Re: Website for GWL: plans, issues, help wanted

**Duane Campbell d*@juno.com**

I tend to get rather grandiose ideas, for which I am taking medication.
But at the moment it isn't working very well. Never has, in fact.

It occurs to me that we may have here the greatest one-site concentration
of expertise on every aspect of home gardening on the Internet. Or not,
but let's dream for the moment that we do. Sure, there are commercial and
university Web sites with perhaps more expert sources, but they are
either narrowly focused or commercially propriatory or regional. We are
broad based.

I think that, yes, absolutely, an org site catering to the interests of
garden writers and run by volunteers would be extraordinarily valuable.
To us. And to any civilians who happened to stumble across it. (I can't
think offhand of any secrets we might want to keep to ourselves that
would prohibit public access.)

Or ...

We could go the dot-com route. Sell advertising (we know who they are,
don't we) and use the money to pay for a professional web developer and
turn it into the most ass-kickin' gardening site on the Internet. Since
it wouldn't be a true dot-com -- not out to make millions, just enough to
pay for the expenses -- we could sell the advertising cheap enough to be
attractive for those less affluent than the green giants. There might
even be money left over to pay some contributors. Who knows.

Are there problems? Oh, Lord, are there problems! I'm not pretending this
is a blueprint, just a vision. An idea that might be included in the
general atmosphere of our discussion on Web sites.

I am now preparing to duck and cover.

D

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