CP WEB pages

Rick Walker (walker@cutter.hpl.hp.com)
Thu, 28 Mar 1996 16:52:07 -0800

Dear Jeff,

> I did see this some time ago and had not realized how far along it had
> come. Perhaps I should just mirror this, or I could point
> http://www.carnivorousplants.com straight at that site? I think
> www.carnivorousplants.com will be an easier way for people to remember
> how to find the site...

I'd love to see how we can help each other. I'm open to anything from
having you point at the existing page, to mirroring it, to co-maintaining
it or even completely taking it over.

If you want, I could send you a tar file of the entire archive (now at
143 megabytes and growing!), and you could start by simply mirroring the
site.

This would take a worry of my mind. Currently, if I died, the CP WEB
stuff would likely disappear into a black hole. Until we get an active
mirror site, or manage to produce a CDROM, the information is fairly
volatile.

If you can't mirror the CP web page, then you might focus on just the
animation aspect. I could tie you into one of the buttons at the bottom
of the CP page. Chris Frazier does something like this already: he
maintains the "CP FAQ" button. Many of Barry Meyers-Rice's
contributions are tied in in the same way.

This might be a cleaner way to merge your video contributions in rather
than getting tangled up in the database maintainance, etc...

> I am not doing this for any business motivation, so nothing I do will be
> competing with anyone... Anything I can do to join or help enhance your
> efforts would be preferred by me as well! : ) If anyone has animations
> or video clips, I could encode these for the web quite easily and
> provide these to be added to your current site.

As I mentioned above, it would also be reasonable to tie these in with
a link, and let your facility actually store and host the video clips.

Pretty soon now, I think it will be appropriate to replace my name at
the bottom of each web page with a generic "The Authors". This would
then point to a page listing each of the numerous contributors, and an
optional bio, photo, and email address for each one.

I'm very aware that I am not, by any means, the author of this
juggernaut. My role is mostly technical facilitator.

I get a "kick" out of seeing us all cooperate together to create such a
nice collection of knowledge!

> I'd be glad to share any of these resources in a way that can help
> promote education about carnivorous plants and preservation of the
> natural environments where they are native.

Sounds exciting. This is really my motivation also. Let's think
creatively how we can help each other to define and fulfill these
goals.

best regards,

--
Rick