Problems with Vaults of Parnassus

[Rob Andrews]

Rainy wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 06 Jun 2001 23:12:21 GMT, Wolfgang Lipp <castor at snafu.de> wrote:
> >
> > readers,
> >
> > I am having a few problems with the vaults of parnassus
> > recently. the vaults are undisputedly *the* one-stop station
> > whenever you look for a python module. however, there
> > are three problems i can see:
> >
> >       the current categorization is somehow less than
> >       satisfying. i do not want to delve into an analysis
> >       here; if nobody feels this way, ignore the point.
> >       if someone agrees, perhaps this can be made
> >       more concrete.
> >
> >       more seriously, the search engine does not work
> >       correctly. i have experienced this several times,
> >       and i am sure it is not a mistake i make, it is a
> >       malfunction. please go try for yourselves: on
> >       http://www.vex.net/parnassus/apyllo.py/751771926.353274583
> >       you'll find jim fulton's extension classes (with
> >       a sadly broken link, but that's more of dc's
> >       problem). the author's name is in the field
> >       titled 'owner'. now go to the search form below
> >       and try to find 'jim', 'fulton', 'jim fulton', lowercase,
> >       uppercase. restrict the search to 'any text', 'owners',
> >       do what you will -- "No Parnassus records matching
> >       your search criteria were found." is the sole answer.
> >       then, try 'extensionclass' -- same, no results. only
> >       thing that does yield results is 'extension class' (13
> >       records) and 'extension class' (87 records). it must
> >       be admitted that 'extensionclass' is not in the text
> >       of the page, but it's in the url. be that as it may,
> >       the name of the owner does appear and is not
> >       found.
> >
> >       next, you say ok, those extensionclasses must be
> >       somewhere, so you follow the download link to
> >       fetch
> >       http://www.vex.net/parnassus/download/Parnassus-Condensed-by-Category.html
> >       which is sadly way behind time, and there, indeed!
> >       you find a lot of hits for 'extension' (using the browser's
> >       find-on-page function) plus one for 'extensionclass' (this
> >       time, the url is, of course, found because it is included in
> >       the listing). however, names of owners/authers do *not*
> >       appear in the listing.
> >
> > in all, if i was asked 'please find out whether a guy named jim
> > fulton, who works for digital creations, has made available
> > a module called extensionclass', and i go searching, i sure
> > would have to answer in the negative, which is not correct.
> > obviously, we have a few problems that intertwine here,
> > and some of them are not within the vault's responsibility
> > (although it may be hard to communicate to executives
> > why links are not checked for validity and listings are not
> > updated nightly).
> >
> > does anyone have similar experiences? where is the
> > problem?
> >
> >
> > -wolf
> >
> >
> 
> In addition, submissions and updates (reportedly) take up to
> more than a week to get posted.
> 
> --
> Jupiter and Saturn Oberon Miranda
> And Titania Neptune Titan
> Stars can frighten
>         - Syd

I've always liked the Vaults, and see myself continuing to do so for
some time to come. If anyone is interested in submitting source code,
links to source on your site, a link to your home page, etc., or if you
are looking for some interesting code, programming contest
problems/solutions, or just some challenges to stimulate your
creativity, may I shamelessly plug Useless Python? (The Vaults of
Parnassus was one of our first links!)

So far, we've been able to post people's code within minutes or hours of
submission in nearly every case. Site maintenance is all done manually
at the moment while I work on automating the whole business with Python
Power!

Rob
-- 

Useless Python!
Kinda like the AOL of the Open Source Community 3;->
http://www.lowerstandard.com/python/index.html