A Collaboration on Shafer's Books?

[Thomas Gutzmann]

Am 24.01.2005 um 22:20 schrieb Gordon Webster:

> A 2-tiered rev wiki would be set up, one tier of which
> would be open access (gratis) for all registered rev
> users - the other would be available by yearly
> subscription and compiled/mediated by Dan (and any
> other gurus he might need to help him). Here's how it
> could work ...

Hi Gordon,

thanks for this contribution.

I already considered opening one of our support web sites for Rev "How 
To", "To Do", "FAQ" and the like, but I think a Wiki is more 
appropriate. I would like to contribute to this kind of publication, 
especialliy in the database area.

Though I have enjoyed Dans book (properly paying, of course), I think 
that it's not possible any more for one author to write a book on a 
cmplex development environment. Us "old dogs", as Dan wrote, must admit 
that time is up for one-man approaches. I'm pretty sure that I could 
never solve the problems of, say, credit card processing (as described 
in an actual thread) myself; on the other hand, I have a wonderful 
solution for true multilingual applications based on PostgreSQL, which 
might be very difficult to develop for others. And so on...

That means that a single author like Dan can only lay the ground for a 
joint effort - and only someone like Dan can and should do it. The rest 
- the joint effort - must be left to specialists who would discourage 
newbies if there weren't authors like Dan.

So what's to be done?

- somebody has to take the initiative to set up the Wiki (I cannot help 
here - what about you, Gordon?)
- somebody must provide the resources (I'm willing to help with hte 
resources of my company)
- there must be a team of people supervising the Wiki (should be people 
form this list)
- and finally, there must be the commitment of RunRev to contribute and 
to help the the supervisors (which may be the biggest problems)

My expectation is that this list will be not be used for technical 
matters anymore - all this will go to the Wiki.

Cheers,

Thomas G.