the most practical aspect is just to tell folks to use the general search engine and look for past discussions.

as for search conventions my favorite feature is negation which no one seemes to use anymore. Lets say you are looking for soemthing on the second law of thermodynamics, but every time you do you get loads of references to that stupid creationist argument against evolution. next search will be for 'second law thermodynamics -evolution' viola! no more creationist references in you search.

Also the old altavista convention was the best. to search using OR logic and simply place the results with both words at the top. Then use the opposit of negation '+' to insist that the word be there and filter out all responses that do not have it. IT is superior to using + as 'and' because second law +thermodynaics in the convention you mention would require returns to Law and thermodynaics. however what if you didn't need law? just thermodynaics, but law was just a good likely hood to be there and you wanted to just use that to sort the results. "law +themodynamics" in altavistas old convention would require all results to have thermodynamics and merely put those with 'law' at the top. if you wanted to require both you would just search with "+law +thermodynamics" this is also a great way to get a yes or now answere as to whether something is there, if searching with "+second +law+ thermodynamics" doesn't revel any results then you won't have to spend time wading through all the result brought up by newtons second law and general duscusion of thermodydamics.

string recognition is also good, to avoid link that both talk about newtons second law and general themodynamics, but not 'the second law of thermodynamics", where you could just search with +"second law of thermodynamics".



its the greatest search systems ever devised and wish altavista still used it, it really help when you don't know what you are lookign for too.

-Justin Kelly