Maybe I can explain my thinking a bit better, and for that I need to do a bit of history telling:

Imagining a new kind of website some years ago, one where those using the site were those providing it or at least its information, but unable to work out quite what that would be, I designed the structure of W2S Mk II rather than designing its content. You'll understand what I mean now, as it has come to be called Web 2.0 and allows users of websites to contribute to them - but this was radical in the days of the first W2S where you put together the content of a website, such as that which was the case with the original W2S - and there it sat without change.

I fact, in the first W2S, singers emailed me info about gigs, I added them to my own personal database, and every evening my computer uploaded the newly adjusted pages of listings to the website server. W2S Mk II is where we are today, and everyone can see the value of my producing the structure, and everyone else producing the content. For example, hosts and singers control listings, as in selecting the content, and W2S provides the storage for that information, the place at which it can be found, and the means (the search capability) by which to find it. Thus I'm tempted, in considering W2S Mk III, to just improve the system, again leaving everyone else to provide, upkeep and control the content.

It's like trying to hit a moving target, guessing what will be required a year or two from now, and making the framework that will last the longest possible time as a basis to what's required - Mk II has lasted many more years that I anticipated, but it's been clear for at least the last couple that it doesn't provide the framework that could support a much more vibrant karaoke industry. That so many hosts are active on W2S makes me think it's in the idea position to be the industry framework.

W2S is just Australian, and although I agree that it seems unlikely for Australia to produce the world-beating software for karaoke, I think that the advantage of having a significantly more unified karaoke industry than other countries might be just what's needed. Remembering that KWC produced several years of winners when its organisers were happy to (resigned to, perhaps) be part of W2S - it's probably no secret that the parting of the ways between KWC and W2S came over my reluctance to print what I was told, censor W2Sers' posts in line with the likes of the Australian organisers, and make or allow no comment including my own that could be inferred as negative to KWC. And that since that time, KWC seems not to have been able to harness the obvious talent of Australia to produce an international winner. Coincidence? I think not, and a reading of the positive competitive power of other industries in other countries may bear it out.

Whether W2S provides the basis on which an Australian developer writes world beating KJ software is obviously well outside my control. But I think that W2S Mk III should be the connection, the platform, the facilitator of the industry. I was always taken by the idea of Kev's Karaoke Union, and although I think the days have passed for such a format as was envisaged, I do think the concept where every industry player is able to be heard, such as can be achieved on a website, is the right one for the industry: No union chiefs to elect, pay or wield power, but instead a carefully considered framework that maintains a balance of opinions and influences via a website.

This isn't going to happen overnight, obviously, as W2S has many flaws that will need to be fixed in Mk III - such as anyone being able to be as many identities as he wishes, as I now realise a person can be the owner of a hosting company, a host himself, and a singer. But what we can do is discuss what we want Mk III to be, or to achieve, or to be the platform on which something can be based.
Submitted by David on 28-09-2012

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