Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Helping out an "outsider"

[Ksenia Barton (kbarton]

This list is a wonderful resource but I wanted to comment on searching the
archives.

As a "newbie", I had quite a bit of trouble searching the archives on a topic
that had been discussed in the past. Posts arrived at through the search engine
don't seem to be linked to threads or anything else, so if one finds the right
question, it's hard to find the answer or any followups. The search engine
wouldn't allow me to restrict my search to the subject line. Also, I was
interested in a general topic, so I didn't necessarily know what terminology was
used in previous posts.

It would probably help "newbies" "catch up" with previous discussions if you are
able to give exact terms or thread subjects or brand names to search for. I am
not the person who asked about kitchen equipment, but I would dread trying to
bring posts on the subject using the search terms "kitchen", etc. - it would
probably bring up 100s of posts, most irrelevant. As an experiment, I searched
for "kitchen equipment" - I brought up tantalizing posts, but couldn't link
through to the followups with the actual content.

All this to say that one might be surprised at how much persistence is required
to get answers through the archives if one hasn't tried this. No criticism
intended of the list owner - I realize that it must be quite an endeavour to
maintain archives at all.

Regards, Ksenia

*excited about our early fall move-in*
Cranberry Commons Cohousing Community
Burnaby, BC, Canada (near Vancouver)

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