Always glad to see new high quality Buffy sites online. Too often when I click on links, site after site has closed down or not been updated since 2003. I fear that the online Buffy community is dying at times and some great, great sites have gone - Cross and Stake springs to mind. I know things have to change but there's also sadness in the passing of so many so fast.

catalyst2 | January 13, 10:51 CET

wow. *bookmarks*
that's really an invaluable tool!

orphea | January 13, 11:19 CET

Yeah, "tool"...

bkhl | January 13, 11:25 CET

Wow.

That's fantastic, Caroline. Great find!

Greyflowers | January 13, 11:49 CET

Hi, this is John. Thanks for the nice comments. A couple of people noticed a problem with the search engine but I've fixed it. It's a work in progress still I'm afraid. Anything you notice, please let me know.

flutie | January 13, 12:22 CET

John mailed me with the link to his site, thanks John!

Caroline | January 13, 13:13 CET

It's a great idea in rough form. However, what the database needs is a communal wikipedia-like secondary database. When you click on a particular episode, you should get the transcript but also a database that 'members' of Buffyology can update. It could be a combination of the Annotated Buffy site, the Buffy Dialogue Database, All Things Philosophical and this site.

In fact Whedonesque tried to so something similar to what I mean in the form of the Whedon Wiki project. By the way I stopped updating in there cuz I lost my password, and I think I asked to get that fixed once, but I'm either too lazy or embarrassed to have to ask for it to be fixed again. Anyway, the problem with WhedonWiki is that it's not directly interactive with this message board.

I think it'd be cool if you could search any given character in Buffyology, and along with a list of all episodes that character appeared in, you'd also be able to scan and read anything that anyone's ever said about that character. Summaries of the character's plot arc in the series. Various trivia and 'facts' about the character, surmized hypotheses about what is not 'canon' and even extrapolations of what might have happened to the character. Furthermore, theses and commentary on how the character inter-relates with other characters, settings, metaphors, themes, etc. ..Oh. And cultural references of course.

It's a great start though. At the very least, this John Horner guy could coordinate with Masquerade, Vrya, Justin Leader and others and they could cross reference their efforts with mutual links. ..Oh. And pictures. Can never have too many of those.

[ edited by ZachsMind on 2005-01-13 12:53 ]

ZachsMind | January 13, 14:52 CET

Useful! And possibly doomed, liked the much-missed psyche's transcript site (only that site wasn't searchable and cross-listed and so forth). But I certainly intend to appreciate it while it's with us.

Maeve | January 13, 16:33 CET

Not as good as http://vrya.net/bdb/, in my opinion.

chickenbird | January 13, 17:03 CET

Well, what Buffyology has got going for it is that it's clear that it's a database you can search, unlike bdb, which one might mistake for a 'regular' fan site.

Caroline | January 13, 18:15 CET

John, If you read this, can you tell me if you have any plans to add an AtS guide to the site?

And agree Caroline on the search function. That rules.

Willowy | January 13, 18:28 CET

Although not searchable, the Online Encyclopedia of Buffy Studies at http://www.slayage.tv/EBS/index.htm is a hyperlinked guide to both Buffy and Angel. It's not finished yet, but we've put a lot of work into it!

Ruadh | January 13, 18:37 CET

The wiki we have here at whedonesque (www.whedonwiki.com) was going great until someone tried to bury the thing and I had to password protect it. Since then nobody's worked on it, which is unfortunate. I'd love for someone more technical than myself to take over responsibility for the wiki.

Caroline | January 13, 18:39 CET

"Well, what Buffyology has got going for it is that it's clear that it's a database you can search, unlike bdb, which one might mistake for a 'regular' fan site."

BDB is searchable, to some extent--at least you can search for quotes. It's pretty useful, really. And well organized.

Maeve | January 13, 21:39 CET

Caroline, I actually really was loving the Wiki, and cursing that I've not had time to contribute. I've got some technical web background, and, while I've used wikis before, I'm not *exactly* a wiki expert. Mostly web design-y stuff. But, at the very least, I'd not mind asking politely for a password. And, my schedule is starting to clear up, if you'd like to send me some details on what you'd like from a wiki person, feel free to drop me an e-mail (it's in my profile, though hidden).

In fact, I think John's site is a great resource, but, I like the wiki potential.

k8cre8 | January 14, 00:01 CET

Wow, some really interesting comments.

I don't have any plans to do "angelology", sorry, no.

Do we think it's doomed because someone will send me a "cease and desist" letter because of hosting the transcripts? I'm not really sure what the position is there.

The Wiki idea is great, but I'm not sure I want to take on the amount of work it would imply. Don't forget that Wiki software is free and open source and anyone can start one.

In my conception of it, Buffyology only lacks two things: more detailed episode synopses and better transcripts. I'm working on the second one right now. Any suggestions for the first one?

And the next stage of cross-reference would be character cross-references, as in "we know Giles wanted to be 'a fighter pilot -- or a grocer' from Never Kill A Boy On The First Date" kind of thing.

flutie | January 14, 00:39 CET

"BDB is searchable"

Yes, I realise that. It's just not immediately obvious, design-wise.

Caroline | January 14, 00:59 CET

I've enjoyed the episode guides at TV tome and Buffy Guide and, while there are a few errors on the TV tome site, in general they're both quite good.

I've been working on a database (of sorts) of Buffy/Angel trivia, and, it's developed into a Buffy collaborative trivia game project, which, actually, has now had its first playtest. Some of my questions are very like the one you posted about Giles. In my database, I have the pertainant source episode and such. I also have things like a count of how many times Giles gets knocked out, the first time we see the Citroen, etc. These are things that interested me, but, I've not seen in the guides available.

k8cre8 | January 14, 01:19 CET

That sounds very interesting Kate, perhaps you could write to me and we could talk? Thanks.

flutie | January 14, 02:46 CET

I think a demon database would be cool, like the one you always see Cordelia, Willow, and Dawn on. If thier was a site like that, could someone let me know.

BufSlyAngel | January 14, 04:49 CET

There's not one that I know of, and the Demon database on the DVDs is woefully incomplete.

k8cre8 | January 14, 23:37 CET

Wow - this is a great site - John has obviously put an awful lot of work into it. I've been trying to get all this information on my site for the whole time I've been running it and still not managed to complete all the episode guides and transcripts and stuff (work always gets in the way of this stuff). I'm actually working on my own Demon Database at the moment and hoping to add this to the site in the next few months. I'm aiming to get every demon/vampire/witch/thing that goes bump in the night that is mentioned by name from every Buffy and Angel episode on there with as much info on them as I can. It's slow going but I'm getting there.

Cider | January 15, 00:45 CET

Just to note that the address of the site has changed and is now http://buffyology.com.

Here's a hint, you can normally get to the right page by typing something like "hush buffyology", "xander buffyology", "hannigan buffyology" etc., into Google and hitting "I feel lucky".

If you're using Firefox just type it directly into the URL bar and hit enter.

flutie | May 31, 15:15 CET