In search of tips for mining the former Discuss DetroitYES! forums
Before DetroitYES! transitioned from the old Discus software to the new
vBulletin software on April 1, 2009, a great deal of valuable information had
already been collected under the old Discus system. In my experience that old
information is not accessible from the new software's search engine. In an
effort to leverage the value of that old Discus content, I've experimented
with ways to search and reference it. If anyone has found better ways to
perform these tasks, please share. We'll all benefit.
To search the old Discus forum, I've found it useful to include the term
site:atdetroit.net in the "all these words:" field of advanced Google
search queries. That helps to exclude everything beyond the old DetroitYES!
forums. Add other terms as necessary.
Once Google finds the page containing the post to be referenced [[copy the URL
for this page for future reference), it's possible to construct a link that
references that specific post within the page.
To do so, view the source of that webpage and search it for text unique to
the post to be referenced.
E.g., a Google search for site:atdetroit.net "Margo Guryan 16
words" yields three results. Clicking on the first result displays the
page
Discuss Detroit » NON-DETROIT ISSUES » GoLeft TV » GoLeft TV - Archive » Archive
through June 02, 2008. Viewing the source for that page and then
searching that source for the unique word "Guryan" then scanning backward, we find above that word
the post separator:
HTML Code:
<!--/Post: 955255-->
<!--Post: [b]955260[/b]--><!--Time: 1212269013-->
So, append #POST955260 to
the above copied URL to make a link to this specific post: http://atdetroit.net/forum/messages/...334#POST955260.
I hope someone can find an easier way to do this. If not, this is at least a foothold.
P.S. The first link on the targeted page is 404 precisely because people don't attend to these retention matters. The second link works for the time being.
