I came home from school today and as I normally do, I checked my
e-mail for my
Everything2 Daily Report. I checked out a few of the
cool nodes of the day. Before long, though -- right as I began to get interested in the stream of nodes I was going through, my
internet connection cut off.
Now how annoying is that?
And it always happens when you're about to click on some really
neat-o sounding node.
So I got to thinking -- if there was a way I could get a copy of the
everything2 database for
personal use that would just be infinitely cool. There would be a good number of advantages to "owning your own everything":
- No lag or waiting whatsoever. Pages would appear as fast as they could be proccessed.
- The central E2 Server wouldn't have to take so much load on, since the most frequent readers would likely own their own copy
- The nightly database backup won't effect your reading
- It would serve as a excellent desk reference -- kind of like having a copy of Encarta, only written by real people
- People may be less likely to create bots to scour everything2 if they could just get it on a CD.
- The blockstackers could make a bit of money!
I personally have no idea how big the
E2 Database actually is, but I've seen
estimates put it at around 40MB. This is not at all too large to
distribute on a
CD, or even over the internet. Updates could be availible for download either by month, week or day.
Unfortunately, there are also some bad effects something like this could have on everything:
- Everything is not a TV set! Distributing the contents of Everything2 like this may cause people to be less likely to contribute. This would be bad.
- Producing a distributable version of the database that made some sort of sense to view would take a considerable effort by the EDEV team. It may take a while.
- Mass CD creation is expensive. Bandwidth is also. These are the only distribution methods I can think of.
- I don't know how many folks would actually be interested in obtaining a copy of the database. It may just be me who wants it.
- Voting and Cooling would be difficult (or pointless) if you were looking at an offline copy.
Looking at the deal as a whole, though, it seems it would have a positive effect on the
everything2 community. I would be willing to dish out probably
$50 USD for
everything on a cd, so long as it came with
free monthly updates and all...
And of course it would be completely optional -- nobody would
have to buy everything2 to use it. Just the people who wanted quick, uninterrupted access could have it for a
small price. Others could use it just as we do now - for
free.
Anyone with me?