Encyclopedia Glorantha

From: Dave Black <dav_blak_at_cyberus.ca>
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1998 07:42:45 -0400 (EDT)


Stephan Milam wrote about Dave Black's idea to create a Gloranthan Encyclopedia:

>why Claris or microsoft works, to be viable it would need to be fully
>relational, with bells and whistles.

There are a couple of reasons why I'd go this route:

  1. the software packages mentioned are completely capable (in my view) of handling this sort of information
  2. they are available cheaply - and indeed many computers come equipped with them
  3. relational database approaches may be overkill (again, just my view)

>...if you charge people for it, I think your user base would be very small IMO.

It took nearly an hour to create the records necessary to identify all of the Gloranthan references on Page 5 of Issue 10 of Tales of the Reaching Moon. Considering the thousands of pages of information published on Glorantha no person could live, work, and pay their bills without being paid for this. In order to do it would require either:

  1. quitting my job to devote myself to the project
  2. hiring someone else to do it

Both options will require infusions of money and this is why I'm being very careful at the start to guage the willingness of Gloranthaphiles to support the project...

>
>i think the owners of this material may want words with you if you do
>not have their full permissions first...........
>
>snip
>
>why only 100 words............why not up to 1000 words or 10,000 words?

If sufficient interest exists I will of course be approaching the various copyright holders seeking permission to use their works.

100 words (actually 500 characters) is the limit allowed by Claris Works for a text field. There are ways around this of course but there is some merit to the idea that the descriptions themselves should merely be summaries of what is known rather than complete replications of what is known.

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