[Foundation-l] Request to allow Google to search list archives again

[Birgitte SB]

I support this especially as url's to old messages are not stable.  An effective search is greatly needed.  I have spent a long time on occasion for searching for things I am certain exist and came up with nothing.

Birgitte SB


--- On Sun, 4/27/08, Michael Bimmler <mbimmler at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Michael Bimmler <mbimmler at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Foundation-l] Request to allow Google to search list archives again
> To: "Wikimedia developers" <wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Cc: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Date: Sunday, April 27, 2008, 12:30 PM
> [courtesy copy to foundation-l, though I suggest that
> discussion, if any, be
> centralised on wikitech-l]
> 
> Hi all,
> the search index for the mailinglist archives was last
> rebuilt in January.
> Now, after having made quite a few queries about this here
> and at other
> places, I learnt (and obviously had to accept) that
> rebuilding the search
> index is quite a resources-consuming process which resulted
> in crashes.
> 
> To put it bluntly, I dare suggest from a non-technical POV
> that the "htdig"
> (that's the name, isn't it?) experiment has failed.
> If we can only update
> our search index every 6 months or so, it is pointless to
> have it.
> 
> Instead, I suggest that
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/robots.txt be modified as
> to allow Google (and other search engines) to crawl
> /pipermail/ again. I do
> not really see the privacy issues of this, nabble, gmane
> etc. are
> google-searchable as well and I really don't see the
> point in barring Google
> from our own archive.
> 
> If I am very honest, I do not even remember anymore, why we
> decided to bar
> Google from http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail.
> Was it due to privacy concerns? If so, which, and why is
> lists.wikimedia.orgas an archive different from
> Nabble/Gmane?
> 
> Thanks,
> Michael
> 
> 
> -- 
> Michael Bimmler
> mbimmler at gmail.com
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> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
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