On Tue, 2 Jul 1996 08:12:16 -0700 Richard Burkett said: >So, Eric: >When, oh when is the archive search going to be reinstituted for listservs >running on PCs? The list I help run (over 3000 members strong) has a LOT of >topics that keep coming up time and again that could be easily answered with >a quick search of the archives. Yes, the archive search feature is highly desirable. But there is a less desirable side effect being revealed here: doing a possibly CPU intensive search to get an answer that should (a) be in a FAQ or (b) have been included in the "welcome" message. We have netnews at this site and I'm not too fond of it. There's too much traffic and too high a percentage of it is crap from airheads: but boy, do I ever like news.answers. Or, if the FAQ I want isn't on the local system then a quick FTP to rtfm.mit.edu. Archive search is inherently a good thing. Archive search jobs can be done right. But, in practice, archive search is a royal cpu pig when used in a culture that doesn't exploit the wonders of a good FAQ file. -Kary P.S: This was intended as a general observation and no specific slight was intended to the submitter, his list or his site. Is anybody else nostalgic for the days when you could have a discussion in the US without having to add an explanation for the reading-context challenged?