lucyjoyce wrote:
Ditto - I'll take this opportunity to thank you as well.
Appreciation to you and mrspock. A lot of guys worked hard on it. It's far from done, by any means.
We stopped hand-coding years ago, because of the absolute enormity of materials from the various areas covered. Not so much that we were intimidated by it, but realistically, it wasn't feasible for one editor of a section to grab and code every little bit of information that was being gratefully submitted.
We began an effort to build a dynamic system software for continually updating the static pages of the Tome with submitted information. Sort of like what the wiki is like here, but in a way that helps to build the primary collection of the site's materials. We got it pretty close with Ralf's guidance, but life took over for him and he had to refocus all of his energies to other matters. In the background of that development, we started using the forums as a way to immediately present newly collected information and direct discussions of that materials (a poor man's wiki). There is a bunch of stuff sitting there waiting to be sorted as a result of great contributor energy.
So that is kinda where it is. I'll lay this out to anyone who might be looking in. If you think you might could help to take it to the next phase of technical development, please contact one of us. There is a lot of collected material waiting for some programming magic to organize and represent it, and an underlying plan developed for implementation and additional development. The only caveat is that it can't be for commercial enterprise other than an interest in supporting the value of the collectibles many of us having built hobbying interest around.
I will be listing my personal collection for sale coming up soon, and just wanted to float that out there regarding what is going on around developments at the Tome. I will remain involved and committed to the site going forward no matter what comes to pass.
