Delicious is one of the most popular social bookmarking services. It works by setting up titles and tags that link URLs.
Delicious enables Time Past users to assemble a searchable database of all the content that can be found across all the groups in the entire Times Past site. At present searches are limited only to a particular group. With Delicious a Times Past user can search for a particular author, title, genre etc. across the entire Times Past site.
The effectiveness of this resource is only limited by interest or lack of interest Times Past users demonstrate in maintaining the data base. Most crucially when you create a new discussion be sure to also bookmark it. It only takes a minute.
How to Bookmark
1) Open a discussion page.
2) You should be able to see a tab on the right hand column of the Times Past page which reads: Bookmark this on Delicious. Click on this tab. A window will automatically open in Delicious for Time Past users.
3) The computer curser will be flashing in the TAGS line. At the bottom of the window you will see a box entited All My Tags. All the Times Past Group names are listed here. You will notice that the Group.Name appears without spaces with the title words linked with periods. Click on the appropriate tag name. At this point in development the aim is for the Group.Name to appear at the beginning of the TAGS line. You will note that the URL and discussion title were already filled in for you.
Basically that's it. Click on Save. A link to the discussion page will be saved in Delicious. The Delicious window will disappear.
4) For the more adventurous user, more descriptive TAGS and NOTES can also be added in the Delicious window. The information can be typed or I've found that clicking and dragging from the original discussion page also works well. There is a character limit in the NOTES however.
How to View the Bookmarks
1) You will have noticed a tab View Delicious Times Past also appears in the right hand column of this page. Click on this tab. A window will open listing the latest Times Past bookmarks. A search function appears at the top of the window. You will notice that all the bookmarked entries continue to be editable.
Thank you for your interest
Replies
You win a few, lose a few. The reason I was leaving it open temporarily was just long enough for all to get everything in and others to see how it worked. No one could still access anything unless they were a member of a particular group on time past. The only thing that could be looked at was items that were already public on times past. If you clicked on a link that is in a private group, you get the same page you get when you click on a private group form the main page on time past asking if would like to join group.
After all was entered was going to lock it all down, create a private group on times past that you would have to join to get a password to access the locked down links for those that were interested, giving the ability to perform a consolidated search from all groups.
When they are locked down, no one can access them with out the log in data.
Yet someone could give that info to someone, but still would have to be member of the particular group if private for access. Yet they could see the title of post.
As far as duplicates of files, I do not really see it as a major concern. Some duplicates are higher quality than others which some are interested in, and others might have a smaller file to download which is nice for members still on dial-up.
We are all here to have fun and share, it is not a job.
Robert
Roger
Either these discussions provide a viable resource for other members or they don't.
At this point, this discussion leads nowhere.
So unless there is any objection I'm going to delete this discussion later this coming week.
Thanks all of you for your interest.
It is instructive in that we learn of the dangers inherent in a public database.
Peter
Thanks to everyone who keeps this place going.