Hi Teresa! I've seen things on wikipedia, and as you say anyone can
edit/add. Can you explain more as to why we'd need to be a group with a
domain name to do this? Its certainly an interesting idea to add more to the
polymer clay section thats there.
Thanks,
Sarajane

--
Sarajane's Polyclay Gallery
Beads-Dolls-Wearable Art
www.polyclay.com
see the current auctions at:
http://snipurl.com/aiid
"Teresa" wrote in message
news
Hi
My name is Teresa, and I've been reading this newsgroup on and off for
years. Even though I have no talent for it, I love polymer clay. Based in
part from information I have gained from this newsgroup, I have developed
enough skill at the craft that my family doesn't return polymer clay
Christmas gifts, and ocassionally appropriate things I have on my shelves.
I also have a bowl of polymer clay beads in living room as decoration (I
like interactive knickknacks), and a 1"x1"x2" lump of "mud" sitting on my
desk that I squeeze whenever my hands aren't busy. It is probably the
best conditioned piece of clay on the planet.

I am delurking at this time for a reason, but I need to give a little
background before I explain. I am the webmaster for my church's website.
A couple of weeks ago, Pastor announced that he wanted a wiki. After a
couple of false starts, I have installed mediawiki, which is the wiki
engine that wikipedia runs on. The pastors are off to the races editing
their favorite topics.

The googlebot hasn't found the site yet, and I'm glad because I'm sure the
spambots are sure to follow. I intend to install the mediawiki script on
another domain in order to test some spam blocking techniques. I've found
that these types of test s are more effective when being done on real data
than on funky test data that I make up. So I can make a copy of my current
database to test on or. . . .

I could set up a wiki for a different group of users--like maybe the
members of this newsgroup. I hesitate to make this offer, because I know
it sounds like I just want to use you for guinea pigs. In reality I would
like to give back to the community and I think this could be a valuable
resource. I would also gain a place to install upgrades or test antispam
blacklists and whitelists. I realize that this sounds like it could be
very unstable, but in reality I do not expect to be upgrading this
software very often (although I do plan on installing a captcha module),
and I am meticulous about backing my data and code before I upgrade so I
can quickly return to a working version of the code if something goes
haywire. I would post to this group before upgrading the code, and I could
share my black and white lists by private email.

I am willing to upload a small picture to my church's website or one of my
other sites to prove that I am indeed the webmaster of the site.

I do not have the technical expertise necessary to write articles on
polymer clay or to moderate this effort, so this would have to be a
collaberative effort. Maybe you already have a wiki. Or maybe this idea is
redundant--I know that there are already some wonderful repositories of
polymer clay knowledge out there- the glass attic comes to mind. Or maybe
no one has time to work on this. But if you are interested I would like
the group to elect a two or three board panel to set policies and help
moderate the entries.

If you are not familiar with wiki's, you should keep in mind that anything
you post can be edited by anyone else, and that it becomes public domain.

If this were to take off and consume so much bandwidth and disk space that
it forces me to upgrade my hosting account, I would eventually have to put
a paypal donation button on the donations page. I don't expect that to be
the case, and I certainly don't expect to make any money on this venture.
I have no plans to accept advertising or to publish google ads.

I will purchase a domain name for this project. I agree that if the group
is ever dissatisfied with the administration of the site I will send a
copy of the database and relinquish the domain name to someone of the
group's choosing.

I wish I was a long time contributor to this group(although I am afraid
that my contributions would have been mighty thin), as I realize this
would sit better coming from someone you already know. I am not trying to
be weasly, although I do admit that I do gain from this. I am trying to
lay all my cards on the table, but I will understand completely if you are
uncomfortable with this proposal.

Thanks for your consideration.
--
tm