[syslinux] Request for the Admin

[Gene Cumm]

On Tue, Sep 17, 2013 at 2:41 PM, Geert Stappers <stappers at stappers.nl> wrote:
> Op 2013-09-17 om 17:43 schreef Ady:
>> To the Syslinux mailing list administrator(s):
>
> Hello All,
>
>> There seem to be some issue when searching the Syslinux mailing list
>> archives.
>>
>> To replicate (example):
>>
>> 1_ Open a Google web search page
>> 2_ Search for "site:http://www.syslinux.org/archives/"
>> 3_ Click "Search tools"
>> 4_ Limit the search to "Past month".
>>
>> Result: no match!

For today, August 17th is the last noticed records.

Is this only an issue where the last 30-ish days are not searchable in
this manner?

>> This has been happening for about 10 months or so.
>>
>> A few mailing list search repositories / engines had kept caching the
>> Syslinux mailing list until a few months ago, even after Google
>> stopped.
>>
>> I know of at least one such mailing list search repository / engine
>> based on Google results which eventually moved the Syslinux mailing
>> list to "dormant" state. This was on May or June 2013.
>>
>> The reason this type of searches are important is that users are
>> repeating their questions (typically, related to newer versions of
>> Syslinux), and I am sure that much time would be saved if a simple
>> web search would provide a meaningful result.
>>
>> If there is anything / something that the Administrator / Owner can
>> do (e.g contacting Google and finding out what the problem / reason
>> is), I'm sure it will be helpful for all.
>
> Yeah, right.
>
>
> Groeten
> Geert Stappers

Perhaps an explicit robots.txt could be of help.

Per http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html an empty file or

"User-agent: *
Disallow:"

A HTTP return 404 _should_ be sufficient (but we know how well some
things that _should_ work may not always).

-- 
-Gene