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Message no. 1
From: S O'Neill callahan421@*******.com
Subject: Idea - Meta Index
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 15:55:37 EDT
Open question to the list:

When I'm playing or writing about Shadowrun, one of the things that I
frequently think would be really useful would be some sort of master index
that spans all the books and sourcebooks and novels and stuff. Though FASA
has made a great game, I find that their indices tend to be somewhat . . .
lacking when I'm trying to find all references to ghouls, or Knight Errant,
or whatever.

So you, for instance, look up under D and find:

Damage
codes (SR3, p.XX)
healing (see Healing)

Deep Resonance
appears in
Technobabel
Renraku Arcology: SHutdown
Virtual Realities II
effects of


Dunkelzahn
appears in
Portfolio of a Dragon (throughout)
Super Tuesday (p 4,5,6-10, 11, 26)
Beyond the Pale, (p. 11-15, 22)
Etc.


and so on . . . essentially replicating indices from the existing products
and supplementing them with additional suggestions and information. It ought
not to be too hard to set this up as a .hlp or similar file, that would have
search capabilties as well as an alphabetical tree-structure index. Clearly,
it'd be an ongoing effort, but:

Does something like this already exist? (if so, where?)
If it doesn't exist, how useful might it be as a public resource?

Callahan


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Message no. 2
From: Jeremie Bouillon bouillon@****.dotcom.fr
Subject: Idea - Meta Index
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 22:04:44 +0200
Le 15:55 23/06/00 EDT, S O'Neill a écrit:
>Does something like this already exist? (if so, where?)

Something like that ?
http://www.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de/~jhary/Shadowrun/SR_Ind_page.html

>If it doesn't exist, how useful might it be as a public resource?

Very useful indeed.



--
«Le monochrome, c'est pour ceux qui s'intéressent (encore) au contenu.
Usenet dans ces conditions, c'est comme le web avec lynx, on prend
trop conscience du vide, c'est déprimant.»
-+- JLC in Guide du linuxien pervers : "Coup de cafard..." -+-
Message no. 3
From: dbuehrer@******.carl.org dbuehrer@******.carl.org
Subject: Idea - Meta Index
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 14:05:25 -0600
S O'Neill wrote:
>Open question to the list:
>
>When I'm playing or writing about Shadowrun, one of the things that I
>frequently think would be really useful would be some sort of master index
>that spans all the books and sourcebooks and novels and stuff. Though FASA
>has made a great game, I find that their indices tend to be somewhat . . .
>lacking when I'm trying to find all references to ghouls, or Knight
>Errant, or whatever.
>
>Does something like this already exist? (if so, where?)
>If it doesn't exist, how useful might it be as a public resource?

http://www.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de/~jhary/Shadowrun/index.html


To Life,
-Graht
http://www.users.uswest.net/~abaker3
--
"Anything I have ever done that ultimately was worthwhile....
initially scared me to death."
-Betty Bender
Message no. 4
From: Wordman wordman@*******.com
Subject: Idea - Meta Index
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 17:42:56 -0400
> >When I'm playing or writing about Shadowrun, one of the things that I
> >frequently think would be really useful would be some sort of
> >master index that spans all the books and sourcebooks and novels
> >and stuff.

> http://www.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de/~jhary/Shadowrun/index.html

I enjoy the file above, but it is not detailed enough for me. I want
something _really_ detailed. I'd like to be able to find every casual
reference made to, say, Somalia.

I've been considering starting a project like this for nearly a year, off
and on. On June 6, I sent an e-mail to FASA to ask permission to start such
a project. I have not heard back yet. Here is a copy of the letter I sent:

>>>>>>>
Mr. Mulvihill -

I am interested in starting an open source, internet-based project to
compile a massive, complete index of every Shadowrun project ever published.
Since there are some trademark and copyright issues in doing this, I am
writing to get your opinion on (and, hopefully, permission for) undertaking
such a project.

The project will be called ISIS (Internet Shadowrun Index Service). The idea
is to get Shadowrun enthusiasts to volunteer to find and add index entries
for a few pages of a Shadowrun book. With a number of people doing a few
pages each (with ISIS mediating to make sure pages weren't duplicated), a
large number of entries could be collected. ISIS would combine all of these
entries together to build a complete index, in various formats.

It is important to note that these entries would _not_ reproduce verbatim
text from any Shadowrun book. They would be typical index entries, such as
"Corporate Court, founded" or "Knight, Damien". No summaries of stats
or
rules would be present, only page references of where to find rules or other
information. The indent is not to reproduce Shadowrun products, but rather
to allow players and (especially) GMs to find tidbits of information in the
thousands of published Shadowrun pages.

For example, say you remembered some mention in some book about the
Communist government of Malaysia being overthrown. You read it a while ago,
so without a global index, you need to guess to figure out which book.
Cyperpirates seems the most-likely, so you comb through it. You can't find
it, but does that mean it isn't there, or that you just didn't see it? This
kind of stuff happens to me all the time, and it is extremely irritating to
have to waste time to find this kind of stuff.

With ISIS, you could find an item like "Malaysia, government overthrown" and
discover the reference is on page 43 of the original Seattle Sourcebook.

I have set up the bare bones of a web site describing ISIS in more detail.
The site is not yet finished, and nothing links to it at the moment. One
thing the site needs, for example, is the standard statement about Shadowrun
being FASA's registered trademark. The URL for the site is:

[URL removed. Sorry all. I want to keep it private for a while.]

The "Join" and "Guideline" pages contain the most information. The
Guidelines page describes how the index will be divided into "source files"
and how these will be contained in a public source control archive.

I would very much like to use the services of a web site called SourceForge.
This site hosts open source projects and includes space to host the source
code (as a CVS archive), as well as a number of maintenance tools which
would make the management of a project like this much easier. SourceForge
can be found at:

http://www.sourceforge.com/

One requirement of SourceForge is that projects it hosts must conform to
some OpenSource license. ISIS will be generating computer code to build the
indexes (and perhaps an application to make adding them easier). I would
like to use the GNU Library or `Lesser' Public License (LGPL). The text for
this license can be found at:

http://www.opensource.org/licenses/lgpl-license.html

The license for the index data itself is more tricky. The index is bound to
contain words trademarked by FASA, such as Matrix, and ISIS neither intends
nor desires to challenge such trademarks. In my opinion, what makes the most
sense is the Open Content license. This license is good for this type of
information, because it allows transfer and duplication of the data, but
also protects copyright and prevents anyone (even ISIS) from charging a fee
for the data. The text of the Open Content license is:

http://opencontent.org/opl.shtml

The Open Content license also allows derivative works (with restrictions).
This is important to ISIS, because the whole point of the index is to
produce index data that people can use how they want to. For example, maybe
someone will build an interactive web engine that searches the index in some
way.

The issue of ownership is also tricky. In my opinion, the best thing would
be for FASA to claim ownership and copyright on the data and then release it
under the Open Content license and give ISIS permission to manage it.

Provided we can come to some sort of arrangement, once ISIS is given
permission to begin, the expectation is that there would be no need for FASA
involvement. Naturally, if FASA wants to get involved at some level, that
would be great. My point here is that ISIS should not _require_ any mind
space or time from your busy staff.

Please let me know what you think of this proposal, in particular the
licensing and copyright issues.

Thanks,

Lester Ward ("Wordman")
http://divnull.com/lward
<<<<<<<

I don't know if FASA's lack of reply indicates that they are not interested,
that they never even read the mail, or if they are just to busy to respond.

A question for you all: I believe that, even if FASA does not give an
official go ahead, it is still legal to create such an index. Does anyone
know the law on this? Does an index count as "fair use"? Naturally, I'd much
rather do it with FASA's permission.
Message no. 5
From: caelric@****.com caelric@****.com
Subject: Idea - Meta Index
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 14:46:29 -0700
At 05:42 PM 6/23/00 -0400, you wrote:
>I've been considering starting a project like this for nearly a year, off
>and on. On June 6, I sent an e-mail to FASA to ask permission to start such
>a project. I have not heard back yet. Here is a copy of the letter I sent:
>
>

<snip stuff about indices>

>I don't know if FASA's lack of reply indicates that they are not interested,
>that they never even read the mail, or if they are just to busy to respond.
>


Very good idea, and I would be willing to help.

As for the email, for whatever reason, FASA doesn't seem to respond very
timely to emails. For example, since M. Mulvihill took over as SR chief, I
have sent four or five polite emails, all with legitimite question
srequesting replies, and I have recieved exactly one answer. That answer
took over 2 months to get to me. Very disapointing; however, not knowing
the volume of email FASA gets, nor how many resources are dedicated to
this, I cannot say much more.

Dave
Message no. 6
From: Wordman wordman@*******.com
Subject: Idea - Meta Index
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 18:33:45 -0400
> Very good idea, and I would be willing to help.
>
> As for the email, for whatever reason, FASA doesn't seem to respond very
> timely to emails.

Sigh. I guess it's time to slaughter trees.
Message no. 7
From: caelric@****.com caelric@****.com
Subject: Idea - Meta Index
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 15:26:03 -0700
At 06:33 PM 6/23/00 -0400, you wrote:
>> Very good idea, and I would be willing to help.
>>
>> As for the email, for whatever reason, FASA doesn't seem to respond very
>> timely to emails.
>
>Sigh. I guess it's time to slaughter trees.
>
>


Heh, well, never having sent a letter to them, I can't say, but my guess is
the response will be equally slow, if not more so.

::sigh::

Dave
Message no. 8
From: Ashley Griffiths dagdamor@***********.co.uk
Subject: Idea - Meta Index
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 00:26:42 +0100
yes it is legal, and it would count as fair use, if yo uadded the usual
copyright notices.

Also i would be willing to help if you did seet up this project as it would
be incredibly useful for me and my group.

Dagda Mor

what was once proved is now only imagined
Message no. 9
From: Patrick Goodman remo@***.net
Subject: Idea - Meta Index
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 18:33:57 -0500
From: Wordman
Sent: Friday, June 23, 2000 4:43 PM

<huge snip>

> I don't know if FASA's lack of reply indicates that they are not
> interested, that they never even read the mail, or if they are
> just to busy to respond.

Knowing Mike's schedule, I'd lean towards "too damn busy." They're trying
to get MATRIX together so it can be the GenCon book, IIRC, and then there's
the summer con schedule (with both Origins and GenCon coming up fast). I'd
advise patience and a politely worded follow-up; sometimes he forgets things
in the shuffle.

--
Patrick E. Goodman
remo@***.net
"I'm going to tell you something cool." -- Gene Wolfe
Message no. 10
From: Brian Johnson expatrie@*******.net
Subject: Idea - Meta Index
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 21:00:52 -0500
> A question for you all: I believe that, even if FASA does not give an
> official go ahead, it is still legal to create such an index. Does anyone
> know the law on this? Does an index count as "fair use"? Naturally, I'd
much
> rather do it with FASA's permission.

Opinion: Doubt they'll go for it. Digital (roughly) is very threatening to
anything flat (paper, CD, tape, vcr, dvd, et. al.) They're a publishing co.:
They want to keep publishing, unless they're looking to broaden and expand
(voir: decipher merger-which was canned), seems improbable. They want their
product to remain useful. It sounds threatening (have you considered that they
might not even like email? consider the level of the web site --archaic--as
indicative of co. policy/enthusiasm for tech.) maybe to you it doesn't menace,
but look at it from "their" side where anyone can basically query the database
for all the stuff, and you could (very slowly) reverse engineer the information
(Shadowrun is heavily setting, so this information is more vital to them) -
obviously one book contains a sentence like "government of malaysia was
overthrown by _ in _. This impinges on the books' usefulness.

(Read the Prince. Established powers dislike change, because change isn't easily
predicted and they might lose power, consider MPAA, etc. vs. MP3, napster, etc.
Broadly interpreted / incorrectly packaged this is what you propose).

>>>>>key point
I would very much doubt the fair use would fly, unless they approve, and why not
respect their decision (whatever it may be), for once instead of going ahead
after someone says no. Really the safest way might have been to go was go ahead
and not tell them. Easier to get forgiveness than permission. Since you
basically propose compliling the indexes (and TOC) of the books, they clearly
hold the rights to such. As you intend to expand further, they don't hold the
copyright explicitly, but implicitly, you could argue you are basing your work
off of their work product, thus it is theirs to control and disseminate.

Going the opposite direction, it is possible (unlikely) they might just have
something like this on-site (in which point they would feel very threatened
having it accessible by the public without their control over it). I doubt many
companies are going to go in this direction unless they have an aggressive
managment team/ leader / visionary who doesn't care about risk. If FASA were
privately held, this might be the case. Otherwise I'd expect the most
"traditional" businesses to be the least aggressive in the digital demesne. You
could repackage the thing as a "knowledge base" and propose the project as
internal (then they might give something away in the response--i.e do they all
ready have it). Liken it to Miscreantsoft (which is more "accepted," and back
away from GNU and EFF and all those "political" groups (i.e. organizations that
are non-profit and have ideology). Furthermore, summarize and don't get
technical on how it is to be done - send it as an idea. You might have
overwhelmed them with the details of the idea, so the idea itself isn't clear.

I don't really want to debate the merits of Msoft, GNU, EFF, FASA corporate /
expansion stragegy and business plans, etc. Just spitballing. Streamline the
proposal and go postal (that's mail, not crazy).




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Message no. 11
From: Wordman wordman@*******.com
Subject: Idea - Meta Index
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 15:22:49 -0400
> Opinion: Doubt they'll go for it.

So do I, frankly.

> maybe to you it doesn't menace, but look at it from "their"
> side where anyone can basically query the database for all
> the stuff, and you could (very slowly) reverse engineer
> the information

If they think this way, they are not only archaic, but foolish as well.
Sure, someone _could_ do this, but at what cost? Assuming an hourly wage
(even at minimum wage), the cost to do this would be much higher than just
buying the books.

> obviously one book contains a sentence like "government of malaysia was
> overthrown by _ in _. This impinges on the books' usefulness.

How useful is a book within which you can't find anything?

> >>>>>key point
> I would very much doubt the fair use would fly, unless they
> approve, and why not respect their decision (whatever it may be),
> for once instead of going ahead after someone says no.

Why do you think I asked in the first place? If they say no, then I won't
build it. End of story.

> Really the safest way might have been to go was go ahead
> and not tell them. Easier to get forgiveness than permission.

Unfortunately, I have morals. Damn annoying, on occasion.


> Going the opposite direction, it is possible (unlikely) they
> might just have something like this on-site (in which point
> they would feel very threatened having it accessible by the
> public without their control over it).

If they have such a thing, they could probably make some money by printing
and selling it. I'd pay quite a bit for it. While I see how it's possible
that they would find such information threatening if made public, I totally
disagree. All having such information would do to me is a) make me a better
GM, b) save me time and c) make me enjoy Shadowrun more (and, therefore, buy
more books).

Frankly, I don't see the risk. To me, only ego would make someone think that
such information needed to be protected.

> Liken it to Miscreantsoft

This actually brings up another issue. If software is written to handle
parsing the index, could that infringe on Microsoft, who has some kind of
digital rights to Shadowrun?

> Streamline the proposal and go postal (that's mail, not crazy).

Thanks for the advice.

Wordman

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