Cataloguing the Archives

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Louis L Sorenson
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Cataloguing the Archives

Post by Louis L Sorenson » January 13th, 2012, 3:34 pm

I've been thinking about the best way to showcase the archives of the former B-Greek email list. What I think may work is a sticky post for each of our sub-forums (which contain topics; although some forums give a list of separate topics below the list of sub-forums), The sticky would be short and contain links to 1) a web page (not yet created) which lists the relevant archive topics for that sub-forum (this list would be hand-crafted) and 2) Links to web search engines to search the archives (both old and new) for that particular sub-forum.

We would have to get the titles from the various threads in the B-Greek archives and link the title to the first post in the archive thread (as an entry point) and then cross link them to the particular sub-forum where it would belong in the new forum. (There are about 31 sub-forums not including the 'Other' in each category). This may be a good way to let people (a) know what archive materials exist for that topic and (b) browse some of the archive material and (c) give easy access to searching the forum via some of the search engines. There may be some posts (junk) we would really not to link to. For any given month, there are about 20-30 different threads with about 60+ posts per month. If we could get a comprehensive list of the topics for the last 20 years, and link them to the forum categories (e.g. Books>Lexicons) that may be the best way to get people to enjoy the last 20 years of discussions on B-Greek.

τί φρονεῖτε;

cwconrad
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Re: Cataloguing the Archives

Post by cwconrad » January 13th, 2012, 4:38 pm

This sounds very good. I think it would be immensely time-consuming. Intelligent searches would bring up a lot, but inasmuch as subject-headers are all too often not adequate indicators, I think this would have to be done by working through the archives sequentially by month and by year and cataloging discussions. I think that the categories and subcategories of this forum and "other" would probably be quite adequate for just about all the threads. Of course, there's considerable chaff within the archives, and if it is to be noted, perhaps "chaff" would be a sufficiently catch-all heading for that. If I live long enough and get finished with the tasks already on my agenda, I might undertake this sort of task, but that's a big if. Probably at least two people should be involved in this. I guess that's about all I have to say about this at the moment.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)

Louis L Sorenson
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Re: Cataloguing the Archives

Post by Louis L Sorenson » January 13th, 2012, 5:52 pm

Most of this could be automated, and only needing to select the appropriate category for the first post in a thread. (2nd round could be splitting them where appropriate, but at least they would be in some general category. The web pages could be generated automatically as the task progresses. It's something easily done in Microsoft Access or another database type program. I figure it might take a year to get through the complete archives. It's obviously not something who teaches in academia would do, but some retired members and people who have a little time on their hands and have contributed in the past perhaps would be most likely be willing to help. But it would be done monthly archive by monthly archive. 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there, after a year or less, it could be easily done. Perhaps a web page interface would be best. I don't think it would clutter up the forums too much, because there would only be one new sticky post at the top of each forum with 2-3 links (that's all).

I'd like to see what Jonathan thinks about this.

Here is the list for Nov 2010 (Generated by a Query). The number on the left is the number of posts with that topic. There are 50 different messages out of 194 posts.

CountOfID PostTitle
1 " ""Epexegetical phrase"" (was ""John 2:15--PANTAS ... TA TE PROBATA AND TOUS BOAS"")"
1 " ""mnhmeion"" vs ""tafos"""
2 (no subject)
1 <Re: B-Greek> Self-taught in Greek
2 1 Thess 4:11 φιλοτιμεῖσθαι ἡσυχάζειν
1 14th Annual E-Lister's Meeting at SBL
1 A hearty vote for our esteemed scholars
8 Analysis of the SBL GNT in the Gospels
2 Another old Greek grammar
19 Arthur Way and 1 Tim 2:15
7 attic writers during koine period or post koine
1 Audio samples
2 B-Greek Appreciation Day (was A hearty vote for our esteemed scholars)
3 B-Greek Appreciation Day (was A hearty vote for ouresteemed scholars)
1 Col 3:16b syntax
8 Combination Septuagint and Greek NT Lexicon in One Volume?
6 EGW EIMI ANHR in Acts 22:3
4 EKTENESTERON in Luke 22:44
2 English translation of KOINON in Romans 14:14
1 Ephesians 2:1 -- ontas
1 Graecae linguae tabulae
1 Greek Pedagogical books for Africa
2 GRONT SCORE
3 GRONT Score for Dionysius of Halicarnassus (was the Gront Scale)
2 Hebrews 6:1 - let us go on unto perfection
4 Inexpensive pocket-sized Greek NTs
2 Is Greek practical?
5 Is understanding Greek verbal aspect crucial for understanding the Greek of the New Testament?
11 John 2:15--PANTAS ... TA TE PROBATA AND TOUS BOAS
10 Lexicography and Deponency
1 Lunchtime Hebrew conversation at SBL
10 Matthew 1:20
9 Matthew 8:23 EMBANTI AUTWi ... HKOLOUQHSAN AUTWi and What Grammar Is/Isn't
2 MNHMEION vs TAFOS
1 New book: Synopsis of the Pauline Letters in Greek and English, edited by James P. Ware
9 On-line Koine writings to read?
2 On-line Koine writings to read? -- Acts Of Paul and Thecla in Firefox
9 papyrus p66c
1 PLEASE DON'T PIGGYBACK NEW MESSAGES ON A DIGEST
3 Question on Jn. 4:2
3 Revelation 20:5b
1 SBLGNT Q&A on Facebook with Michael Holmes
10 Self-taught in Greek
2 Some details re printed edition of SBLGNT
3 Ten Best Books for Studying New Testament Greek
5 Ten Best Books for Studying New Testament Greek: AT Robertson
2 Ten Best Books for Studying New Testament Greek: ATRobertson
2 The Greek verb FTANW used in the context of a race (race imagery)
2 The GRONT Scale
2 Why am I speaking to you in Greek?

Louis L Sorenson
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Re: Cataloguing the Archives

Post by Louis L Sorenson » August 16th, 2013, 10:02 pm

This discussion is related to the ongoing post by Alan Patterson titled "Old Posts" http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/forum/vie ... =39&t=1994

Jonathan Robie
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Re: Cataloguing the Archives

Post by Jonathan Robie » August 17th, 2013, 11:55 am

I have relatively little time to give to cataloging the archives in the near future.

Is the goal to have them searchable, with the information available in mailing headers, and perhaps other things that could be parsed (e.g. Greek words used, Scriptural references)?

Or is the goal to have an edited collection of the good stuff, perhaps in the phpBB system?

Or is the goal to integrate them somehow with the existing system? (This seems ambitious to me if phpBB is the starting point - but perhaps a standalone search page covering both would be more feasible.)
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/

Louis L Sorenson
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Re: Cataloguing the Archives

Post by Louis L Sorenson » August 18th, 2013, 7:25 am

Jonathan had three questions:
(1)Is the goal to have them [the archive content] searchable, with the information available in mailing headers, and perhaps other things that could be parsed (e.g. Greek words used, Scriptural references)?

(2) Or is the goal to have an edited collection of the good stuff, perhaps in the phpBB system?

(3) Or is the goal to integrate them somehow with the existing system? (This seems ambitious to me if phpBB is the starting point - but perhaps a standalone search page covering both would be more feasible.)
(3) I think it would be very difficult to bring the archive content into the php format. Providing links to relevant threads may be the best we could hope. But even this is fraught with difficulty. Take the post from July, 1998 (one of the first real content posts in the most recent e-mail archive forum http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-gr ... hread.html) titled "Concepts and Words" http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-gr ... 00447.html. This thread, which is a broken thread (not nested) had about 10 responses. The archives are grouped by month, so there could be replies to that thread in the next month's archive, or even later. The topic of that post is really 'The meaning and etymology of προσκυνέω'. Eventually a reference to John 4:22 comes into the picture.

The motivation (of developing a method of linking to or cataloging the archives is that there is 18 years of great content on the B-Greek e-mail list that is eternally archived. The switch to the php-forum is not the problem, because on the email list, a person still had to know that messages were archived and had to know the URL of the archives (there are two main archive email formats) in order to find them. The main problem is that there are no links in the current php forum to the last 18 years of B-Greek content. (We can be happy as B-Greek members that we are not in the same boat as Textkit, who lost years of their content when their php forum had been compromised).

In my opinion, the thing that would give the most bang for the buck, and be seen of value to our members, would be to provide a gateway to the archives in each sub-forum. Currently, many new members do not even know that of 20 years of B-Greek postings, only the last two years are available on our php forum platform. An interface needs to be set up to allow interested and helpful members to go through the archive content and match posts to a sub-forum in the current php Forum, using: (1) Greek words, (2) Scripture references, (3) Topics (key words) (not necessarily the header of any given e-mail in the archives)

(2) Importing 'the good stuff' into the new php forum would mean that (1) content would have to be filtered (2) edited and (3) posted by an anonymous B-Greek archives user. I think that there is a place for resurrecting certain posts from the e-mail list into the current forum only if there is an ongoing discussion of a topic that was extensively discussed on the e-mail list. But to do such a project wholesale would be a task that would never see completion. Perhaps we need an additional forum titled 'Best of the Archives' where we can make the link between proto b-Greek and neo b-greek happen.

(1) Yes. Having the archive searchable from the main B-Greek forum page would be ideal. The current php "Seach" and "Advanced Search" are able to retrieve content only from the current forum and only if the search term is not pervasive (pervasive = too common). I've tried to use the php Search field numerous times, and most of the time get the result
The following words in your search query were ignored because they are too common words: word.
You must specify at least one word to search for. Each word must consist of at least 3 characters and must not contain more than 14 characters excluding wildcards.
If I want to find content on B-Greek, I usually have to go to Google or Bing and use the advanced search limiting the search to the URL http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/forum and if I want to also search the archives, I have to find that long string of URLs (site:..... OR,) and paste them into my query. This is not easy, not fun, irritating (should not technology be simple?) and 95 times out of 100 will never happen because the querying member just gives up because of the extreme hassle of trying to do such a search.

So the real question is the answer to the #1 question. How does the current php forum (1) link to the archives and (2) provide opportunities to search the archives.

Jonathan Robie
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Re: Cataloguing the Archives

Post by Jonathan Robie » August 18th, 2013, 4:50 pm

Here's a short-term fix:

Search B-Greek forum, archives, Funk grammar, etc.

If you like it, I can put it in a prominent position on the forum. Anything fancier will need to wait.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/

Stephen Carlson
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Re: Cataloguing the Archives

Post by Stephen Carlson » August 18th, 2013, 6:44 pm

Jonathan Robie wrote:Here's a short-term fix:

Search B-Greek forum, archives, Funk grammar, etc.

If you like it, I can put it in a prominent position on the forum. Anything fancier will need to wait.
I think it might do for a while. Thanks! Yes, putting it in a prominent place such as near the standard search place would be nice.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia

Jonathan Robie
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Re: Cataloguing the Archives

Post by Jonathan Robie » August 18th, 2013, 7:21 pm

Stephen Carlson wrote:I think it might do for a while. Thanks! Yes, putting it in a prominent place such as near the standard search place would be nice.
Check out "B-Greek Site Search" in the upper right hand corner of your page.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/

Louis L Sorenson
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Re: Cataloguing the Archives

Post by Louis L Sorenson » August 18th, 2013, 9:40 pm

The URL filter is ibiblio.org/bgreek which covers:

http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/forum
http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/test-archives/
http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/archives/

What about the content listed under

http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-greek/

Can you include that or is that content part of the ibiblio.org/bgreek search?

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