[HP4GU-FAQ] Egroups Search/Spoilers

[Paul Kippes]

--- Margaret McNie <sarvalsha at dellnet.com> wrote:
> I did a search on the yahoo archives in egroups
> searching for 'lupin'. I
> just wanted to see the general discussion even if
> the messages did not get
> listed on our FAQ database. The two lists did not
> match up. I would expect
> the search to find messages that weren't listed in
> the FAQ list;
> unfortunately, I also found that the messages listed
> in the FAQ list did not
> show up on the search. Has anyone else had a similar
> problem?

I see what you mean.  If I would search on "borgman" I
would expect results: 
112 (not found)
113 (not found)
114 (not found)
3301 (found)
3310 (found)

If I would search on "harry potter" the lowest message
returned is #2819 (with 859 total hits).

If I would search on "harry" the lowest message
returned is #2816 (with 1898 total hits).

If I would search on "jkr" the lowest message returned
is #2816 (with 494 total hits).

Finally, if I would search on "dumbledore" the lowest
message is #2816 again.  (#2815 should be a hit.)

If you notice what the highest message number we have
is, you'll see it's 7815.  Clearly (to me) eGroups has
set an arbitrary search scope of 5000 messages. 
Unfortunately, we didn't test THAT aspect of the
search mechanism before declairing "They've got a
seach mechanism!"  Who would have thought.

What to do?  They may not be aware of this.  Some
programmer may have put in that "magic number" just
because he tought he/she needed something.

Perhaps once Penny returns home she'll agree that as a
minimum we should alert eGroups to our findings. 
Cool, we've found our first test for the
responsiveness of eGroups!!!

At any rate, this is currently not an issue for the
HP4GU groups at large.  Perhaps eGroups can be
persuaded to look into this before it becomes one. 
Until then, it looks like the text file will be needed
to ensure complete results.

Paul



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