OT-CHAT: Archives Tutorial

Greetings.

As promised, here is one person's idea about how to maximize enjoyment of the 
Archives of this mailing list, the Iris-talk, once the Iris-L. The overall 
plan of action is to understand how it all fits together, learn how to work 
around the cumbersome bits, and thus turn the limitations of the system to 
one's own undaunted advantage. 

Just as reading the posts you receive from the Iris list takes time, so must 
reading the Archives take time, for the Archives are all the many posts that 
have been made to the list through its long and merry history. That is all 
they are. Lots of posts, and a Search Engine, of which we will hear more 
later. Remember this: Getting at the good stuff can be as simple, or as 
complex, as you choose to make it. 

The subject of the list is Irises. All kinds: species and the hybrids made 
from species, bearded, beardless, crested and bulbous. Irises everywhere from 
Alaska to Moscow and the antipodes: how to know them, how to grow them, where 
to find them, how they differ, from whence they came, what they meant to 
gardeners once, and what they mean to gardeners now. Science, history, 
stories about people, all this and more is in the Archives, along with 
collateral issues like iris society matters, and a certain amount of general 
horticultural info and rollicking good humor. 

Our Archives are hosted by Mallorn computing, along with the Archives of 
several other mailing lists. You can see a list of these other lists at 
<<http://www.mallorn.com/lists>> Feel free to snoop in other lists' Archives, 
and search those, too! 

Now, in order to understand what is being talked about in any specialized 
discussion one has to know the lingo. Irises have a lingo, or more 
specifically a descriptive terminology, which is defined by the American Iris 
Society. There are beardless irises, like Siberians, Japanese, Louisianas, 
Junos and Spurias. There are Arilbred irises, which are derived from exotic 
desert Iris species. There are crested irises like Iris tectorum and Iris 
cristata, there are bulbous species like reticulatas, and there are bearded 
irises, a very large group of garden irises. 

Now, all the bearded irises fall into size classifications, which 
classifications have standard abbreviations, much used on this list. You will 
need to know these terms to understand any of the conversation about irises 
in the posts, whether they are old posts in the Archives, or new posts that 
come into your mailbox. So, if you don't know your TB from your BB, visit the 
AIS webpage at <<http://www.irises.org >> and look at the section on 
Classification. While you are there go to the section on Bulletin excerpts 
and read the 'Glossary of Iris Terms.' This will introduce you to some 
additional useful terminology about color patterns and so forth. There is not 
an immense amount of descriptive lingo to become familiar with, and most of 
it is not difficult, but what there is important, if you are going to 
understand what folks on the list are talking about, or find your way among 
the posts, whether old posts or new posts, you need to be comfortable with 
this material.

Now, to go directly to the Iris Archives, go to  
<<http://www.mallorn.com/lists/iris-talk/>> You will see a screen which 
offers two options. One is the Search Option. One is the option of selecting 
a specific month's posts. Let us deal with the latter first.

To get a feel for the Archives or just amuse oneself reading therein one can 
always simply open a Month and start browsing about. Do remember that some 
subjects will tend to appear on list in accord with the iris culture 
calendar. That is, many bloom reports will be in the Spring, although rebloom 
reports may be in summer and autumn. Borer questions show up a lot in borer 
season, although not exclusively. Digging questions appear at digging time. 
So, sometimes a browse through certain carefully chosen months may be 
especially interesting and useful. 

To Browse a Month, select one and open it up by clicking. The posts be 
displayed by Thread. Threads are chains of responses. If you hit 'reply' to 
this post I'm writing, it will show up as a response to mine. We will be a 
thread! If someone changes the subject line, a new thread will be born. 

Notice that an open post will offer several links at the bottom which give 
you the option of following the thread or moving around in other directions. 
These include "Follow-ups."  One can use them to go forward in a discussion 
without returning to the Thread page, but I have found that for most purposes 
the simplest, fastest, and least confusing manner of navigation is just to 
hit my Back button when I am finished reading a post and return to the Thread 
list rather than using those links. So my rhythm is open, read, back, select, 
open, read, back, select, open, read...etc. If you do use the links and get 
lost, just go to the very bottom of the page where there are links back to 
the main page.

Of course, you don't have to read by Thread. You can read by Subject, which 
does not suit me very well, or by Author, or by Date. Author is good if you 
want to look at all the posts a specific person wrote in the Month.  Date is 
good because it shows the posts just like they would be in your mailbox, and 
is thus somewhat familiar. When displayed by Date, posts are listed with the 
older posts on the bottom. So, starting at the bottom of any Month, you can 
open up and read the posts in the sequence which they were received by the 
Archives. You can select posts by Subject line and open up the ones that look 
like they might be interesting or relevant. It is just like having that whole 
month's posts in your mailbox. Select, open, read, back, select, open, read, 
back, ignore, select, read, back. 

The other Option on the Main Iris-talk page is Search. There is a Search 
Engine for the Archives that will obey your commands, most of the time, if 
you phrase them correctly and look just for those posts which discuss things 
you are interested in. There are two elements of a search, one system 
limitation, and a couple of minor qualifiers. The first element the What of 
you are looking for, that is, your Search Term. The Second is the When, that 
is the Time Period which you want searched. The system limitation is the 
number of responses it can offer you all at once. The minor qualifiers tell 
the Search Engine how carefully to read what you have specified for the 
Search Term. Let's discuss these one at a time.

Now, defining your Search Term is the most important, most subtle, and most 
challenging part of using the Archives. You want to think about your inquiry 
very carefully, and pinpoint its essence. You want to decide exactly what you 
want to read about, and find a word or words that will necessarily be 
involved in the discussion, for the Search Engine is looking not for abstract 
concepts, nor subjective categories, nor vague impressionistic suggestions, 
but for words, that is, for unique configurations of letters.

For your Search Term you are looking for a good Key Word. The best Key Word 
is not necessarily the one that will give the most responses overall. The 
best is the one that not only brings you the information you are looking for, 
but also excludes information you are not looking for. Getting good at 
picking Search Terms takes some experience, but you will get better with 
practice. 

Your Search Term may be more than one word, combined with linking words and 
parenthesis denoting groups. The rather complicated example given at the 
Search Page is this: ((blue AND flag) OR reticulata) NOT introduction). This 
means you are looking for all posts in which both the words 'blue' and 
'flag,' or 'reticulata' appear, but not the word "introduction." That is, you 
want to find posts talking about Blue Flags or Reticulatas but not any 
addressing the Introduction of same. Note that the subjects you are 
interested are defined, and some unwanted aspects of the question are 
excluded. Fret not; most of the time you will be using only one or two Search 
Terms together. Pick those well, and you may not need that NOT.

The two Qualifiers on the search that I mentioned are the little boxes that 
say Case Insensitive and Whole Word Match. Leave them at the default setting 
(checked). If you need to fiddle with one at some point, you will discover 
that in trying to define your search. If you disengage Case Insensitive it 
will pay a lot of attention to capital letters, for instance. I never mess 
with these qualifiers, myself.

Now, I mentioned a When. When is the Time Period you want the engine to 
search. You get to specify the Year or Years, and a Specific Month, or All 
Months. You do this by just checking or unchecking years, and using the drop 
down menu for Months. We will return to this in a minute.

The Search engine can only drop a maximum of 250 posts down for your perusal. 
You can specify fewer or more by adjusting the quantity at the little box on 
the screen. Now, to get the maximum possible number of posts which meet your 
search criteria, open up the Number to the max, click all Years, and specify 
all Months. But notice that if there are more than 250 found, you won't see 
all of them, so sometimes it is best to open it to the max and take it year 
by year. In other words, sometimes the search must be broken down into 
chronological pieces to make it manageable. Such is life. 

You can open the posts the Engine found and read them there at the Search 
page, select, open, back, select, open, back, but you don't have to. If there 
are a lot of posts shown in a fairly tight time frame or time frames, I often 
make a few notes as to when the subject I'm interested in was discussed at 
length, and then go directly to the Month/Year lists and read the whole 
discussion.

For an example, lets take an easy subject with a potentially cumbersome 
search like the iris borer. Okay, you can use 'borer' for search term and 
probably pull up a zillion posts on same, only some of which will be 
displayed because the engine can't show them all. So perhaps it would be a 
good idea to pin that search down more. Want information about the moth? Try 
'borer' AND 'moth.' Want information about controls, well, you might have to 
try several approaches using the word 'borer' with other words like 
'control,' or 'insecticide,' or 'chemical,' 'organic,' 'kill,' or others. Let 
do another. Need some information about 'soft rot'? Try 'soft' AND 'rot.' You 
should get some posts on the subject and in those you should run into some 
other good soft rot Key Words like 'erwinia' which is part of the name of the 
bacteria that is the pathogen.

The more precisely you can define your question, and the more precise the 
Search Term you can design, the more precise your answer will be. Where a 
proper noun can be used for a Search Term, it may work out very well, 
although it may also not. If you try to use 'Hager' you will pull up a slew 
of stuff about Ben Hager the hybridizer, and also a slew of stuff posted by 
Dennis Hager over the last few years. In any word driven search you just have 
to roll with the coincidences and take advantage of the serendipitous.

It is sometimes a lot easier to re-find things in the Archives that you 
remember reading when they were first posted than it is to search for 
information on broad general topics that have received a lot of diffuse 
discussion, since often you will recall who made the post, or have a time 
frame in mind, or you will recall a turn of phrase or an odd bit that you can 
use for a search term. On the other hand there are more broad general 
discussions and once you figure out when they took place, moving through them 
is just a point, click, and back, away.

Wandering around in the Archives is a great way to get a bit more Iris-talk 
in your life when the list is slow because people are off digging their 
plants or whatever. I encourage people to read a few months now and then. 
Settle in with a cup of something nice to drink, maybe a cookie, and just 
start reading. You will become more accustomed to it the more you visit, and 
that will make dealing with the Search Engine--that poor thing, just no 
imagination at all---all the easier. Don't try to remember everything you 
read, just let it wash over you, and enjoy it. Once you have been into the 
belly of Our Archives Beast and heard its stories, it will not intimidate 
you. There is nothing spooky there, indeed there is nothing there at all but 
a bunch of people like you, talking about the flowers they love.

Anner, in Virginia
ChatOWhitehall@aol.com

 

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