The last time search stopped functioning on our archived board Yuku fixed it without cavil. Now it seems they’ve changed things. Just received this email from them:

Hi there,

I’ve replied to you in the search topic at bugs.

Search does not work on abandoned communities because the indexing needs to be triggered by activity.

Please start a new topic, plus make a reply to it in order to trigger the indexing. The search should start working within 15 minutes after you post a topic and a reply.

Kind regards,
Chris W
Yuku Support Management

They never mentioned this stuff about ‘abandoned communities’ last time. It isn’t abandoned, it’s a damned archive, as I made quite clear to them, emphasizing that as such it’s of great importance to us. Alas, it’s clear that they see no qualitative difference between an archive and an abandoned forum.

Dave, any chance of you posting a dummy topic and reply every so often just to keep the search function alive? I can’t see any other way round it, short of shifting the whole archive (and I don’t even know whether that’s possible.)

I’ve just tried to post in my old account.  I got in OK, but I only get a screen that asks me to apply to the administrator for permission to post.

When I did that, I get the following,

You have now applied to make new topics. However, the Domain Administrator has not yet approved your application. When the Administrator of this Domain has decided to approve your application you will be notified by the Administrator.

Edit: I presume that the administrator of the domain is yuku.com not Dave.

I’ve added and replied to a dummy post. It still doesn’t seem to be working. Maybe it needs more time.

Oeco: I’m the administrator, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out how to find, much less approve, your “application.” The Yuku control panel is a total mess.

And no, there is no way to transfer the content from Yuku to the new forum. One of the reasons for dumping them was that such control over the content was not possible. (The other reasons are evident in this thread.)

I wrote again to tech support and said that I re-joined partly to help reactivate the board.  Here is the “team member’s” reponse:

I took a look at that board, and it looks like they only use the board as an archive and they don’t approve any members.

Is this a lost cause? I’ve written again to get this anonymous writer connected to Chris W. whose note I copied to him from aldi’s OP in this thread.

I might have found an inconsistent google workaround.  It worked at least on “nine yards”.

site:wordoriginsorg.yuku.com [search term]

It didn’t work however on “Writer’s block” (with or without quotation marks) and I know that such a topic was begun by aldi 06/19/06. The words writer and block searched separately gives up several citations, but not Writer’s block.

So, inconsistent at best.

Likewise, I was unable to use Google to turn up the specific thread about old terms for the color orange that I remember distinctly, although other hits on “orange” came up.  It seems that parts of the yuku archive are invisible to Google, or (heaven forbid) have been deleted.

From Chris W:

Hi there Jim,

Sorry about that garbled link fast fingers I think are the cause :)

I think I’m a bit confused here. Your first message was about your application not being approved at the board, I assumed you were trying to post. My mistake for not looking any further. Now I see that your name is on the member list with quite a few posts in the past. The forums are view-only, so the “archive” part seems done on purpose.

I happen to be on IM with our systems admin, he took a look at the board and found an error in the search. He fixed it just now and the search is working fine

( I am Chris W by the way)

Cheers

Excellent result, oeco! And kudos to the estimable Chris W!

In order to grease the wheels as it were, I paid for a six month subscription.  Worth it. (7USD)

Thanks, Oeco!

Can you point me to the contribution page? I had thought it was considerably more expensive to maintain a paid status for the site.

Dave Wilton - 09 April 2010 11:41 AM

Thanks, Oeco!

Can you point me to the contribution page? I had thought it was considerably more expensive to maintain a paid status for the site.

I remember that as well.  At the top left corner of the home page of the Wordorigins Yuku site just under the words “Wordorigins Discussion Forum” there is a link for contributing.  But interestingly, if you click on “view contributors” I see your name with a large sum ($218) for a 12 month contribution. So, maybe there’s a difference between being an individual contributor and one who owns the site. Or maybe their structure has changed.  Dunno.

edit: I also remember that after you stopped paying for the site, there were ads that appeared on about every third note when we tried to read the threads.  What I notice now is that the burden seems to be on the reader.  Now if the individual reader pays, he or she doesn’t get the ads (at least I haven’t).

Ah, that may be the difference. The site doesn’t list any recent contributions and I’m still seeing ads. So the $7 is probably an individual subscription to Yuku. Still the search function works. Bravo!