Another idea on supersites

Wieland Willker comments on the discussion that has been going on between Torrey Seland, Jim Davila and me on the future of the megasites (see my most recent post with links; and Torrey Seland's most recent post with links). Wieland writes:

I think this cannot be done by one individual alone. I would therefore suggest that we should gather certain individuals for small sections. Every individual is responsible for one section under the head of the NT-Gateway. This way everything looks the same and is easily navigatable. This is already the case with the "Open Web Directory" where you can become an editor of a certain category (check http://dmoz.org). An editor should keep the links up-to-date, add new links, and have some comments now and then. The only problem I see at the moment is how to manage the access authorization for the editors.

I have wondered about something like this before and it might provide a useful way of getting the balance right between an evolutionary approach and some degree of prescription or organisation. However, at this stage, at least as far as the NT Gateway is concerned, I am a bit concerned about the idea because (a) it might take as much organisation and maintenance as the doing the site myself; (b) it would -- as Wieland mentions -- mean organising access authorization for the editors; (c) there is the risk of patchiness across the site, with some editors doing their sections well and others less well; and (d) I am not sure that the NT Gateway would be the right forum to do this -- there are other megasites and I don't particularly want to land myself with a kind of imperialistic role! But on the other hand I don't want to pour cold water on this; I am intrigued by the suggestion and there may be something in it. Let me think a little more.

One final comment on how something like this is actually evolving already. On many occasions I simply point to a place where you can go to get the best gateway on a given subject. I have a little section of Judaica, for example, which just points to some of the major places to go for extra information -- it would be madness even to try to be comprehensive there. Likewise the Gospel of Thomas. Even though that is one of my research interests, there is no point my trying to provide a comprehensive set of links because one already has Steve Davies's Gospel of Thomas homepage, so I point to that and one or two other leading resources. My guess is that this is the way that things will continue to develop, so unofficially bringing about something like what Wieland is suggesting but on a more organic, evolutionary model.