Search Engines (was: DE draftee questions)

[abigailnus]

--- In HP4GU-FAQ at yahoogroups.com, "Amanda" <editor at t...> wrote:

> Where is the catalogue we're searching? Is it simply the Yahoo 
> message archive, or have sections been pulled out? Can we type 
arcane 
> search functions into the Yahoo archive box, rather than just terms? 
> What are a couple basic search functions (like CTL-F)? 

This actually ties in to something I asked MEG a while ago, but no one 
seemed to know the answer.  Does anyone have any idea about the 
capabilities of the Yahoo search engine?  I know that on groups with 
less messages then HPfGU's 80,000+, I can get fairly accurate results 
by searching for keywords.  However, Amanda is right - can I use the 
same kind of boolean search functions that I would use in a Google 
search?  Can anyone testify as the accuracy of the search engine?  
Does it often give false positives?

For that matter, I had an idea a while back, and I'm too much of a 
technosquib in these matters to know if it's completely insane.  What 
would be involved in uploading the HPfGU database somewhere and 
making it truly searchable?  I know that several websites and blogs have 
generic search engines that are Google-powered.  If we could do the 
same thing, we'd be able to search by author, date or message number, 
and really use those boolean search functions.

Does anyone know if this is feasible?  More to the point, would it be in 
violation of copyright?  

Abigail