MC Book-other ideas

[Richard MacLemale]

Andu writes, 

> These users 
> although very helpful on the mailing list don't seem to be the kind of
> crowd to invest a lot of time and energy in activities which don't present
> some possibility of profit

And Phil writes,
> One possibility (maybe more easily doable, probably less fraught with
> ownership issues, and certainly more current, than a book) would be to create
> a MC documentation site similar to the one for MySQL (see
> http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/index.html ).

I agree with Andu that we're not going to get a high percentage of MC users
to contribute, but I disagree with the generalization that we won't be
willing to invest a lot of time and energy.  Some of us would.  I would.

The idea of doing a documentation site IS better, except for one detail...
It would have to be hosted by MetaCard itself, or it would not work...
Meaning that smart people would be reluctant to put a lot of time and energy
into updating a db on a site that may vanish in 6 months.  We did this in
the Macintosh Manager world... A bunch of people all contributed to this
guy's troubleshooting db, and the thing disappeared a few months later.
I'll never, never do that again.  I'd only post if it were hosted by
MetaCard.  Another alternative would be if it were hosted like 5 or 6
different places (mirrored) and MetaCard kept a list of the mirrors posted.
That would work (but would require a whole lot more effort.)  A third would
be for MetaCard to fund someone else hosting it.  Then it wouldn't be on
their "official" site, but we'd have a promise that it wouldn't vanish in
the wind.  My 2 bits per usual...

-- 
:)
Richard MacLemale
Network Administrator
J. W. Mitchell High School