Surviving Hurricane Jo II - Comment & Suggestions

[Steve]

--- In HPFGU-Feedback at yahoogroups.com, "Shaun Hately" <drednort at a...>
wrote:
> On 12 Feb 2005 at 6:19, werebearloony wrote:
> 
> > To summarize what has been a somewhat rambling post.  My idea is to 
> > make all new posts to the list this summer public (with the full 
> > knowledge of the list) in order to prevent too many new members as 
> > well as to be able to use google to search the public posts.  And to 
> > allow new members only by invitation after they have had an email 
> > reply posted by a listie.   


> Shaun:
> 
> Just an observation - personally I am not in favour of public 
> archives, but the proposal made here doesn't worry me that much - 
> however, it is an error to think that having public archives means 
> people can use google to search public posts.
> 
> While messages from public archives at yahoogroups can show up in 
> google searches, nowhere near all such messages appear in a google 
> search. Only some wind up in such searches.
> 
> ...edited...
> 
> A lot of people seem to think that somehow google will index every 
> single post on a publicly archived mailing list. Actually it will 
> do relatively few. On a list as large as HPFGU, there will be some 
> hits - but nowhere near enough to make this an effective search 
> tool.
>  
> Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought
> Shaun Hately 

bboyminn:
 
To -Loony, the public vs private access to the group, I'm pretty sure,
is a switch- all-ON or all-OFF; it offers no room for posts prior to a
certain date to be made private while new posts are made public.

Moving old posts to the archive site would also not work. The post
there are in 'Digest' format, that is, they are one huge file covering
several thousand posts. Actually, it's several large files each
covering many many post. So these archived posts aren't threaded in
anyway, there is no subject heading link list, and the only way to
find common subject headings is to text-search the file for them. 

I'm not implying the archives aren't useful, because they are, I've
downloaded them all on to my computer. I'm just saying that their
large-file all-text chronological format is limited.

As far as Google, Shaun is right with regard to going to Google's
website and using their 'web' search engine, but Google provides
search services that you can attach to personal or professional
websites to search within the contents of that one website. This, in a
sense, provides you with your own private search engine. In fact, if
you download the Google tool bar, unless I'm mistaken, you can use
Google /services/ to search your own computer. 

I've often wondered if it was possible to create a website that tied
Google search /services/ to our Yahoo Group. 

I've also contemplated the idea of moving our group to a better
'group' provider, but that move would probably mean that many years of
history would get left behind at Yahoo. I've already compared Yahoo
Groups to a shopping mall, it common, generic, and easy to find. So,
for /ordinary/ people who engage in ordinary discussions, Yahoo might
be adequate, but the extraordinary nature of the main HP for Grownups
group, shows how woefully inadequate Yahoo really is.


I've already said that I like the idea of making the group accessable
to non-member read-only access. That's how the group originally was
and I never really understood why that was changed. If it had been
left as a public read-only group, we would probably have half the
members, and the same number of readers and posters. Although, I do
have some doubt as to whether public read-only access would
/encourage/ or /discourage/ people from joining. 

One thing I think might help, which is similar to what someone else
suggested, is for the group Administrators to periodically post single
point procedural posts; like snips from the Humungous Big File. 

Maybe drop in a post every now and then reminding people to recognise
when a discusion has reach a Stalemate. To recognise that each side is
entrenched and is not budging, and that once your position has been
stated, restated, clariifed, and qualified, it's time to shrug your
shoulder and move on. And to also remind /certain/ people that they
have to realize that sometimes the world just isn't going to agree
with them not matter how hard they try.

Or, to drop in a post reminding people of proper /snipping/ with
examples of reasonable inner and inter paragraph snip-formatting.

This would be a constant but unobtrusive reminder to us all to keep
and eye on the quality of our posts.

I'm speaking of stand-alone posts, other people have suggested that
the moderator intervene more often on-line, assuming it can be done so
appropriately and with diplomacy, and jump into threads with reminders
to Snip, be nice, proofread, wrap it up, and recognise a stalemate. 

This method would not be used to replace emailing an individual with a
reminder; it would simply be added to the moderators arsenal of
management tools. This would be used in those /in-between/ times.
Times when the whole group can benefit from the comment, and the
comment is general enough to not appear to be attacking the individual. 

Just a few thoughts.

Steve/bboyminn