First, let me state clearly that I LOVE this idea!!! I’ve spent the last few years lurking and learning here, and still to this very moment turn up new (to me, but years old) posts and threads, full of a treasure of knowledge. And I’m the original WWWeb Ferret!! No kidding, I was literally finding information on the Internet (and elsewhere) before it was the WorldWideWeb, so I should be pretty good at it, yet still people link to posts my searches never turned up.
There’s still the problem of identification… When you look for a topic, how do you know what words appear in the title or body? Do I send you looking for “PantsAFire Z42” or just “Z42” or the name “NotzAFire” calls their copy of the beloved and widely known PantsAFire Z42?
And what if a thread about the “Bargains-R-Us” web site evolves into a detailed discussion of some “PantsAFire clone” that only they sell, but which has highly detailed pictures and descriptions of the beloved and widely known PAF Z42?
When you “send someone here”, what do you tell them to search for in this list? Unfortunately, computers still require specific strings of characters for which to search. It seems that this list would be harder to search, since it only would contain the thread titles… Sorry, I’m just saying… That can work a WHOLE lot better, but it takes more labor.
Maybe it would be better, at a more fundamental level, to have your privileges elevated to Moderator and set to work on the Search function and its database…
If we posters (at least those with answers to questions) can generally agree to, say, use “full retail” names — SOMEhow — that would help your efforts as much as any Search.
Yes, I know. That’s why I used the quotes. What’s in a name? And how do you spell it?
So if there were …someone… motivated enough to do it, going through the database and entering a useful description (could be called a “profile”…) of each referenced post… You’ll notice that happening spontaneously on this thread…
Yeah, I know… I wouldn’t do it either. Couldn’t, actually, as I’d start reading every post & never be heard from again. :bigsmile:
If you’d take a minute to Google Clifford W. Ashley , you could see what it took to do this in the 1950s… His artistic skills were only matched by his knack for Taxonomy.
Please don’t take all this rambling as negativity! Just “gird up your loins” for a big, very permanent job.
Thanks for reading!
Dim