I have been following this thread as everyone else has.  It appears that
we have missed the point here.  We want to make the vanagon list more
useful and more accessable.

The problem is that there is a lot of information in the archives
which make it difficult to search.  Alot of the information should be
temporary (ie. For sale, unrelated discussions on topics other
than vanagons etc.)

If this type of "temporary" information was automatically deleted from the
archives and we could force categorization (ie. electrical, camper,
body, suspension etc), I believe that using an online archive system would
be much easier.

It would also be nice if there was a mechanisim to create an offline
databases.

I hate to say this but I suggested this about a year ago, when I offered
to create a web site using lotus notes.  I currently have all of the
messages from June of last year to today in a databse.  An I do most of my
searching offline.  I even posted it once and got a great response.

The only negative feed back I got a year ago was that people like to
receive email rather than going online with a web browser.  Well this
problem could be solved if you were to purchase Lotus Notes Client ~$49.00
and then the database could be replicated or downloaded to "selected
clients" (I know this is a money issue so please do not flame me!)

I believe an online database is the best solution with the ablity to
categorize and scheduled deletion of certain categories.

Once again let me know what you think.

Dan Moy
danmoy@cynet.net