[seul-edu] Re: Building some seul-edu archives summaries

[Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

On Thu, Aug 10, 2000 at 03:19:42AM -0400, karl wrote:
> Thanks a million for the URL/lead, Roger. 
> I will skim through www.seul.org/archives/seul/edu/,
> 
> How could I help categorize, or organize the mail-archives?
> 
> Would you like to see a crisp page that has direct-links to relevant 
> email-messages about free software-in-education pro-action?
> 
> That is probably the best action I could make for my writings: to index 
> all of my citations, sources, and leads in a one-page HTML list.
> 
> Maybe I'm missing the idea?
> 
>  --Karl
 
Yes, that's right.

There have been a number of previous attempts to do this. They all go a
little ways and then stop. So when you're working, you should make sure
that every step you take is useful. Think small, actually try to create
immediately useful documents. Don't expect to tackle all of the topics
and all of the archives -- they're much bigger than you realize.

I suspect you will be most useful if you try to build documents to
answer your own questions, rather than anticipating what other people
"might want". This will a) make you most likely to actually do it, and b)
make it definitely useful for somebody out there.

Somewhere in the archives is a nice start on this -- I think it was one
of the Bill's on here, who came up with a list of topics that it would
be nice to summarize. Doug left for vacation today, so he isn't here to
remind us who or where it is. Perhaps somebody else on the list can dig
this out more easily than I?

I would be happy to provide you with all of the seul-edu mails in
mbox (mh) format, or also all of the webified mails in a big tarball
so you can download and browse them locally. Let me know what would
be convenient.

Thanks!
--Roger