| Searching the archives of electronic product support mailing lists often provides unsatisfactory results for users looking for quick solutions to their problems. Archives are inconvenient because they are too voluminous, lack efficient searching mechanisms, and retain the original thread structure which is not relevant to knowledge seekers.; I present MCS, a system which improves mailing list archives through condensation. Condensation involves omitting redundant or useless messages, and adding meta-level information to messages to improve searching. The condensation process is performed by a human assisted by an editing tool.; I describe the design and implementation of MCS, and compare it to related systems. I also present my experiences condensing a 1428 message mailing list archive to an archive containing only 177 messages (an 88% reduction). The condensation required only 1.5 minutes of editor effort per message. The condensed archive was adopted by the users of the mailing list. |
