[OBW]

Maybe the problem is not that there is a lot that you CAN find if you try hard enough, but that it is not so easy to find. I'm retired now and still cannot simply spend a lot of time reading through old posts. I may seem to have time when I am posting, but I am actually stealing some of that time from other things. And everyone is different.

Maybe there is a different solution. For example, I was a shade-tree programmer back when everything was DOS. But I have lost touch with that since the advent of Windows. Maybe someone else would be able to help think through an internet database that could index this forum. Not thinking about trying to automatically categorize each post, but at least identify the major and minor topics within each thread, the number of posts (as a signifier of a level of depth), the date the thread originated, and the URL for the start of the thread. This would not have to be IN the forum — just linked from it.

Just an idea to get better minds percolating. My thoughts are to ignore short threads that go nowhere. It will probably require some manual administration since it might not be so easy to automate. And the startup would require some time reading through old threads to see what is worth indexing, what is covered, and setting it up. And some work for maintenance and updates.

And while it may seem good to me, that may be all it is worth — my own amusement.