[SGVLUG] Non-web archives -- how? (was archives??? since when?)

[Emerson, Tom]

> -----Original Message-----
> Behalf Of Hershel Remer

I'm curious about this:

> We have longtime contributors to our list who will clam up if 
> what they write
> goes unfiltered to the association's web site. We would much 
> rather have their
> input on our list than have the resources of a web archive, 
> especially when
> all emails are archived in email form anyway.

[putting on my "next generation 'net user" hat, I have to ask] If the archives are not "on the web", how do you search them?  I can't imagine that you grant "shell" access, or do you?

[switching to my "vaguely more experienced 'net user" hat, I can answer] I somewhat recall some list managers having an e-mail interface to "the archives", but as I remember, you somewhat have to know in advance what you are searching for (you retrieve them "by message ID" or some such nonsense).  However, there is also a bit of a "speed penalty" in that the response is via e-mail [for instance, I have an intermediate system that manages my e-mail.  This system runs a "fetchmail" daemon set to check every 5 minutes -- in other words, a message could be returned 5 seconds after I requested it, but my system won't check for it...]

[and back to my "normal" hat] So, what capabilities do users have for "searching" the archives?  Can they search on content, or strictly by thread/date/author?  It would seem that our system only provides the latter, however as each message itself should be picked up by "a spider", ultimately the CONTENTS of messages become searchable via a third-party indexer, as can be shown here:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=site%3Awww.sgvlug.net+archive

(looks like there were FAR more references to the fact that "this list is now archived" than I remember, and not all of them were in subjects that I thought would qualify, such as "remove")