Need a little phrase to let fellow netizens know how clever and tech savvy you are? Want to start a flame war over some anonymous coward's politics? Can't remember exactly how that pithy saying went?
Then try siggle, the .sig search engine! This amazing internet website search engine searches the entire internet for signature lines -- from emails, websites, discussion boards, newsgroup postings, and brings them all to you in one convienent, centralized location.
Sigs would be identified in that they tend to be repetitive large blocks of text, appearing at the end of messages, however that is defined on the medium. So you could set up a working definition of a 'message' for newsgroups, a particular discussion board software, slashcode, or software. Then you start looking for repetitive phrases. Those are likely to be sigs.
And of course, as you start to build data, you can refine your sig criteria-- lawpoop, Dec 27 2004 What is a SIG? http://www.google.c...efmore&q=define:SIG [DrCurry, Dec 27 2004] Dot Sigs http://www.crossove...edrob/sigquote.html [DrCurry, Dec 27 2004] Sig Alert http://www.dot.ca.g...fairs/faq/faq18.htm [normzone, Dec 27 2004] USENET: alt.fan.warlord http://groups-beta....oup/alt.fan.warlord [jutta, Dec 29 2004] Will it tell me what a ".sig" is?-- half, Dec 27 2004 I thought the standard search engines *did* search SIGs and news groups?-- DrCurry, Dec 27 2004 I thought, considering it was being presented as though it was a file extension, it had something to do with signature files. I didn't get Special Interest Group from the context.
Maybe I should have done a .DUT search: Dictionary of Undefined Terms.-- half, Dec 27 2004 Ah. You may be right about the signatures - see second link.-- DrCurry, Dec 27 2004 Sounds like a group grope for singles.-- mensmaximus, Dec 27 2004 Siggle lert [link]-- normzone, Dec 27 2004 What, exactly, is being proposed in this idea?-- bristolz, Dec 27 2004 A search engine that only examines signature lines. As froogle is to prices, Siggle is to signature.-- lawpoop, Dec 27 2004 "Frankly, my dear..." = .sig o' Rhett?
How would said signature lines be identifiable to the search engine?-- half, Dec 27 2004 Sigs would be identified in that they tend to be repetitive large blocks of text, appearing at the end of messages, however that is defined on the medium. So you could set up a working definition of a 'message' for newsgroups, a particular discussion board software, slashcode, or software. Then you start looking for repetitive phrases. Those are likely to be sigs.
And of course, as you start to build data, you can refine your sig criteria.-- lawpoop, Dec 27 2004 Or just run an automated cliche cache.-- DrCurry, Dec 27 2004 Seems to me that it might have been helpful to include those explanations in the idea to begin with.
[-] withdrawn because I at least now understand what you propose. I personally don't see the value, but I never use those signature lines as you describe.
"IHWPUUA" --half-- half, Dec 27 2004 [half] - Well, I thought that HB users would be kind of net savvy, but I was wrong. Does it make more sense now?-- lawpoop, Dec 27 2004 [half] here's something -- maybe you are trying to find someone online, or something they said, and the only thing you can remember about them was their sig line. This might be a starting point for trying to contact them or look up whatever they said.-- lawpoop, Dec 27 2004 Yup. It coitanly does. (The knowledge that you consider as proving "net savvy" is just superfluous information to me. I'm not a fan of jargon anyway. Even the hb is too general an audience for that. From what little I know of DrCurry, I'd consider him to be net savvy, but he hadn't a clue as to what you were on about either.)
If that were the case, a regular search engine would find it, no?-- half, Dec 27 2004 Well, I've done searches on search engines with sigs, and the results are disappointing. Especially with blogs and message board systems, when you follow links, they tend to not work. You don't get to the search results that the engine cached whenever it found the results.
With this you might actually be able to look up the user, get the full sig, see who else adopted the sig, etc.-- lawpoop, Dec 28 2004 I know what you're talking about, I just think it's most sigs are in email and therefore (except gmail) out of the domain (thank god) of search engines What [DrCurry] said about cliche. (-) "if I had a dollar for every troll on the HB" neilp-- neilp, Dec 28 2004 "if I had a dollar for every troll on the HB" Wouldn't giving them money just encourage them to come back?-- half, Dec 28 2004 If we had a search engine that could detect trolls.......and I could get a dollar for every one of them.......WIBNI-- normzone, Dec 28 2004 random, halfbakery