ADMIN: A Crash Course In Searching Yahoogroups (was RE: [HPforGrownups] Re: Butterbeer)

[Heidi Tandy]

No: HPFGUIDX 30987

> 
> Real-To:  "moorequests" <mollypickle at hotmail.com>
> 
> 
>  Thanks for the tip Joanne, but that didn't turn anything up. So my 
> question still remains.... anyone care to take a guess?
> 


Actually, Joanne was completely right, but for the newbies who might not
be familiar with the Yahoogroups Search System, here's a few hints:
1. Always click on NEXT. Yahoogroups searches in blocks of messages, so
just because nothing shows up on the first page doesn't mean nothing's
there. Say I want to search for posts discussing Draco as a ferret - I
type Draco ferret into the box. Nothing comes up, so I click on NEXT,
and then I see a few messages discussing the transfiguration by Barty
Crouch.

2. Don't type in a question. This is not Ask Jeeves. Type in the most
salient or relevant words. Here, I typed in Butterbeer Alcohol - and I
got 4 posts on the first page, including an October 25 post from Vicky
deGroote on the exact issue. It's at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/28186 if you want to
find it. A few clicks on NEXT and I managed to see another two dozen
posts, just this fall. Sometimes, it said:
No matches found in the messages searched.
Click "Next" to search more messages.

And when that happened, I just clicked NEXT. 

Yahoogroups' search engine isn't the most elegant or easiest to use, but
it's not completely worthless, and in the over 32,000 messages in this
archive alone, you should be able to find at least a gleam (no, not THAT
gleam) of discussion about or at least related to many topics. This
isn't to say that things which have been discussed before should never
be brought up again. Far from it! But it's a bit disingenous to say
There's Nothing About This, or Has Anyone Ever Thought...? When it's
something that was brought up, oh, two weeks ago. 

heidi tandy
follow me to FictionAlley - Harry Potter fanfics of all shapes, sizes&
ships - only 7 sickles an ounce
http://www.fictionalley.org



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