Merging PSO-World and PSUPedia (Pondering Why Not)

[Brainwrecked]

I know there's a clash between a wiki-style site and a database-style site. But other than this, why hasn't PSO-World and PSUPedia? Great info on both sites, and each site has its own plusses when it comes to accessing info. Just kind of a bummer that all your PSU needs are split between two sites.

Is it just the mods/sysops of each site recognizing the strength and weaknesses of each and learning from one another? Is their political grounds? (Doubt it -- I think I've seen the PSUPedia sysop post here before.)

Just pondering what's probably been discussed before but fails to rise up from the slew of search results and slap me in the face.

[Weeaboolits]

I think it'd be better to keep them separate (I also doubt everyone involved would be for a merge anyway), but maybe add them to PSOW's affiliates if it hasn't already been.

it's good to have information in more than one place, say PSOW is undergoing maintenance, PSUpedia will most likely still be up. Conversely, if PSUpedia exceeds its bandwidth, PSOW will most likely still be up.

It works, I'd say.

[rena-ko]

as far as i know there always has been cooperation between psupedia and psow. *shrugs* and it's always better to have a second source for things.

[Kylie]

It's always nice to have options when looking for information.

[beatrixkiddo]

PSUpedia's information is under a GDFL free use license. PSO-W copyrights its material. That's one reason why it won't happen ;o

[Hrith]

The information about the game displayed on PSOW is in the public domain, and does not fall under the copyright. HOW the information is displayed is what is protected by copyright.
Don't try to sound smart when you have no clue what you're talking about, bea.

As for merging the sites, one being a database and the other a wiki makes it impossible to merge the sites. Besides, lots of oversized egos would get in the way, no matter what.

Icing on the cake, several PSUpedia SysOps are banned from PSOW.

[HUnewearl_Meira]

I wouldn't be opposed to information sharing between the two sites, nor being affiliated. I really don't see an outright merger occurring, however.

[Brainwrecked]

The information about the game displayed on PSOW is in the public domain, and does not fall under the copyright. HOW the information is displayed is what is protected by copyright.

Don't try to sound smart when you have no clue what you're talking about, bea.

EASY! I think you missed his point, in that PSO-World and PSUPedia have different views on how to share their copyrighted work. PSO-World outright reserves all the rights that it has. The GFDL allows you to share with pre-defined guidelines.

A good article I dug on the topic is here: Draft Debian Position Statement about the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). While it's from the point of view of why Debian rejects GDFL, you can gather what the license entails from that.

There's problems with both ways, but the underlying fact that you can't copyright knowledge makes the copyright/license point almost moot. References, by design, contain little original content. Theoretically, I could spider both sites now for the info, and strip out all original content (commentary, user-contributed pictures, formatting, etc.) and fall within fair use. Realistically, why re-invent the wheel a third time?

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Thanks for the discussion thus far. It's given me insight I didn't have before.

[Tomeeboy]

One day, we hope to provide fans with all of the information they need, in one centralized location. We're always open to ideas that would help accomplish that, and our goal has always been to support the Phantasy Star community as best we can. However, a merger has never been brought up to my knowledge, so there's really no point in speculating why it hasn't happened or won't happen.

We can't just assimilate another fan site because it would be convenient to have everything in one place We can, however, do our best to provide PSO-World visitors with as many resources as possible, and will continue to do this (hopefully with the community's continued support and contributions ).

[Zantra]

Monopoly only works as a game.