I've been trying to filter constructive suggestions out of Guest's vitriol.

Jon said, "I don't think it a good idea to have several "custom" dts floating around with differnt selections of harvesting, filenames for tunes, etc."

Why not? Assuming appropriate acknowledgments are made for the initial dataset, and a clear statement that the wiki (or whatever) was a separate beast (I think this would be important), if Guest truly has a larger army of folkies than visit Mudcat, why not? Why limit the resources available in the world? Presumably those who cared to could harvest from the MC Forum as well as any other source, as we all do (I would hope that such a Wiki would include in its groundrules proper citing of sources), certainly the reverse would be true.

Would it confuse those searching for songs? In this Google information age, we're not limited to any one resource; I doubt that many of us Mudcat devotees consider the DT the definitive source of anything.

Would it dilute the effort of compiling a great collection of songs? Maybe, maybe not. There lots of other collections and collectors out there now. I don't know if I want to say "the more the merrier," but, I find it hard to say it's a bad idea for someone to make a different run at it.

A more technical question: Would it be possible to maintain a downloadable database via a wiki interface? Or would a user be limited to working online?

I don't mean to distract from Dick's search for a programmer to maintain the current vision of the DT. Maybe this discussion should move to a separate thread.

~ Becky in San Diego, at the moment