Using Google Groups to search for help

Flippers.com

A guide to using "News Groups" to search for help for your game's problem:
Written by David Gersic (with thanks & updates (Google search!) by JR)

Edited on
"Hi John,

I've got this Twilight ZONe game that I caN'T seeM to get workIng
correctly. Can you tell mE what's wrong with ...   ;-)"


There's a difference between being new ("newbie") and being a twit. Newbies
can learn; twits aren't interested in learning to use the tools at their
disposal.

So, in the spirit of trying to help people learn, and possibly saving John
his sanity for Christmas, here's a quickie introduction to the wonders of
the DejaNews UseNet archive.

Since March 1995, virtually every message posted to the rec.games.pinball
newsgroup has been archived by DejaNews (recently renamed to Deja.Com).
These messages are in a searchable database. No matter what your question,
complaint, or problem, there is a good chance that it has already been
asked, voiced, or discussed, and the archived messages contain the
information you need.

DejaNews used to have a nice, simple, easy to use search facility. Since
transforming themselves in to Deja.Com, this is no longer available, as 
DejaNews has been taken over by Google. Now Google has set up a site with
access to all the original messages from the late 1980's and on... A much simpler 
interface has been put up on the web at this URL:

          http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search (rec.games.pinball for example)

The first field in this form is the most important one. It is labeled
"Find messages" and it is the one that you will put the terms you are looking
for in to. For example, if you have a Williams Twilight Zone pinball
machine that when you are playing it, it tends to act as though the power
switch has been flipped off then back on again, especially during
multiball, you could enter "twilight zone power reset multiball" in to the
"with ALL the keywords" field.

The second most important field is the one labeled "Newsgroup". Since you
are looking for information about a pinball machine, put
"rec.games.pinball" here.


Click on the "Search" button and you will get back a list of messages that
might be useful to you. Or, maybe not. You may get many thousands of
messages, or only a few. Vary your keywords to get more or less messages in
the list. Adding keywords (with "all" selected) generally makes for fewer
messages. Adding keywords with "any" selected generally gets more messages.

Try "twilight zone power reset multiball" and you will see only a few
messages. Remove "multiball" from the keywords list and try again.

Play around with the keywords, and using "any" vs. "all", and you will
almost definitely find what you're looking for.