinks. (or used to think)

But seriously, wouldn't it be nice if the archives were indexed by  
Google (for example)? It's not because they are password protected or  
firewalled. Anyone can look. No one thinks the stuff has commercial  
value or generally speaking has to be kept from the eyes of children.  
But for some reason (it may be a good one for all I know) the  
listserv software blocks indexing by the indexing software normally  
used by Google, etc. Oh, well. Just one of those things.

Another complaint: it used to be that waste.org would allow anonymous  
ftp-ing of the pynchon-l files. You could transfer huge blocks of  
data to your own computer and  use grep  of something to find  
anything you want. They  stopped this years ago however.  I suppose  
if a lot of people were utilizing this feature it could be  too much  
of a  drain on the  waste.org system.


On Jul 23, 2006, at 10:29 AM, Dave Monroe wrote:

> Those who know, know ...
>
> --- jbor at bigpond.com wrote:
>
>> the list has more than its fair share of trolling
>> and sock puppetry. And cranks.
>
> But I maintain that the archives are an underutilized
> trasure trove for casual readers, students, academics,
> et al.  The only problem is ...
>
>> The "Keyword" search engine for the archives, once
>> you get the hang of it, is probably the best way to
>> find specific info.
>
> ... that you can only use one word, not even boolean
> opeartors and/or quote-enclosed phrases, and just
> because a word was actually used in a post, DOESN'T
> mean the search function will find it.  Dammit, I
> found two examples yesterday alone, but ...
>
> But one problem is, certain keywords are used over and
> over and over (and over ...) again.  My suggestion is,
> if you ever want to find a post of yrs again, or want
> it to be easily locatable (me, I can't say I've ever
> siad anything all too important or illuminating here,
> but I HAVE ented an awful lot of annotations and
> excerpts from critical commentaries, and it's very
> convenient for me, at any rate, to be able to call
> those up here, online, rather than dig out the source
> mat'l) is to slip in a more unusual word along with
> it.  Hell, I can find my own posts as often as not
> simply by my characteristic typos (damn these
> thalidomide flippers ...), so ...
>
>> The "Search by author" and "Search by thread"
>> functions on thmonth-by-month lists also allow you
>> to avoid a lot of the cruft.
>
> But I disgree there.  Unless you can recall subject
> headings (which may or may not have to do with what
> you might be looking for in a given post) or who wrote
> something AND, at least roughly, when, it's even more
> of a hard target search through myriad results ...
>
> But another tried and true method here, as we've seen
> even today, is, quite simply, ask.  Me, I'm always
> happy to track down something given the time, and
> there's no end of Those who Know (or at least put up a
> good front) here, so ...
>
> There's also this thing called the Infonet (?), but
> ... well, it won't search the archives, so ...
>
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