Guest guest Posted March 25, 2004 Report Share Posted March 25, 2004 i'm a coder. let's face it. i know computers are unreliable. and yet, i retain all these emails, carefully color-coded, for re-reading later or searching, or whatever i need to do to remind myself of the information when a client comes up with this or that particular issue. boy, *that's* a recipe for disaster! so i've started a project, a gimongous compilation of stuff. it won't be actually everything from the list, but it's all the threads that i think might cross my path again, organized by topic and neatened up, in Word and completely searchable. i expect this project will take more than a while to complete, but if anyone's interested in its ongoing phases... course, if i do a really good job, i could make it into a book, and we could sell it to finance all the crocks we're going to buy from heidi -katja Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted March 25, 2004 Report Share Posted March 25, 2004 > so i've started a project, a gimongous compilation of stuff. it won't be > actually everything from the list, but it's all the threads that i think > might cross my path again, organized by topic and neatened up, in Word and > completely searchable. i expect this project will take more than a while to > complete, but if anyone's interested in its ongoing phases... Cool! I started a similar project a few weeks ago. I read 100 archived messages a day and paste relavent content under the different topic(s). I'm up to message #1,910. I've learned so much - and it really is like reading a book. Plus, reading the first few posts of frequent posters is sometimes rolling- on-the floor halarious. Like one of our frequent posters wondering if they would stay on the list, and one of our enthusiastic liver eaters expressing uneasiness about *buying* liver. And the Warrior Diet was actually introduced a couple of years ago. Didn't really catch on like it did last year when the slethnobotnist mentioned it. I won't ruin the best ones for you, though. Betsy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted March 25, 2004 Report Share Posted March 25, 2004 > > well, betsy - i haven't even thought about the archives yet...this project > keeps getting bigger and bigger!! > perhaps we can merge our projects? > > -katja Great – so we're not even duplicating each other's work! I'd be happy to periodically send you archived stuff and you can incorporate it into your list summary. Or we could maybe we could put them in the files section in separate files – beginning to March04 (or whenever you started) and March04 to current. We could update them every few weeks. Or, even better for you, you could start a weekly $subscription service$ and send out a weeks worth of the condensed version of the NT list for people with no time to wade through the list. Betsy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted March 25, 2004 Report Share Posted March 25, 2004 @@@@@@@@@@ > Cool! I started a similar project a few weeks ago. I read 100 > archived messages a day and paste relavent content under the > different topic(s). I'm up to message #1,910. > > I've learned so much - and it really is like reading a book. Plus, > reading the first few posts of frequent posters is sometimes rolling- > on-the floor halarious. Like one of our frequent posters wondering > if they would stay on the list, and one of our enthusiastic liver > eaters expressing uneasiness about *buying* liver. And the Warrior > Diet was actually introduced a couple of years ago. Didn't really > catch on like it did last year when the slethnobotnist mentioned it. > I won't ruin the best ones for you, though. > > Betsy @@@@@@@@@@ Ha! That's so funny! I can imagine there's some pretty embarassing stuff in there! Back in the dim and distant past when I joined the list I skimmed the archives and found some interesting stuff. I have a folder of posts I saved (202 posts I see now), but that was maybe 1.5 years ago and I don't think I've ever looked in it--most probably wouldn't be of interest any longer... I do save all of my own posts to groups so I can use my computer's search engine to look stuff up very quickly and conveniently and save time by copy-and-pasting old stuff instead of duplicating effort... It's a beautiful system... Betsy's idea reminds me of something I've meant to propose for a long time. The idea is to create an archive summary/FAQ by having individuals choose a topic and extract and organize everything in the archives about that one specific topic. If, say, 30 people participated in this (the list has over 800 members...), it wouldn't be much work for any one person, but would result in an extremely useful resource. Further, people could relax and stretch the project over many months, like only doing a small batch of old messages once a week or something; there certainly would be no urgency or deadline. And naturally people would choose topics they have some interest in, like, say, a person whose life has been changed by Heidi's gluten posts would handle that topic; I'd cover insects and eyeballs (okay, I'm done already!), etc. The group's homepage could fit a huge amount of text files. An alternative is to assign each person a group of messages (total number of messages divided by number of people participating), and have them pull out the " good stuff " and organize it. This would be far more efficient than the above idea, but the result would lack the same topical organization and it's pretty hard to define " good stuff " since much of the value in lists like this comes from tiny details of personal experiences and such whose effect can range from triggering an epiphany for one person to seeming like zero-content blah to another person. Mike SE Pennsylvania The best way to predict the future is to invent it. --Alan Kay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted March 25, 2004 Report Share Posted March 25, 2004 --- In , " Anton " >...The idea is to create an archive summary/FAQ by having > individuals choose a topic and extract and organize everything in the > archives about that one specific topic. If, say, 30 people > participated in this (the list has over 800 members...), it wouldn't .... Hey, in the achieve summary I'm working on, I've got about 25 topic headings (a few with sub-headings) and " Mike 's Thoughts " is one of them. It's for your posts that just don't seem to fit anywhere else :-) Betsy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted March 25, 2004 Report Share Posted March 25, 2004 @@@@@@@@ > Hey, in the achieve summary I'm working on, I've got about 25 topic > headings (a few with sub-headings) and " Mike 's Thoughts " is > one of them. It's for your posts that just don't seem to fit > anywhere else :-) > Betsy @@@@@@@@ :-) Mike SE Pennsylvania The best way to predict the future is to invent it. --Alan Kay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted March 25, 2004 Report Share Posted March 25, 2004 > so i've started a project, a gimongous compilation of stuff. > it won't be actually everything from the list, but it's all > the threads that i think might cross my path again, organized > by topic and neatened up, in Word and completely searchable. > i expect this project will take more than a while to > complete, but if anyone's interested in its ongoing phases... Prolly take less time in the long run to simply let this script suck down the entire archive: http://www.lpthe.jussieu.fr/~zeitlin/2mbox.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted March 25, 2004 Report Share Posted March 25, 2004 @@@@@@@@@@ > as an alt either for pulling posts categorically or just searching the > archives try Google with the term: > " + whatever " > if your results look light try the repeat search link > at the bottom. @@@@@@@@@ I don't know why, but unfortunately that doesn't work. " michaelantonparker " gives only 32 hits; " " michael anton parker " " gives only 46; and " " mike parker " " gives only 20, when the number should be around 1000 for each, because those three strings have appeared in every post I've ever made. Likewise, " heidi " only gives 581, when the number should be in the neighborhood of 5000 at least (I'm guessing). I don't know why google is so funky with . Also, the following queries give zero results, so something funky is going on. " beef site:health./group/ " " price site:health./group/ " Mike SE Pennsylvania The best way to predict the future is to invent it. --Alan Kay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted March 25, 2004 Report Share Posted March 25, 2004 I like Mike's idea of each of us taking a topic. If Betsy already has 25 topics, it only needs 25 of us to pick one up each. I;ll take one and i don't really mind which. If recipes isn;t one of the topics, i;ve started a file on that too, so make it 26 topics. deb > > Betsy's idea reminds me of something I've meant to propose for a long > time. The idea is to create an archive summary/FAQ by having > individuals choose a topic and extract and organize everything in the > archives about that one specific topic. If, say, 30 people > participated in this (the list has over 800 members...), it wouldn't > be much work for any one person, but would result in an extremely > useful resource. Further, people could relax and stretch the project > over many months, like only doing a small batch of old messages once > a week or something; there certainly would be no urgency or > deadline. And naturally people would choose topics they have some > interest in, like, say, a person whose life has been changed by > Heidi's gluten posts would handle that topic; I'd cover insects and > eyeballs (okay, I'm done already!), etc. The group's homepage could > fit a huge amount of text files. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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