Hey All,
I actually had these thoughts myself awhile ago, but with Invincible Overlord's post in the General Collecting Forum a few weeks ago, as well as some of the recent research discoveries that have come to light (such as Stormber's recent determination of the real True 1st Print Dungeon Masters Guide and some other discoveries such as PotVQ and the Daystar West modules) I wanted to see what everyone's thoughts are about this option.

What I am specifically looking to see is if anyone is in fact interested in the possibility of setting up a Research Team of current forum members to help out both Foul, as well as the Valuation Board with specific research items. At this point nothing is a definite, but I am looking to see if in fact that this is a really viable option and if so, who might be interested in doing it. This new team would be completely seperate from the VB, but VB members would not necessarily be excluded from the research team. Personally, I think that it is a good idea, but bear in mind that it will probably take a pretty fair amount of both time and effort all persons involved.

It seems structurally what would be done with this team, is that there would be a team of people who would try to track down information on specific topics, that at this point are known to need further follow up on(i.e IO emailing back and forth currently Morno from former Wee Warriors), or possible discoveries that we find later on. These research items could be as simple as emailing someone who maybe able to help up us with print run information, to as complex as tearing apart a DMG to find the stitching spacing. All of the members of this team would be reporting to one individual who would them gather any and all the data/information on these research items, who could them put it all together in an organized fashion and send it Foul for site updates with the new info and/or further research.

Like I said, at this point absolutely nothing is definite, but I am looking for some feedback and possible volunteers. The final say so on a project like this would be completely up to Foul, but let me know what everyone thinks, even if you think the idea sucks.

Thanks all,
Brian

A research team sounds good to me.  It could take quite a bit of dedication by the members that are selected, though.  More than likely, the members would have to have at least the following qualifications:

1. Members would have to have access to a decent amount of the items to be researched and/or be quite knowledgeable in them.
2. Members would need to be on the team for the long-term.
3. Members would need to thoroughly document whatever they discover so it can be carried on by others, in the event that they can no longer perform the research.

Very good idea.  In the recent discoveries I've made on printing version differences on Daystar Rahasia, help tracking down others with copies, etc. would have certainly helped and led to quicker answers.  We'd probably generate a lot of discoveries with this approach  :D

Seems like we are starting to get a pretty good response, although I am still waiting to get some feedback from some other folks.

*waving to some of our current UK friends and hardcore collectors*

Also, at this point these only seems to be 1 dissenting vote, which I would be interested to see who it is. Anybody care to air some dissenting views on this?

** nudges you into the Acaeum DCP forum **

I will dissent a little bit (but not much ). I love the idea of a research team but it seems to me that it already exists. I always thought that research was one of the main pulls of the Acaeum forums, if not the Acaeum itself. This seems to me the research team is the Memberlist.

Cheers,
Curt

mbassoc2003 wrote:Joking aside, if I were to put the time into something b way of a 'contribution' to this site, I would prefer to put together some credible information on the non-TSR stuff. Maybe put together a Judges Guild section with price data and more accurate printing information.

Just my 2p.

i am always more than willing to put in a little time to help fill in gaps if i can - i aint opening my PotVQ again to - feck that for a game of soldiers

am quite happy to scan it tho for Ian to research as he has already had it and i can trust him with it.

as for JG stuff, i am totally for that - nothing is hardly documented and i would wholeheartedly back a research push in that direction and can help aplenty there.

Al