I have used the archives many times and found that they are more than helpful.
Yes, there is a lot of information, but they are relatively easy to search,
especially if you narrow down your search, search a year at a time, etc.

The archives and the list should not have any mandatory charges.

Hotch
86 Vanagon GL
89 Jetta GL
Philly

Rico Sapolich wrote:

> Archives?  There are no archives.  To refer to the mass of babel, be it
> worthy or inane, generated by this list as an archive is a perversion of the
> term on the highest order.  A sad fact of life is there can be no archive
> without an archivist to filter the information and bring some order to it.
>
> Directing someone to the archives is often an act of smugness which has
> little efficacy for the person seeking an answer to their newest Vanagon
> calamity.  Searching any term in the archives, which is to any measure
> relevant to Vanagons, will return a glut, numbering in the thousands, of
> mostly useless messages.  And, then, since only the first 100 of this vast
> number of messages are returned, the exercise becomes even more tedious.
>
> I once heard of a writer whose field of expertise was composing indices of
> reference books.  Until that point, I had given little thought to such
> things, but once being aware that indices do not appear spontaneously and
> people of some intelligence are paid to compose them, I viewed them more
> critically.  I now realize that a proper index is vital to a reference book
> of any merit.  All one has to do is to haul out the Bentley manual to
> appreciate the value of a good index.  I think an archivist should be hired
> to bring some order to this morass of bits and bytes.  And, that of course, I
> hate to say these words, means there will have to be a fee charged to use the
> archives.
>
> Rich

--
Richard Hotchkiss
http://www.hotstrings-inc.com