Re: Conlang Archives (was Re: Serial verbs (was Re: Marking nouns with person?))

Hi!

"David J. Peterson" <dedalvs@...> writes:
> Jeff wrote:
> <<
> I often can't find things in the archives via the search function
> that I'm
> sure are there. And I'm sure serial verbs are there somewhere in the
> last 5
> years.
>  >>
>
> You know, I have trouble, as well.  I'm wondering: Would it be
> possible to sort of *tag* conlang messages in the archives?  I.e.,
> if an e-mail talks about a given language, put that in the tag; if
> it talks about verbs, that's another tag; if it talks about serial
> verbs,
> that's another tag, etc.
I think I could very well agree on the habit of putting a line of
keywords under a new mail.  If in a thread at least one person
remembers this, I also think this would greatly improve the
searchability.  We can, of course, not enforce this, but I think it's
a good idea.  Of course, the keywords only be words that are not in
the main text already.

> I imagine this would require a lot of volunteer work and someone who
> knows what they're doing.  I have no idea if such a thing is even
> possible.  I'm just throwing the idea out there to see if it makes
> any sense whatsoever.
Well, the database cannot easily be edited or what did you have in
mind?  So it might be good to just start now and try to think of
adding keywords.  Whenever someone posts links back to earlier message
(s)he just found (by accident? :-)), keywords could also be added to
that message to install a reference point.

Apart from that, I usually use Google to search the archives -- it is
much more clever and, more importantly, much faster.  Unfortunately,
you cannot restrict the search by time or author directly.  Anyway, if
the group wishes so, I can add an additional search button on the
front page of the archives that links to Google.  But maybe someone
finds this bad since Google is evil(tm) or something...

**Henrik