Japanese Toy Wiki project.

As you may have seen, Sofubiki shut down. I migrated the Markdown and images for the six pages I created there to my GitHub account. I'm not planning on doing anything more with this at the moment but I figured the information was still worth sharing: https://github.com/rogerharkavy/japanesetoys/wiki

 

What happened to Sofubiki? Ran out of funding?

 

Brett posted about it here: http://skullbrain.org/bb/index.php?threads/sofubiki-the-sofubi-wiki.54549/page-2#post-1021121

 

Establishing and Running a wiki page has to be tough, if not nearly impossible to do; wether single-handedly or with a small group. Especially with something as niche as soft vinyl toys. This is a perfect example of why I love Skullbrain. It’s been around now for 15+ years and is a repository of so much information regarding this hobby of ours if you’re willing to search for it, and post about it. I’m so appreciative to @brianflynn for keeping this board open and free so so very long, and the users that still come back regularly to contribute. Everything on Instagram or seems fleeting or hard to search and somewhat shallow. I love the pictures, but if I need info on a release or old information about some toy I just discovered… I come here first.

 

The most challenging part of a project like this is the planning. What is the scope of information the wiki will cover? How will it be organized? How do you make it easy for other people to add information? And most importantly, do you have backups of everything?

Skullbrain won't be around forever. Eventually it will disappear, and maybe without warning. For those folks who are relying on it to maintain references like toy checklists, visual databases, etc., I would recommend figuring out a new format for that information so that it can be replicated somewhere else.

 

You’re right; skullbrain is my be around forever, but I think the powers that be (Brian I assume) would give us all the heads up if it were going to be shuttered if he didn’t want to foot the bill on hosting… and give time for folks to gather whatever information they might want, or even to transfer ownership perhaps. I don’t know the costs to keep the lights on here, but I’m glad that Brian and Super7 allow it so.

But this is a bigger issue with preservation of digital information online. Any of it could go away at anytime. TLDR- I miss super7 magazine.

 

It would be nice if there was some warning if this place was going to go away, but in my experience things rarely happen that way.