PROBLEM

Have you ever tried to find an old message in a mailing list -- say one
that you remember as crucial, but you just can't track down?

It's a common problem with many mailing lists.  Literally 1000s of hours
of advice and experience; and the messages might as well be deleted
after 24 hours for all the use they are to anyone tomorrow.

EXISTING RESOURCES

For the REBOL mailing list, there are valuable full-text indexes,
such a Graham's two projects:

  http://s94368865.onlinehome.us/rebolml/
  http://203.79.110.37/rebolml

BUT...

A problem with any full-text index is that it only knows
what a thread *says*, not what it *means*.

ANNOUNCEMENT

So, this announcement is about an initiative that attempts
to add some meaning to the REBOL Mailing List archive.

For a while there has been a "topic index" on the Mailing List archive, eg:

  http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/ml-topic-index.r?i=v

That indexes threads that have *topic tags* in their subject line.

It's a quick way, in theory, to get to threads that are *about* a topic,
rather than just contain a specific word.

But few threads have been tagged by their initial poster in that way.
So the existing index is a little sparse.

Now, thanks to an initiative from Gerard, any thread can be
retro-actively tagged.  One day soon that webpage may be a
comprehensive index of themes that have been discussed on
the Mailing List.

That would make the nearly 40,000 messages in over 8300 threads
suddenly more accessible. A relatively dead archive will become
a live resource.


HELP! JOIN THE TAG TEAM

For that to happen, we need a few people who'd like to join the
tag team, and tag up existing threads.

That probably won't take more than five minutes of your time
a day or so a week over the  next month or two.

You might want to spare a little time to help because you already have
a "crucial thread list" and this would be one way to make that
public.  Or maybe you support or promote a product, and could help to
index all threads about it under one heading. Or you'd just like
to join a fun team on an interesting project.

Whatever the reason, if it's something you'd like to know a bit more about,
please take a look at:

http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/boiler.r?display=ml-tag-team-help.h
tml


Or ask me more,

Thanks,
Sunanda


-- 
To unsubscribe from this list, just send an email to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe as the subject.

Reply via email to