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A Lord Rootes Trophy winner recently told me he would not have won the world’s most prestigious Tiger award had it not been for this Forum’s search capability. That is quite a statement. Yet despite its value, most have never used it.
Our Forum’s search capability has been overlooked. A tremendous amount of valuable information is contained within the nearly 50-thousand searchable Forum posts. “How-to” accounts for hundreds of Tiger restoration tasks are preserved.
This Forum’s software can either search every word or the words just in the threads. Regardless, a list of thread matches is returned. That list can run many pages long. The searcher looks through the list for threads with promising titles. A title that accurately describes the thread can really help a searcher find the material being sought.
I’m bringing this up to urge posters to give a bit of thought to the title of their thread keeping in mind future searches. Try to name the title with what you want the thread to discuss. What would be more helpful to a search a few years from now – a thread titled “Tiger for sale” or “9470003 for sale”?
And I also urge that Forum members resist any impulse to add information to thread replies that is not pertinent to the title. Recently we saw a thread from a member who wanted to buy some front rotors. Let’s pretend the thread had been titled “(new) Rotors Wanted”. After a bit another member offered a piece of excellent advice about driving defensively when using stock Sunbeam brakes. Obviously, this had nothing to do with the “Rotors Wanted” title of the thread. If a future searcher wanted to find suggestions about driving with stock Sunbeam brakes, he would probably not look in a thread titled “Rotors Wanted”. A better way to have handled this would have been for the responding member to start a new thread “Tips for driving with stock Sunbeam brakes” and then also post a reply in the “rotors wanted” thread saying he has a braking thought that is not related to this (“Rotors Wanted”) thread so he has started a new thread and then provides a link to it. That way future searches for either thread will be more successful since both threads will have content following their titles more closely.
Forum members can expect to see the Forum Staff begin to moderate more visibly when threads are being taken off-topic. (AKA Hijacking) We are working on some interesting ways to try to keep posts from "wandering".
Finally, recently I’ve seen excellent Forum discussions about the posting of non-durable links – links that contain valuable information but will disappear in days, weeks, or months. Again, we urge Forum members to keep in mind the long term rather than focusing exclusively on the immediate discussion. As has been pointed out in these recent posts, it’s easy to cut and paste information onto Forum messages which will be preserved even if the original link breaks. As Theo, our Webmaster, has pointed out, don’t worry about taking up space.
Bottom Line: I urge all originators to think long term both about choosing an appropriate thread title and further urge members to keep their replies on topic.
Buck
Admin
Our Forum’s search capability has been overlooked. A tremendous amount of valuable information is contained within the nearly 50-thousand searchable Forum posts. “How-to” accounts for hundreds of Tiger restoration tasks are preserved.
This Forum’s software can either search every word or the words just in the threads. Regardless, a list of thread matches is returned. That list can run many pages long. The searcher looks through the list for threads with promising titles. A title that accurately describes the thread can really help a searcher find the material being sought.
I’m bringing this up to urge posters to give a bit of thought to the title of their thread keeping in mind future searches. Try to name the title with what you want the thread to discuss. What would be more helpful to a search a few years from now – a thread titled “Tiger for sale” or “9470003 for sale”?
And I also urge that Forum members resist any impulse to add information to thread replies that is not pertinent to the title. Recently we saw a thread from a member who wanted to buy some front rotors. Let’s pretend the thread had been titled “(new) Rotors Wanted”. After a bit another member offered a piece of excellent advice about driving defensively when using stock Sunbeam brakes. Obviously, this had nothing to do with the “Rotors Wanted” title of the thread. If a future searcher wanted to find suggestions about driving with stock Sunbeam brakes, he would probably not look in a thread titled “Rotors Wanted”. A better way to have handled this would have been for the responding member to start a new thread “Tips for driving with stock Sunbeam brakes” and then also post a reply in the “rotors wanted” thread saying he has a braking thought that is not related to this (“Rotors Wanted”) thread so he has started a new thread and then provides a link to it. That way future searches for either thread will be more successful since both threads will have content following their titles more closely.
Forum members can expect to see the Forum Staff begin to moderate more visibly when threads are being taken off-topic. (AKA Hijacking) We are working on some interesting ways to try to keep posts from "wandering".
Finally, recently I’ve seen excellent Forum discussions about the posting of non-durable links – links that contain valuable information but will disappear in days, weeks, or months. Again, we urge Forum members to keep in mind the long term rather than focusing exclusively on the immediate discussion. As has been pointed out in these recent posts, it’s easy to cut and paste information onto Forum messages which will be preserved even if the original link breaks. As Theo, our Webmaster, has pointed out, don’t worry about taking up space.
Bottom Line: I urge all originators to think long term both about choosing an appropriate thread title and further urge members to keep their replies on topic.
Buck
Admin
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