I certainly think it would be an interesting and valuable thing to do,
and distributed among lots of people the work involved would not have to
be huge. Looking at the proposed list of contents implies to me that
there would be a lot more to it than what is already available on the web.
The wiki-wiki thing looks very interesting, and I suggest that the best
way of proceeding would be to set up such a site, with the contents list
as it is as the frame work, and then invite contributions. Hopefully
that would not take too much time. Then, the project viability will
become clear if and when sections get filled in.
Done this way, the project would not need a managing editor at this
stage, and would be quite simple to get going. If it turns out that
enough material is generated to make it worth pursuing more seriously,
then management decisions would have to be taken.
I might suggest that we set up another list to discuss and organise
this, or resuscitate the old one, as not everyone is interested in this
project. I'm not sure how to go about that though.
Roger
Richard F. Man wrote:
Hi Zuikoholics - it does look like there are (still) quite a bit of
interest in contributing toward a "definitive OM book." My original idea
was really a book, but looking at the responses, it is probably too much
of an undertaking. That leaves website as the main viable option. Of
course a complex website can be turned be dumped on a CD at anytime so
that option is open as well.
So how do we manage the website? One model is the website maintainer
receives web page submissions from different people and organize them.
Depending on the skills of the maintainer and how much time he or she
can spend, this should work reasonably well.
Another model is the wiki-wiki model, where ANYONE can modify a website.
This has the advantages that any expert can change the content and even
reorganize it to whichever way they see fit. This model works well if
there are at least some dedicated people who can really set the ball
rolling to set up the initial pages (TOC, links etc.) There are also
some learning curves on using wiki-wiki, as it is not strictly HTML. The
guards against malicious hacking are simply that bad contents can be
edited out, and outright trashing of data can be restored from backup.
I can offer some webspace for either of these two options. Personally I
would prefer the wiki-wiki approach, but I will leave it up for the
people who want to contribute to decide. Regarding copyright etc. I'd
think that the copyright of a particular article remains solely that of
the writer, and that if CDs are ever offered, they must not be sold for
more than $X where X is small, say, $5, plus S&H. [ ImageCraft does own
robotic CD burner so burning multiple CDs is no problem ]
So first thing to decide is whether people agree this is a worthwhile
project. Second then is to decide whether to go with the traditional web
model or the wiki-wiki model. To get an idea of what a wiki-wiki is,
look at http://c2.com/cgi/wiki, to see an example running on ImageCraft
local server, check out http://www.dragonsgate.net/taichi-pedia
Let me know what you think.
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