Great, Kenyon. I haven't laughed that hard in years! And I didn't even notice the a_sence of "_"s until I read your explanation! Dick _enjamin -----Original Message----- From: mailing-list-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:mailing-list-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On _ehalf Of Kenyon Wills Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2007 9:57 AM To: mailing-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: IML: Short History of the Site and where we're headed http://imperialclub.com/OIC-specific/TeamOfVolunteers/index.htm For a historical-themed site, we have not documented our internal journey, and I wasn't in the first group, so please speak up if I'm omitting something; here's what I know: Tony Lindsey (see the link at top of page) started an Imperial email ring where all messages flowed to him - he'd then turn the messages around and forward them to all. What would YOUR Imperial life feel like without access to the rest of us and the fountain of information that one now gets online? ...That's why we're all here! This was, as I understand it, an organic thing that just made sense as soon as people started to learn of it as the www came into more common usage, and for whatever reason, Imperial owners seem to have had a large population of "early adopters" that were on the www early on, so things got rolling in 95 or 96. Tony got tired of the work after a time and he decided that it wasn't his thing. Very time consuming, as I understand it. I have heard a few versions of this, so don't know what actually happened. Leslie, who appears here from time to time was the person that managed to prop things up and keep the place going, with the additions of other key volunteers such as Mike and Chris Trettin and Mr. Hogg, as well as some of the folks that are still listed on the IML volunteer pages such as Jeff Ingraham, Steve, and Elijah.... Please don't kill me if I'm leaving folks out - don't want to skip anyone... There were certainly others such as Whiteshoes Johnson that seriously pitched in as moderators and so forth - I have some empty spots there....The place was/is altruistic and part of the "Free Resource" thinking/movement that spawned such things as craigslist (as opposed to for-profit online stuff like e-commerce). Manuel Alvarez was tapped to help with supporting the site and mailing list, and DTE is still supporting the mailing list. I joined later, as did many of the other volunteers have as well. The volunteer group has certainly had its ups and downs with some high drama and perhaps what one might call dirty laundry. Perhaps when we're farther away from all of that we can go into more detail? Not now - too close to it still. We have now migrated our site to a server independent of DTE for larger space and cost-effectiveness, since Manuel was donating our space and it made sense to pull our own weight, after all. Where the site has gone and is going? When I arrived, I was faced with insistent (good natured) IML messages from Hugh Hemphill trumpeting the recent addition of a set of ads to the 1958 page, making it the "no. 1 page on the site due to 1958 having such superior qualities" and so forth. I looked at the 1960 page and sure saw an awful lot of space there. Since I KNEW that 1960 was actually THE year of all years, I started looking for material with which to trump old Mr. Hugh and his overly active typing. The site owes Hugh for motivating me on the 1960 page - that's for certain, so say hi to him and shake his hand if you see him in person for me. You can check out the site as it evolved here: NOTICE ANY DIFFERENCES????: http://web.archive.org/web/*/%20http://imperialclub.com/ Anyway, the site has grown and we now have almost every ad from every year. We have almost every sales flyer, and every specification. If it was in print and came up on everyone's favortite online auction site, there's a 90% chance that it's posted - only a few very pricey items have escaped our grasp. If you've not tried the yearly imperial pages other than your own, you're missing out. Some special areas would include the WAR YEARS page with the airplane on the "Years" page - what did Chrysler do in the war effort? There is a story of the Sperry Gyrocompass there that's pretty super, and we have stuff on Tanks, Projectiles, Atomic Stuff, and Radar coming soon. What's left to do? We have gaps left to fill in the Service Manuals, although we have nearly all of them scanned - just need to complete the difficult task of processing them. Folks don't really notice what goes into the site, so I'll take a moment to explain that: First: item gets procured. Second: item gets scanned. Thrid: item gets uploaded to a temporary holding pen where other volunteers can get the "raw" image. Fourth: item gets straightened, descreened, color-corrected, and if needed stitched. Note that many of the color catalogs and ads are too large to fit the platen of a scanner? At that point, overlapping scans are made and a volunteer uses photoshop or some other application to match edges and seam them together. There is some real electronic art going on that shows as a final product that you'd never think took 6 hours to create... Fourth: Image is "cleaned up". These originals are 25-80 years old. Most of the online stuff looks perfect - ever notice that there are so few artifacts? So anyway, once the image is done, we then upload THREE copies to the site - a small one, a medium one, and a giant, full-resolution one that allows printing of one's own in full resolution should you want a full size or expanded image. This requires translation into a www page. Now apply this manual process to a 600 page Service Manual. We just had Frank Winnips join in the last 6 months, and he seems to have a way to automate/speed up the process. Until now, each FSM represents at least 80 hours of work. Perhaps more? http://imperialclub.com/Repair/Lit/index.htm http://imperialclub.com/Articles/index.htm http://imperialclub.com/Part/Lit/index.htm (and we already have 22 (!!!) of FSM's, 300+ magazine articles, several hundred LIFE-sized magazine ads that had to get re-stitched together) and you're starting to get what's going on with half the site, work-wise. People seem to take it for granted. The site is now 25,000 pages and was a serious nut to chew and swallow. Now look at the PARTS section where we have listed EVERY vendor that we know of, http://imperialclub.com/Part/index.htm the REPAIR section where we have archived THOUSANDS of discussions on whatever Fix-It area you might need to look up, http://imperialclub.com/Repair/index.htm and then go over to the MOVIES section and you're starting to get through 2/3 of the site. http://imperialclub.com/Movies/index.htm Anyway, I digress. The Service Manual project has the following FSM's in queue to go up (we could use the help of anyone reading this with HTML skills!!!!): 1933, 1937, 1938, 1940, 1954, 1956 Preview, 1956, 1956 Torque Flight, 1957, 1958, 1961 AC Supplement, 1966, 1967, 1969, 1970, 1970's Torque Flight, 1971, 1972, 1975, 1982, 1990. The supplementary series of manuals called MASTER TECHNICIANS SERVICE CONFRERENCE are shorter, and more innocuous at only 14 pages each. They are actually "almost" a superior source of info to FSM's that a couple of us have gotten slightly nutty on. We think that they could have greater importance than the FSM's, so we've gone pretty hard and heavy on them. We have 75% of them at this point, and there were 12 per year from 1948-1973 at least, so that's "a lot"... http://imperialclub.com/Repair/Lit/Master/index.htm If you've not opened the links at the top of the page, there's some fascinating info there.... So, turning from history to the future: We'd like to aquire more material to fill the gaps in the inventory, since we are rapidly approaching the point where we have "most" of the stuff and it's just a matter of doing an inventory of what we're still missing and then seeking it out. The 1927 and 1928 Users Manuals are $125 each at a literature vendor, and I am planning to stump for getting them using the funds that folks are sending in, since these are the precursors to FSM's, and we have almost all of the other ones. We must ask for the group's indulgence here on this: At some point in the coming 6 months, we plan to do a survey of what's missing and do hope for assistance with anything that is collectively laying around in people's posession, since getting stuff loaned sure tops tracking it down and purchasing it. More on that later. Meanwhile, I'm almost done here. Want to apologize for some strange word phrasing a_ove here - had to compose the entire message you've just read without the use of the second letter of the alpha_et since that key is _roken on my key_oard. HA! Made it tho!!! -Kenyon Wills Online Imperial Clu_ Volunteer ____________________________________________________________________________ ________ Be a better Globetrotter. Get better travel answers from someone who knows. Yahoo! Answers - Check it out. http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396545469 ----------------- http://www.imperialclub.com ----------------- This message was sent to you by the Imperial Mailing List. 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