Ok...here goes.
I was sitting here, drawing out ideas for a cool excel spreadsheet to catalog my (still anemic) collection. I couldn't come up with any kind of structure or design I thought would stand posterity. So, like any good geek, I came here and started looking through the multiple threads on the subject. Seems aside from a few of you with no-specific requirements, no one could find a single cataloging system they truly loved.
My girlfriend saw me and ask what I was doing. After going through it, she came up with the greatest idea I'd ever heard, and the newest reason I have or wanting to marry her...
Why not make our own. Not just ours, but *OURS*, as in the community of collectors.
The idea has the following goals in mind:
1) Create a database, custom defined by the community to include whatever information we could possibly ever want on a game. Expand upon that to include hardware, peripherals, accessories, whatever. This would include images of EVERYTHING. Box scans, cart scans, manual scans, gamer/collector action shots, etc. The database would be fully relational and indexed so that any bit of information within it can be accessed in any way imaginable. The trick to this would be keeping it 100% user-submitted and created entries, ala wiki-style community entry. This way we can hopefully avoid trademark/copyright problems as everything would be by design, community created.
2) Create an online front-end for the database. This would turn all the submitted info into the biggest encyclopedia of classic gaming knowledge available.
3) Now, the part that's of interest to all of us, the personal collection front-end. To create a cross-platform (maybe java?) client-side front end for the database. This app would be the first point of contact for everyone. Load it up, enter your collection either based on existing items in the database, or add your own entries and expand the knowledge contained for everyone. Once you have your collection in your private catalog on your own computer, you can sync it up with the community collection profiles on the site and share it with the world. What you see on your computer is exactly what everyone else will see when they look up your own collection on the site. The app would of course be the main point for submitting the content for the database.
4) Create a community voting system to decide which specific items of submitted content become the "default". Perhaps an option somewhere to choose anything in the database to be used for specific entries; scans, images, reviews, descriptions, etc. Definitely an option to use your own scans or info for whatever entries you want within your own collection listing.
So...what do you all think? I'll likely try to do this on my own regardless, but I want this to be a community project. Please, comments, suggestions, jeers, advice. If the idea flys, I'd like to setup a base for the development as soon as possible.