[Bioc-devel] on the future of the searchable mail archives

[Gordon Smyth]

At 12:36 AM 19/07/2005, Seth Falcon wrote:
>Hi Istvan,
>
>On 18 Jul 2005, istvan.albert at gmail.com wrote:
> > I have no problem with doing it in the foreseeble future since I've
> > already set it up in a way that it takes very little effort about 15
> > minutes a month ... even though  I currently do not need to use BioC
> > in my research.
> >
> > But you might want to think about  establishing a more official and
> > better integrated search mechanism for  the BioC site and archives.
>
>First off, thank you for maintaining the searchable mail archives.  As
>your logs demonstrate, this service is greatly appreciated by the BioC
>community.
>
>It sounds like it is time for the BioC community to plan for an
>alternate mechanism (or perhaps just an alternate host) for the
>searchable archives for the near future.
>
>Would you be willing to send me (off list) some details on how you've
>setup the search site?
>
>Best,
>
>+ seth

I actually find that google already provides a nice way to seach the 
archives. For example, to search for "paired-t" on the BioC mailing list I 
would search google for:

     paired-t site:http://stat.ethz.ch BioC

 From the user's point of view, this method has the advantage that the 
links returned point to the actual mail archive rather than to a copy of 
it. You can search all the R mailing lists at once simply by removing the 
'BioC' term at the end.

A simple way to achieve a BioC search mechanism from the Bioconductor www 
page would be to create a form which sends the search string to google 
after adding the appropriate site string.

Cheers
Gordon