An effort to be made by whom specifically? On what basis ‘should’ he/she/it have both the responsibility and the right to do so with the content?
Frankly, I'd love to see a free-standing fountain pen repair forum that's apart from FPG and FPN.
I'd love to see a free-standing, fire-breathing giant Bender statue, but that
isn't enough reason to either make it happen myself, or expect it to happen as a result of someone else's investment of effort and resources.
The idea would be to take the archives of FPN Repair, FPG Repair, and maybe the old Repair area of Lion & Pen and put them together in a single website/forum that is dedicated to repair. That way if something like FPN or FPG goes down, the material is not lost.
Just because there is — or was — largely unrestricted public access to something in the ‘now’, it doesn't automatically follow that the thing is a public asset to which the user community can claim ownership rights, or perpetual licence to use, archive and/or replicate in the name of ‘the public good’, especially when the supposed benefit only pertains to a niche, narrow interest area (that current card-carrying enthusiasts would love to nurture and grow, but expect to be underwritten by someone else). Even if the funding and/or content from which an information asset is created was largely crowd-sourced in the first place, it still doesn't automatically or inherent make the end result public domain or ‘free’ for all to do as they like. You, and we, don't own the pen repair forum(s) or the valuable information contained therein, any more than you and we own privately run, but open-to-the-public, museums housing valuable artefacts and intellectual property (e.g. all the analysis and commentary that go with the exhibits) that some would consider it to be cultural riches squandered and a loss to the public should such museums get sold, closed or burnt down.
Originally Posted by
Jon Szanto
This would require the permission of the people involved in all those posts. Not saying it isn't a grand idea, but collating information from multiple sites is not the same as people signing up for an account at a particular site and agreeing to have their posts become public.
Exactly.
(Just to be clear, this isn't a criticism directed at you, Jon.)
Too many seem to fancy themselves ‘big picture’ people, activists with initiative, or thought leaders who know best how to enrich or protect the ‘communities’ with whom they identify (but secretly define as only those who are like-minded, not just joined by common practical interests but have vastly different personal values) — and then expect support will come from backers and doers to realise their vision after they've contributed their ideas in some sort of imagined compact.
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