Welcome to Locating Tiki!

For a few years now (even when we were on Yahoo) I’ve been getting emails from members suggesting a Tiki Bar database. Surely as Tiki Central grows it gets harder to find this type of information in the Forums, and a database would solve that. But every time I’ve been asked it, I’ve had to reply with “Great idea, but I’m not sure how to do it”. There were a few problems:

• To duplicate the efforts of the Tiki Bar Review Pages would be a huge task, not to mention redundant, and disingenuous to James who has put so much work into it.
• A database maintained by myself alone would be too much work.
• A database maintained by members would “fork” the concept of Tiki Central: discussions about a location would still happen in the forums, away from this database. I wouldn’t feel like a part of Tiki Central to me.
• Simply adding a forum for Tiki Locations wouldn’t help because the line between what went there vs. the main forum would be blurry. Without structure it wouldn’t work. The Tiki Events forum proves this: it certainly is not a calendar of events.

However the more I thought about it, the more it dawned on me that we don’t really need a database as much as we need a place where members could put in their own 2 cents on a location in a structured way. We can blend the concept of a reference with a forum to create a structured place for the cataloging and reviewing of Tiki Locations that still rang true to the spirit of Tiki Central. I experimented with different methods for doing this until I came across one that looked like it was going to work.

The result is the new Locating Tiki forum.

Locating Tiki is a forum, but it’s more structured than our other forums. The idea is to have one location per topic – no more, and no less. Creating a New Topic here will ask you to fill out all the location information and will format the first post in a standard way. But members can add their own reviews, trip reports, photos, and discussion by Replying to Location topics. I think using this format will keep it feeling like an integral member-supported part of Tiki Central while providing enough structure to also make it browsable as a guide.

This is a risk … We’ve never tried to add something that requires as much structure and moderation to Tiki Central, and it may not work. But let’s hope the risk pans out, because the Locating Tiki section could prove to be a big factor in allowing Tiki Central to grow without it growing out of control.

To help with moderation I’ve given Sabu The Coconut Boy moderator status, in addition to Mig and I. Sabu has contributed immensely to Tiki Central through his pictures and urban archeology, and I’m proud that he accepted the duties when I called on him.

One more thing to remember:

This is not meant as a replacement for the Tiki Bar Review Pages or Tiki Road Trip; this is about organizing reviews, trip reports, and discussion about locations from our members-at-large. As such, I expect our members to not add locations by entering data out of Tiki Road Trip. In fact I forbid that. You should be entering locations that you yourself have been to, or that you have gathered information on yourself (esp. in the case of defunct locations). Tiki Road Trip is an amazing book and if you’re looking for a complete guide then you need to own a copy. I don’t expect Locating Tiki to ever be a compendium in the way that Tiki Road Trip is.

As usual, your feedback is extremely important to me. Please feel free to post back to the talkback Topic in the main forum.

~Hanford

[ Edited by: hanford_lemoore on 2003-07-22 04:06 ]