One of the founding aims of AditNow was that the site would, in time, act as a historic resource and database for mining and quarrying history. Indeed, the forum has produced some fascinating debates and has uncovered some startling finds.
There is, perhaps a criticism that can be leveled, in that - to an extent - forum threads could be considered transitory, even though they can often be found by someone searching the internet for a specific subject.
In order to address this, there will be a new feature added to the site in the next couple of months and SimonRL has already coded the basis of a system, perhaps best described as Articles.
The aim is use Articles to create a series of static pages which will then become a series of reference documents, with the option to link them to one or more mines: for example, an Article on a particular method of working could be linked from the mines at which that practice was employed.
The idea is thus not dissimilar to a 'Wiki', although in this instance it will be integrated into an existing website - and thus be able to use the existing database of mine and photographs, which will be able to be integrated into Articles in a similar method to putting them in forum posts.
The current thinking is that Articles will 'belong' to the person who created them, but that editing rights can also be given to either groups or to a list of individuals - ie if you want an Article to be edited only by two other specific people, then this will be possible and similarly if you want all registered users to be able to edit it, then that can also be done.
As the Articles system is still at a 'beta' stage (and not yet accessible through the site) there is the still the potential to make it fit the needs of the site's users. So: what do you want to see? 🙂
Hello again darkness, my old friend...