Wow, thanks a lot Benj
some on there I should have added ages ago, for sure. Will update it today
As for the database - well, the thing is, I'm going to be working to get this database I've planned (starting with bibliographic entries, and a glossary probably) to get some proper support from historians and preservationists - and also, I hope, to get some grant money so that there can be a distributed back-end of the content (some of which won't be public facing). It would, I am sure, have much more broad sets of information fields (including full articles) for entries, and be cross-referenced with historical articles and other non-game items. Quite likely how I think of it would contain summaries ala Wikipedia and Mobygames, with in-depth pages on every major aspect of a game, references and links to external resources, opinion pieces and so forth. Search would have to be good too (try finding "that game with a red cover and had a dude with black hair in it" somewhere else, heh. Could use a lot of search tagging for many types of non-text media!).
I'd like it to be a tool for historians adding to it, so I'd make editing it have revision history and so forth. I'd like to think there'd be enough interest from some people to get basics going and also allow some submissions of info from the public - although it'd quite likely have to be fact checked properly to be of any worth, as we've discussed on our mailing list, there are TON of common things thought of as proper historical fact, where in fact it is just a myth! In any case, that is one major issue with other places - the lack of involvement from experts (true; there are a lot of things to go through...).
Although the content would have to be openly suitable for both referencing (so can be a first point of information), and for reading (some not-so-restrictive CC licence or other open thing perhaps, who knows...).
I haven't, however, got really anywhere building it - only some basics so far, mainly concentrating (still!) on the Database Schema - it's getting quite in-depth. I've not found a good (PHP-based, since I enjoy PHP) base solution to use. Of course I never expected there to be one
(else someone else would have a perfect site for it), but I'll probably hack some stuff together from other suitable places - there's some good things for editors, CSS/layout, javascript etc.
I'd be interested in what you'd have planned and what you'd want a database to do
I would still certainly need to get a bibliographic thing done anyway, so I'll be building that regardless
it's if I'd go further and add games/systems/etc. as well.
