Having the information that you need at your fingertips when you need it is a benefit in any type of situation. Unfortunately reading through pages of documentation, examples and technical data, while interesting, may not provide you with the information that you need. Even using the find feature and scanning for particular words is likely to result in a lot of wasted effort. To avoid these very common issues consider using data from mailing list archives.
Searching mailing list archives for specific answers to specific questions is something that a lot of people don’t consider, but one that is highly efficient. There are some websites that are set up to make this process very easy and some that are much more challenging to navigate. The websites that are logically designed an intuitive to use are going to become your go to site for answers on anything technical that may pop up.
Structure
One top mailing list archives there are both current questions on the mailing lists as well as the archived discussions, typically listed by groups. The groups, when you are talking technical programming and software mailing list archives, are typically listed by software program. This is a simple way to have access to specific software and then browse through past discussions.
The software groups are then further divided into lists. These lists will vary based on specific topics of discussion that naturally group into the larger list categories. From here you can then click on the specific list and look through past discussions.
Search by Tags
For information that may go across several lists or even several groups, such as integration problems or other technical data that may be relevant to more than one group, searching by tags can be very efficient. Just remember the more specific the tag the more you will pinpoint the specific discussion in the mailing list archives. General words, terms or tags will tend to give you larger numbers of results, which may be beneficial in getting a big picture overview.
Using mailing list archives is an ideal way to find answers to the question you may have or the problems you are experiencing. You can see who posted the question and which users provided an answer, also giving you a potential resource for further answers to your specific questions.
