<VV> Online Encyclopedia (was Communique Improvement)

[Barry Johnson]

> Imagine if you will. We offer the back issues of the Communique on CD
by
> year or five years or pick a time period. I would think that ones that
are > already electronic would be real easy to do. The ones that are
hard copy
> only could be scanned and OCRed. I would even offer my teenaged
daughter
> to type them in (and I'll pay her, not CORSA).

Here's a twist on the idea.  

Don't sell them -- publish them on a CORSA members-only section of the
web site.  Provide access to the back issues as a CONTINUING BENEFIT TO
MEMBERS, not as a one-time product sale.

In fact, that library of technical information could (perhaps) be
expanded into an online encyclopedia of Corvair-related information --
and, again, be reserved for use by CORSA members only.

If it grew to a sufficient size, access to this online encyclopedia of
technical and historical information could become THE key benefit of
CORSA membership.

Some people are probably saying, "Great idea -- but the labor costs are
prohibitive.  Who's going to maintain it?  Who's going to keep it fresh?
We'll never find a volunteer to take care of it, and we can't afford to
pay someone to do it."

There is a technology solution to this.  How many of you have used
Wikipedia?  (http://www.wikipedia.com)

For those that don't know, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia maintained
solely by volunteers.   They have a very small professional staff that
keeps the web site running, but ALL of the content is supplied by folks
with lots of topical expertise, but few computer technical skills.  It's
amazing how effective a volunteer organization can be in self-organizing
information.

I've seen Wiki's work in other applications as well.

The software to run a Wiki is free.  I don't think Bryan would increase
his charges to CORSA to cover bandwidth.  As far as I can tell, most
Wiki packages are already configured to run on the same operating system
and web server as this host.  There are lots of free Wiki
implementations out there -- but the "gold standard" is Wikipedia's tool
itself, called MediaWiki.

MediaWiki can be downloaded for free from http://www.mediawiki.org.  It
would take some of Bryan's time to install the software.

It would take a little bit of someone else's volunteer time to start
putting some content into the site.  The most valuable thing of all
might be a donation of content from some of our current skilled members
that are publishing articles on their own web sites.

Bryan, would you be willing to donate a copy of some the content from
your Autocrossing site?  Kent, would you allow CORSA to publish some of
your articles on the site?  Jim Rice, Clark Hartzel -- would you donate
some historical articles?


Why not try it?  The cost in dollars is trivial.  There's no downside if
it fails.

But the upside potential is incredible.

baj
-------------------
Barry Johnson
Lake in the Hills, IL
64 Monza 4-speed convertible (for sale)
65 Monza 140PG hardtop

[ I've hesitated to publish this because I can't volunteer time to get
it started.  But full-time job, part-time job, and leadership positions
in three other volunteer organizations are chewing up every available
minute. ]
 
 
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