<VV> 100% Membership -- What would it solve?

[airvair at earthlink.net]

All,

>From an offline email that I received from Barry Johnson. An idea that I
think would be of benefit to CORSA. Posted below:

-Mark

> [Original Message]
> From: Barry Johnson <barry.johnson at activant.com>
> Subject: RE: <VV> 100% Membership -- What would it solve?

Technical Information
---------------------
The single biggest asset CORSA has available is the wealth of technical
information amassed by the membership. As the years go by, this information
becomes irreplaceable. But outside of the hardcopy manuals available for
sale (the Technical Guides), CORSA hasn't attempted to capture and organize
any of this technical detail.
 
Providing access on a members-only basis to technical detail would be a
*huge* win, especially for folks that aren't currently members -- and
especially for folks that aren't long-time Corvair owners. There's probably
little debate about the value of such a library, if it were (somehow) to
exist.
 
But how can could this massive amount of knowledge be collected, organized,
and distributed without a huge labor burden? We can't afford to pay our
professionals more (well, we might be able to afford a -little- more). Who
could do the work? Who would do it? How could it get done?
 
Turns out there are examples of successful databases of information that
are compiled, organized, managed, and grown solely with volunteer help. The
best ones tap a broad base of volunteers and get many people to contribute
small slices of data -- but when that data is all put together, it becomes
amazing. 
 
The biggest example is the Wikipedia, which bills itself as "The free
encyclopedia that anyone can edit". That's a true statement -- you and I
can make changes to Wikipedia articles. We can change articles, we can
write new ones, we can document references, we can do anything. But solely
through volunteer effort, Wikipedia has become the largest encyclopedia on
the planet with over 3,000,000 articles. The accuracy is surprising:
scientific studies have been made to compare the accuracy of Wikipedia
articles to other well-known works. Wikipedia comes out surprisingly well,
comparable to other major professionally edited sources of information.
 
Could we do something like that? Let's look at it from a few perspectives:
 
1) Technical capability: After a couple of brief discussions with Bryan
Blackwell, I believe that the CORSA web server and data pipeline would be
completely sufficient for running such on online encyclopedia. Many
versions of similar software are readily available, including the software
package that powers Wikipedia itself.
 
2) Monetary Costs: $0 upfront hardware or software costs, and $0 recurring
hardware or software costs (above and beyond what we're already paying
today). The software is free, runs on the CORSA web server platform, and
would not require any hardware upgrades. Over time, it's possible that disk
space could become a consideration. New disk drives with unfathomable
capacity are now available for dirt-cheap: $150 can buy 1.5 million billion
bytes of storage. (Ten years ago, that much disk space cost hundreds of
thousands of dollars. I know -- my company paid over a million dollars for
that much disk space in the late 1990's.)
 
3) Labor Costs: If the work is done by volunteers, the labor cost to CORSA
is $0. I don't know the details of the contract with M&P -- there is an
argument for having them do some of the initial work. 
 
4) Resources at hand: Are there any bits of technical knowledge that CORSA
owns that could be used as a starting point for such a library? Sure there
are. We have the complete back history of the Communique to draw upon
without question. In recent years the magazine has been edited digitally,
which means that transferring articles from the old Communique files to the
new encyclopedia would be a copy/paste operation. Articles prior to that
point would be more labor-intensive to transfer: scanning printed pages,
using OCR software to convert them to text, and proof-reading the results.
 
Several CORSA members have compiled such technical information and publish
it electronically on their own web sites. Bryan's site is a great example,
or Kent Sullivan's, or Rick Norris'.
 
Many of our members have written technical articles and may be willing to
donate their content. The recent article "Wire It Up" for Cool Air is a
terrific example of wonderful technical content. (Did Joe write that?)
Perhaps the Air 'Vair chapter would consider donating some of the older
content for CORSA members only.
 
About a year ago, I spent a few hours bootstrapping up a prototype Corvair
wiki just to use as a demonstration of the point. Head off to
http://corvair.pbwiki.com to take a look at it. Since this was a prototype
and contained some material I shamelessly copied from other people's web
sites without their permission, I set this wiki to require a login, and I
have to approve people's access. (A real CORSA wiki, in the members-only
section, wouldn't need such tomfoolery.)
 
If you look at that prototype, I'd suggest drilling into the Technical
Index, then into the Electrical articles. You'll see, for example, some of
Kent Sullivan's articles reproduced: including their tables, text and
pictures. Take a look at the one near the bottom -- the "Turn Signal
Switch-A-Roo" -- as a good example of how such an article could be
reproduced with text and pictures.
 
But the Corvair Encyclopedia could also be a repository for non-technical
information as well. Historical information -- think of all the Dave Newell
/ James Rice types of questions that get asked and answered.
 
5) Other sources of content: Among others, Bob Helt has intimated that he'd
be willing to share some of his copyrighted material with CORSA. (I think
he specifically mentioned turning over the copyright to his books as part
of his will). Perhaps Bob could be persuaded to donate some of his
copyrighted material to a members-only encyclopedia. There are likely to be
others that would be willing to contribute -- and yet others that probably
would not be willing.
 
6) Can it work?
 
>From all the points above, I think a strong case can be made that such an
encyclopedia *could* work. All of the resources are present, and the
financial cost is in reach. The challenge is getting volunteer labor.
 
In order to get volunteer labor for a project like this, you have to
establish these points in someone's mind:
 
1) The project exists (they have to be aware of it)
2) They have to believe they have something to contribute 
3) They have to believe they are qualified to contribute
4) They have to believe they have the skills to contribute (need to
convince them it's -easy-, because it is!)
5) They have to know -how- to contribute 
6) They have to believe they have the time to contribute (because it's
easy, it's a tiny amount of time!)
7) That their contribution is worthwhile.
 
THAT part of the effort is an education process. This is where the work
really lies, and where a champion of the project is needed. 
 
Someone needs to be a cheerleader, talking about it in the various forums,
and telling people how great it would all be if they'd just take a moment
to add something.
 
Someone needs to write up a simple tutorial on how to add something to the
encyclopedia.
 
Someone needs to publish articles (in the Communiqu?, in chapter
newsletters, in forums, everywhere!) that talks about it.
 
Someone needs to tell the membership about this new benefit they get -- and
how the benefit just keeps getting better and better as they add
information.
 
Someone needs to incorporate this benefit when trying to convince someone
to join CORSA -- they have to believe there's this resource that they can
get access to if and only if they're a CORSA member.
 
 
In some ways, I really regret my current time commitments. I know how to do
all this stuff -- I know I could convince people of the value of this
vision; I know I could teach them how to make the changes, and I know I
could get it to grow. But I simply don't have the time. In additional to
having a 50 hour/week job, I'm a square dance caller involved with lessons
or dances 5 or 6 nights a week (and two full weekends each month). I just
can't commit to seeing the project through, and didn't want to start it
without being able to follow through (I'd hate to see it wither on the
vine, then have people say "We tried that once and it didn't work, so
there's no point in ever trying again."
 
----------------
 
There are probably a few other types of benefits that have come to mind in
the past, but I'm running out of time here today! The online encyclopedia
is really the one that's closest to my heart. Access to information is
clearly close to the heart of CORSA's reason for existence -- and today's
tools can allow us to gather, organize, and distribute that information in
a way that's far more powerful than publishing manuals. (Don't get me wrong
-- I love books and have more than 10,000 in our library -- but most people
aren't like me.)
 
 
baj