How to search (i.e. filter) SGM posts by keywords

[Jan Wolfe]

In Google Groups, one can search for an SGM post containing a specific
keyword or phrase of interest. We'll still be able to do this for
pre-2024-02-22 posts as long as Google Groups keeps the SGM newsgroup
archive as it is now.

But, say, a year or two from now I want to search for recent SGM posts
containing a particular keyword or phrase, how do I do that using
Thunderbird and Eternal September?

A quick online search found this:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1102604. I learned that in
newsgroup terminology we "filter" rather than search. I didn't try any
of the suggestions yet, but it seemed like one would have to download
all the post-2024-02-22 posts and then try to "filter" within the posts
on one's own computer. Is that correct?

Now, a regular Google Search for some keyword or phrase sometimes finds
a relevant SGM post on Google Groups. Perhaps this is the primary way
new participants have found SGM in recent years. I am troubled that this
won't happen for post-2024-02-22 SGM posts that are only available via a
newsgroup reader. And if a new potential SGM participant finds a
pre-2024-02-22 SGM post of interest on Google Groups, they won't know
what to do to participate in the newsgroup.

[taf]

On 2/7/2024 9:05 AM, Jan Wolfe wrote:
> In Google Groups, one can search for an SGM post containing a specific
> keyword or phrase of interest. We'll still be able to do this for
> pre-2024-02-22 posts as long as Google Groups keeps the SGM newsgroup
> archive as it is now.

This remains unclear. As it is now, I go to soc.gen.medieval to search
by virtue of being 'subscribed' to the Google Groups mock-presentation
of soc.gen.med, but this will no longer be the case in a couple of
weeks. It is unclear to me what mechanism (if any) will be provided to
search the Usenet group archives directly via Google Groups after this
change. You may just have to do a standard web search, adding
site:https://groups.google.com/g/soc.genealogy.medieval/ to limit your
search to the s.g.m archive. Alternatively, they may create an
alternative search platform for the Usenet archive.

> But, say, a year or two from now I want to search for recent SGM posts
> containing a particular keyword or phrase, how do I do that using
> Thunderbird and Eternal September?
>
> A quick online search found this:
> https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1102604. I learned that in
> newsgroup terminology we "filter" rather than search. I didn't try any
> of the suggestions yet, but it seemed like one would have to download
> all the post-2024-02-22 posts and then try to "filter" within the posts
> on one's own computer. Is that correct?

In terms of searching newer messages to the group via ES/Tbird, as I
understand it, you are correct - the only way to do this is to retain
the entire downloaded content.

> Now, a regular Google Search for some keyword or phrase sometimes finds
> a relevant SGM post on Google Groups. Perhaps this is the primary way
> new participants have found SGM in recent years. I am troubled that this
> won't happen for post-2024-02-22 SGM posts that are only available via a
> newsgroup reader. And if a new potential SGM participant finds a
> pre-2024-02-22 SGM post of interest on Google Groups, they won't know
> what to do to participate in the newsgroup.

That is going to be a major concern.


There are other web-based Usenet archives, but not as user friendly as
the Google Groups implementation:

https://soc.genealogy.medieval.narkive.com/
This is up to the minute, but they don't seem to have a convenient
search capability within the archive. As above, one can do a general web
search with the site limitation of
site:https://soc.genealogy.medieval.narkive.com/
Narkive is an odd site, lacking any navigation or pointers to the site's
administrative aspects. Their own literature says that you can register
your email and post through the site, but no details are provided to
indicate where/how this is done (perhaps this functionality has been
deactivated but not removed from site documentation).


https://www.usenetarchives.com/threads.php?id=soc.genealogy.medieval&y=0&r=0&p=1
(seems to have cut off last April)
This is an archive of group content, but their search functionality
seems either to be broken or too under-resourced. It just went into a
continual searching loop and never returned any results. And I haven't
found a web-search workaround to target a search to this archive. The
data is here, but hard to get at.

taf