[Freeciv] List archive search engine

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

As you are aware, list archives for FreeCiv are available at
http://lists.complete.org/.  As many of you are also aware, the search
engine is presently unavailable for those lists.

The reason is that the lists archives are so large that the htdig index
can no longer fit in the avialable space on my hosted machine.  I spent
some time today looking at alternative indexing options and haven't
found any that are more compact.

I'm looking for suggestions on how to address this problem.

One thing to be aware of: sometime back, I made sure that www.gmane.org
had a copy of my FreeCiv list history.  Both Gmane and
lists.complete.org have the full archives of the FreeCiv lists dating
back to October, 1998 -- the date that the hosting moved to
complete.org.  Gmane is a general purpose live Web and NNTP interface to
mailing lists, and people can post to FreeCiv lists via Gmane (Gmane
will forward the post to the regular list server, so it still must go
through standard spam/sanity checks.)

You can view the available FreeCiv archives at Gmane here:

  http://news.gmane.org/index.php?prefix=gmane.games.freeciv

So here are some options, as I see them, for going forward:

  * The canonical search engine for the FreeCiv lists could be Gmane.
    Pros: Immediate fix to problem.
    Cons: Gmane's search tool can order by date but not filter by date.
    
    Different archive interface.  Some prefer it, some don't.  In
    general, Gmane makes it easier to read recent conversations, while
    lists.complete.org makes it easier to find old conversations by
    date.

  * Someone could donate money or hosting space to me to host the
    archives and search tool.  Sufficient space to host the search
    engine would cost $108/year at my current provider.

  * Someone else could host the search engine.
    This could be a practical solution and could be fully integrated.

  * Someone else could host the archives and search engine.
    I could get you a copy of the existing archives, plus arrange for
    you to get copies of new messages as they arrive.

  * We could use Google as the canonical search engine.  They offer a
    free (I think) service to add Google to your site (see
    www.netbsd.org for an example.)

    Pros: Nice engine.
    Cons: Infrequent updates, can't search by date.

Let me know your thoughts.

Thanks,
John Goerzen

-- 
John Goerzen <jgoerzen@xxxxxxxxxxxx>                       www.complete.org