[UA] Next Book?

[Michael Dinowitz]

> Hmmm... I'm going to voice a strong counter-opinion to a
> centralized database of city info.
I can set up auto-syndication so other can have the same data on their sites
and can post back to mine. That way it would not be centralized. I can do
this with CF, Asp, PHP, Perl and Java.

> Individual UA websites are a better approach to this
> problem for reasons of robustness, maintenance, and
> adaptability.
Actually, if you look at my sites, you'll see that I run a large number of
mailing lists for the ColdFusion and JRun communities as well as an online
newspaper, articles and more. The site is up over 99% of the time and I'm
maintaining it as well as upgrading it (went to CF 4.5.1 sp2 last night).

> 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.
I own the box and the scripts are already written. Little to update, just
maintain.

> 2) Individual fans can customize, expand, and
> evolve their sites in parallel, rather than waiting for
> one admin to make changes.
True. I'm all for lots of knowledge and totally support other sites in this.

> 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.
I'm proposing a non-formatted setup where a piece of data is just that, a
piece of data. Links within the data go to other pieces but are not hard
coded. All links call data from a DB. www.everything2.com is my model for
this.

> 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.
I agree.

> 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.
I'm confident that the site will be up and the code will work as I'm using
it for other things as well. The nodal system I mentioned will be used for
UA as a general data location that can have cities, spells, etc. I also have
a nodal system for information on Judaism, Kabbalah, general occult, and
ColdFusion. As the code is the same for all of these and I don't think I'm
leaving Judaism or ColdFusion in the next lifetime, I think its rather set.
:)
I'm going to do it anyway as a project of my own. Nothing official or
anything to force anyone to give up their work. Just another way of
distributing info.


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