Frequently Asked Questions

How do I use Onibasu?

Onibasu was built to facilitate searching through mailing lists. Onibasu's search engine is easy and user-friendly. Please read through our examples page to help you get started in searching your favourite mailing lists.

What is Advanced Search?

Onibasu's search engine allows you to search messages using regular expressions, as well as search by subject, author etc. The advanced search page offers some examples of Onibasu's advanced search capabilities.

How often do you update the archives?

Onibasu's archives are updated a few times a week. Due to the large number of messages, low-volume mailing lists may get updated first.

What is Yahoo! message number portability?

Every message archived in Onibasu now uses the same Yahoo! message number used on the Yahoo! groups website. This means you can now share URL's from Onibasu, with the comfort of knowing that you can easily find the same message on Yahoo!'s website at any time.

For example:
http://onibasu.com/archives/am/34415.html refers to Yahoo! message number 34415 in the Autism-Mercury group.

See the next question on retrieving messages by Yahoo! message number.

How do I find messages by Yahoo! message number?

You can retrieve messages by Yahoo! message number directly from the search interface. Simply type in the number and select the group you are interested in. You will jump directly to the message.

Is my email address safe?

Absolutely! Your full email address will never be shown on any of the messages displayed on Onibasu.

Do you track my searches?

We track search requests to see which groups are the most popular.

How can I add my Yahoo! group to Onibasu?

The best groups to index in Onibasu are ones that have large message archives (at least 1,000 messages), and have a constant influx of new members who share similar interests.

Please see Help for list owners and moderators for more details on what is involved in adding a group to Onibasu.

It is best if you contact your list owner/moderator and ask her/him to contact us to start the process.

Why is it free? Will you ever charge for using Onibasu?

We will never charge you or your list owner for using Onibasu on openly accessible archives.

We provide this service free of charge because we would like to see this information shared among people who can truly make use of it, whether for their own health or for the health of their loved ones. It takes a lot of time and effort to keep Onibasu running and up-to-date. Even though our time and effort are not financially compensated, there's a greater satisfaction in knowing that we have given back to the community and helped someone along the way.

In terms of covering our costs and upgrading our equipment, we might try unobstrusive advertising or ask for donations when we come to the point where we need help. Our recently launced Recommended Reading section is one way for you to support us.

Update October 2006: Due to a recent hardware failure, we are running on a backup server. We are running ads on the site to offset the cost of a new server.

Can I suggest new features?

Yes, absolutely! We love hearing from people who use Onibasu and have some great ideas they like to see implemented. We can't promise to address everyone's ideas but we will consider all suggestions. To send us your suggestions, please see our contact page.

I have a question...

This section of the website will be updated with some of the frequently asked questions we receive from users like yourself.

If you did not find an answer to your question on this page, please drop us a line and let us know!

Your question will benefit the other five or six people who visit this site.