[UA] Next Book?

[Matthew Rowan Norwood]

  >I'm a programmer specializing in a language called 
ColdFusion. This is a web
  >applications language used to create dynamic sites 
and such. I'd be quite
  >happy to set up an online form/db/search interface so 
that UA players can
  >create and modify city information.

>  Excellent. I'll contact you off-list.

Hmmm... I'm going to voice a strong counter-opinion to a 
centralized database of city info.

Individual UA websites are a better approach to this 
problem for reasons of robustness, maintenance, and 
adaptability.

My reasons:

1) If the DB admin loses interest, loses his web host, 
or gets too busy to update and maintain the 
database/cgi, everything is lost.

2) Individual fans can customize, expand, and 
evolve their sites in parallel, rather than waiting for 
one admin to make changes.

3) Different formats of info can all be included in the 
web of city sites, and any member can create a directory 
with no intervention from the owners of those sites.

4) Assuming we all make our city sites open-source 
(which we should), site can be mirrored by other fans to 
guard against the death (for whatever reason, and there 
are plenty) of the original site.

There are probably other good reasons. I'm not saying 
you shouldn't whip up a little UA database -- I think 
it's an admirable plan -- but I think it should be a 
_redundant_ source of online UA material.  Unless the 
admin is confident that he'll make regular updates for 
the next few years and that he site won't go down in the 
foreseeable future (which I've never seen happen for any 
game site), a concerted effort to compile UA material in 
one spot online is just setting up the online UA 
community (i.e., everyone on this list) for a lot of 
frustration a month, or six months, or two years down 
the line.

My $.02,

Matt Norwood

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