Egroups Search/Spoilers

[Penny & Bryce Linsenmayer]

Hi:

Neil Ward wrote:

> I haven't used eGroups for searching yet, but I can confirm, from
> searches of the text files, that there are a lot of topic-relevant
> messages that aren't in the FORT database.  I've also found, when
> searching on spells and charms, that I had to take into account
> misspellings of Priori Incantatem, Fidelius and Imperius etc.  With
> McGonagall, I ended up searching on McG or Minerva, as so many people
> either couldn't spell her surname or avoided it.

Yes, I'm now not sure that Trina entered her topics into FORT.  I think
she may have unsubscribed from this group already too.  I would advise
using Trina's separate file, together with FORT & double-checking with
the search features.

> Perhaps the eGroups search only looks in the title and first few lines
> of
> each post?  Perhaps the other FORT messages you saw didn't mention
> 'Lupin'? I'd try Marauder, MWPP, Remus, Moony and werewolf as well as
> Lupin.

I do know that it's searching more than just titles & the first few
lines of text.  But, searching is a bit difficult in that you need to
search for obvious misspellings and variants (I searched fanfic, fan
fiction for example).

> 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.
>
It does sound as though I should write to egroups about this issue.  I
do think it could easily become an issue for the HPforGrownups group in
that we've posted close to 1800 messages in just under a month.

Paul -- can you send me the URL for the text files again?  I know I
downloaded the first batch but I'm not sure I ever got the last ones as
by that point, we had the egroups Archive up & running.

Margaret -- I think we can work around your desire to not read Book 5
spoilers & rumors.  I like Neil's suggestion that maybe we can designate
a group of several people who can update all the FAQs solely for rumors,
predictions & spoilers for the later books.

Off to write a note to egroups!

Penny
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