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To create a movie database website for a regional language industry, I would like to know whats the best way to acquire/build a large collection of movie synopses for my site.
Currently I have thought of 2 ways:

  1. Hire a small team of writers who have extensive knowledge on our regional movies and also hopefully contacts with production houses. The drawback would be it will take quite some time to build a considerable list of movies and the data might not be accurate always.
  2. Create a community edition wiki portal that would allow masses to contribute, just as Wikipedia. But the drawback is I am not sure how much I can trust the community on the data submitted.

In order to manage this project successfully, I need to know the pros and cons of each approach to document on my Risk register. Which method is likely to be the most cost effective? Which one would be more accurate? How could I mitigate the risks and lower costs of each approach?

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    Why don't you ask them?
    – John Smithers
    Commented May 19, 2012 at 17:11
  • I edited your question to make it more on-topic here. Feel free to make additional edits to clarify your question further.
    – jmort253
    Commented May 19, 2012 at 20:51

2 Answers 2

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Crowd-Source. With a similar system to the one used here, merits and demerits could boost agreed upon information to a higher rank, calculated alongside a reputation value bestowed upon the actual user who submitted the data. The users should have incentive to participate and interact, like the badges offered here. Vanilla Forums are a great open source solution, they have an active enough developer community, and i know for certain there are already plugins to handle most of what i've mentioned.

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  • +1 - Great point! Bad content generally doesn't last very long on the SE sites. :) If it works here, it could work for Reddy.
    – jmort253
    Commented May 20, 2012 at 20:45
  • +1 for Vanilla Forums. I am gonna try that and see if it fits to my model. I would have been extreeemely happy if it were a .Net product though.
    – Alexander
    Commented May 21, 2012 at 4:16
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Remember to include opportunity costs in your cost/benefit analysis of either approach. While the price to get raw information might be lower for crowd-sourcing (for example), it may take more time to validate the data, standardize the format and get the website off the ground.

It strikes me that you could mitigate risks by hiring a subject matter expert like a professional editor and/or writer of film reviews or film history. They could also facilitate decision making on which route would be the best for building your database.

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    +1 - I think anytime there are volunteers involved, it's required to have a skeleton crew of professional staff.
    – jmort253
    Commented May 20, 2012 at 20:46

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