> It just occured to me to wonder what the status
> of the RinkLopedia will be? It is a cooperative
> effort between Matthew and Travholt, is it not?

Yes, it is. Although Matthew hasn't been able to participate to it as much as I'd like. This is through no fault of his own, though.

The story goes something like this: As I got more involved in RinkWorks, and especially RinkChat, I faced a few problems. One of them was to remember things about everyone. Especially in the beginning, it was quite a challenge to remember who was who's brother or sister or girlfriend or husband or whatever, who lived where and stuff like that. It occurred to me that I could make some kind of online database, initially only intended for myself. But then you had all these people asking about what "goosnudgy" means, or "seokkkking", or why so many people suddenly say "DOG!" or whatever other internal jokes there might be. So I thought there should be a database for those things, too, that people could be directed to for explanations. (Explaining them all over and over is tedious, especially for the more frequent of the regulars. Besides, it was kind of hard to dig up the journal entry for the "DOG!" explanation every time...) Matthew already had made the RinkCalendar, and that was a natural thing to include, too. So we kinda joined forces.

I had recently aquired my own domain, with CGI scripting abilities and without any ads, so I offered to host it. (We initially talked about putting it on tripod, but said ads and lack of scriptability weighed against it.) I was under the impression that I could give Matthew access to only the Rinklopedia area of my site, so I thought we would both be able to update it. But I was wrong, so unfortunately Matthew has never been able to modify content himself -- it would all go through me. This is something I'm sorry for, because I'd much rather see it as a more cooperative project.

Later came the WebRink, too, the code of which is mostly contributed by Matthew, and a result of the aforementioned CGI scriptability.


> Will it be dismantled? Will Travholt take over it
> entirely? Will it be handed over to another
> Rinker?

Definitely NO to that last point. If Matthew decides to leave, I guess I'll take over entirely. It will not be dismantled as long as I'm on RinkWorks, but if I should leave, it probably will get taken down. If I succeed in my plans, though, it could stay up and maintained by someone else even if I'm not participating on RinkWorks much.

Because I actually have big plans for it. I'm finally getting some answers from my web host, so I'll hopefully be able to port it all from static HTML to dynamic Perl CGI during winter. As it is now, if someone wants to be added in there, I have to update four or five different HTML pages with duplicate information, which gets tedious in the long run, and it's also very error-prone.

Also, I feel that it has dropped between two stools (I hope that's an expression in English, too). Now, it's mosty a private regular RinkyDink site. Its link isn't readily available to absolutely everyone (you'll have to ask for it, or know where to look) because it contains quite a bit of personal data, which is fine among people knowing each other, but wouldn't be fine in the wrong people's hands. This means that if someone new to RinkChat wonders about something, you can't give them the link. I'd like the Rinklopedia (and some other stuff, like "What's In A Name" and "Cool Things To Do On RinkWorks") to be public, while the Personal data, Stalkers Weekly etc. should be private to the people registered in it.

This seems a lot of work for a small group of people, and I'm quite aware of that. :-) I do this mostly because it's fun and educating in so many ways. Also, it's a contribution to a wonderful community.

Travholt.