Index of Topics?

[Peter1953]

Mark, since we already have a lot of topics, is it useful to add an index on alphabetical order for both "Composers and Music" and "New recordings"? I'm thinking of an index for (1) composers (who have a topic of their own) and (2) other subjects.
I know, it's for me as a member easily asked, but it means quite a lot of work for you as the Administrator...

[JimL]

Isn't there a program or tool that can do that?

[Mark Thomas]

I agree that it would be useful, but I have no idea if it can be done automatically and I certainly don't want to be compiling an index manually. Leave it with me. In the meantime, you can always use the Search facility for something you are looking for, but there's no serendipity in that I do appreciate.

[Gareth Vaughan]

This is what happens when you have a successful site that generates such a lot of valuable comment and information. It gets like an encyclopedia - but not a very well-ordered one because the quantity of knowledge has just "growed". It's hard to see how there could be an indexing "tool" to do the job of an indexer, though there might be a more sophisticated (and therefore more expensive, I expect) search engine.

[Mark Thomas]

I'm afraid that I have given this suggestion no thought at all yet, beyond the one that a manual index would not only be an appalling prospect but also a never ending one.

[Peter1953]

Oh dear, I really hope I didn't cause any inconvenience with my suggestion. Actually, I came to think about an index when I read the topic "Belgian music" and thought a discussion about Guillaume Lekeu was being started. Lekeu has already a topic of his own (posted 29 December 2010). So I thought maybe an index could be useful.

[Mark Thomas]

No need to apologise, Peter. An index would be a good idea but I don't know how practical its implementation would be. Maybe there's an easy to implement software solution. I'll dig around when I have some time (which isn't now I'm afraid).

[eschiss1]

the two topics weren't quite redundant, anycase, since there were reasons they were in different forums (though one of them definitely did go off on a tangent and -into- Lekeu.)