On or shortly before December 8, 2002, there was a link in the
"Spotlight" section of the msn.com home page.  The link address still
works as of this date; however, the link to the article that was there
goes to a DIFFERENT article now.  How can I find the actual text of
the article that was linked to on December 8 (or thereabouts)????  The
original "blurb" on the msn.com "Spotlight" section was "what to do if
a friend is hitting on you."  The original link was
"http://love.msn.com/personals/article1.asp" & led to an article on
turning down a friend's "crush" gracefully.  This is the article that
I need to find.  The original article was replaced
after the date originally found with another article, just using the
same link address.  Help, please!!!!

Hello.

I believe I have found your article.

I looked at the love.msn.com/personals page. The articles listed all
seem to come from match.com, so I think the source for your article
would have been match.com as well. (In a recent question, I learned
that Keen.com is the source for all of msn's horoscopes. It seems they
prefer to buy, rather then use, content. Which may explain the lack of
archives at msn.com. They might be renting content.) But I digress.

Match.com doesn't seem to have any way of searching their articles.
What I noticed was that any article you call up, the URL begins with
their domain and directory information, then s unique session ID, and
then a tag called "theme" which I have seen as 3, 5, and 7. The theme
remains the same throughout your session, unless you go look at a
different area of the site. The final "tag" is articleID= and a
number. (These articles are in the matchscene area.)

Through trial and error, I found that they have a wealth of articles.
(about 552 to be more precise.) Since none seemed to hit what I wanted
in a sitesearch at google, I brute-forced it and checked every article
in order.

I believe the relevant articles are:

#93 "When friends cross the line"
Susan Hayden, Match.com
"...words “I’m in love with you” from a friend you really care about,
what do you say?..."


#336 "12 signs he wants to be more than friends"
Emily Livingston, Match.com
"...How can you tell if he wants to be more than friends?..."


#430 "How do we be friends after we've been more?"


Here's how to get them:
visit
http://www.match.com
There is an area called "matchscene" Look for it and click on it. I
think you will see a box in the middle area of the page with some
highlites from it. I cannot be sure, as I can't convince it to log me
out and pretend I don't exist!

You'll be asked to sign-up when you click on it. It's free to join, so
go ahead and create a username and password.

I would advise to uncheck the two email subscription options, but it's
your call.

Once you've created your login, you'll probably have to click on
matchscene again. When you're in matchscene, there are links to a few
articles. Click on one of them.

Now, in your address bar, you'll see what looks like:

http://match.com/Matchscene/article.asp?SID=EC3B850B-153E-4A3B-96E3-72890286FABC&TrackingID=0&Theme=8&ArticleID=456

Click once in the address bar. Now the whole address will be highlited
in blue and ready for you to type a new address. Press your right
arrow key once, to place the cursor at the end of the address. Press
backspace 1, 2, or 3 times as needed to erase only the article number.
Type in the number of the article you wish to read (probably number
93) after the equals sign, so that your address abr ends in
"ArticleID=93" and then press enter. The article should load.

I hope this is the information you were looking to find. If you are
satisfied with my answer, please rate it. If you would like more
information or this is not the answer you were looking for, then
please request a clarification prior to rating my answer.

-sparky4ca-ga

Great job!  The first article the researcher found, was, indeed, the
one I needed.  Also it was good that they included more helpful
information to use in the future in the answer.  Thank you.

cn21212-ga,

I'm glad that article was the right one. It wasn't the first one I
found, though. In what I thought was a stroke of brilliance, after
looking at 1-60, I decided that they might be in chronological order
(which would make sense to me) so I went to the end and worked my way
back! 93 was almost my last one.

Thank you for your kind words and 5-star rating.

sparky4ca-ga