<VV> Forum enhancement; Automated Responses

Joe West joew at diveaz.com
Tue May 10 10:20:05 EDT 2005


Hi Gang,

I've enabled a feature on the virtualcorvairclub.com forum which should be
of some assistance to folks.

If you post a question or comment in any section of the forum, the search
engine will automatically search through the entire database to find posts
related to your question and the forum will display the posts which are
similar.

For instance.  Let's say you post a question regarding appropriate tire
sizes for a late model Corvair.

You title your post: "What size tire for a Corsa"
And in the body of the forum post, you type:

Can anyone tell me what size tire I should use on a 1966 Corsa?

After you hit the "Submit New Thread" button, a few things will happen in a
couple of seconds.

The forum will post your question, and then it will search the entire
database for key words in your post.  It examines the title of your post and
picks out key words, then it examines the body of your post and picks out
more key words... and then it searches the entire database for those key
words and finally, it displays all of the matches for your post at the
bottom of the page... and it does this all in about a second.

If you post a question to the forum... look at the bottom of the post and
you will find the closest matches to your question.  Right now... with only
3,600 archived posts... the matches may not be the best... but soon we will
have over 100,000 posts and then the matches should be dead on.

The key to getting good automated responses from the forum... is to be as
specific in your post as you can.  Use appropriate keywords, make sure
spelling is correct and don't put additional information in your post that
you don't care about (in other words... if your question is on tires...
don't add a comment at the bottom about sex in cars... or the forum will
search on the word sex and tires and you'll get some interesting suggestions
back :)  )

This is probably more information than most of you care about... but it is a
new feature of the forum which will help answer your questions as quickly
and accurately as possible based on the absolute wealth of information from
the virtual vairs majordomo.

Kind Regards,


Joe West
Administrator
http://www.virtualcorvairclub.com






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