I keep telling folks, use the search function, use the search function. But it does take some looking at a lot of rocks before you find the diamonds.
300Bucks,
Two comments...
1) Forum search is much easier if you remember the thread and much harder if you weren't there. People who were involved know the approximate times, who was involved and the key words that were in common use at the time. Newbies lack this context and lacking it, have a much harder time knowing if they are getting warmer and or colder as they sort through search results. Add to this that Google's "site:" feature is generally much better than any PHP search tool.
2) "All topics are cyclic." -Eugene Miya.
Eugene was a researcher at NASA Ames who was involved in starting many groups in the old usenet rec.* hierarchy. He's credited for coining the phrase FAQ, which bears on this comment. Cyclic topics keep the air moving. It's more of a problem in very high bandwidth forums and less of an issue in low bandwidth forums. IMO (formed very much from my usenet days and long talks with Gene on the topic) is that the only things that appeals to use search functions and to avoid cyclic topics do is to discourage newbies from posting. If forum old-timers want to be really serious about making information available to newbies to reduce the frequency of certain topics (all topics are cyclic, they only differ in periodicity), then they should collaborate on creating good static content. This was the original goal of usenet FAQs or, in Gene's preferred terminology, Distilled Wisdom posts.
All of this to say, if people in the Buck forum feel really strongly about not fielding cyclic questions (again, all topics are cyclic) such as questions about specific Buck models, I think a much healthier approach is to post up well curated stickies. Of course, well written and helpful stickies take real work that busy people may not have.
Not leveling this to you 300Bucks, but in general, when I hear old timers in a forum (any forum, not just this one) tell newbies to RTFM (aka, use the search tool), I roughly translate this into, "I've gone beyond the point of getting any fun out of educating newbies and would really just prefer to talk with the handful of people I consider to be peer and I don't have the time or interest to write good static content nor the interest to stand up my own private mailing list, so I'll just camp out in this quasi-public forum and do my best to chase away any clueless newbies so the forum can be used only by those I consider to be in the cool kids club."
Please note, I've written a couple of static web site on hobby topics I feel passionate about. I use them to answer question in forums related to those topics. It's not that hard, so I'm less impressed by self-appointed old timers who can't do the same. Unless/until people post static content (ie stickies), I think the best thing for the forums is to embrace cyclic questions by newbies.
