A pair of vendor information resources for the 3000 customer are getting spruced up, using reports  straight from the community — with no gatekeeper. One Web list offers vendors enough access to update their own product listings, while the other improved resource will use research from a new volunteer at OpenMPE.

The longest-lived, deepest vendor list for 3000 products has been hosted at 3k.com for a long while. During the 1990s, Brian Duncombe of Triolet Systems began compiling HP 3000-related product listings. That list that just got a new nest this year when Chris Bartram of 3k Associates opened the community's new 3000 Wiki pages to the information. As of this month, Duncombe's vendor list is getting the Wiki treatment, complete with community editing of vendor information. In the old model, a single, overworked volunteer had to apply vendor-submitted changes to this comprehensive listing.

Any vendor can head out to the 3k.com Web site's Vendor Directory to update a listing. In the Wiki tradition, anyone — vendor or not — who's registered can edit an item. The result is a resource where 3000 customers can browse these product and company lists. They're grouped by category as well as posted by vendor name.

To update a listing, or contribute what you know about HP 3000s at 3k's 3000 Technical Wiki (Twiki), you  need to register. Get a free username and set your password at www.3k.com/twiki/bin/register/Main/WebHome Bartram explains that the new resource eliminates an old bottleneck, "An online, up-to-date HP 3000 Vendor and Product directory, where the biggest bottleneck (a single overworked maintainer) is no more!"

Since Brian Duncombe took his [HP 3000] directory down a few months ago, I decided to resurrect it on the Twiki. I've been busily cutting and pasting to recreate the directory as it last appeared. Though still a work in progress, the HP 3000 Vendor/Product directory has been resurrected, and in an "All New Improved" formula. The directory is now all Wiki, with each vendor and product entry set up as a separate user-editable page.Once I get all the remaining old data converted into the new format, vendors will be able to log in and update their own contact info and product data.

Bartram's idea is catching on, too. Another revived, community-driven effort surfaced this week to update the application listings at the OpenMPE Web site. Both projects call on an important common element: contributions from a 3000 community which is still maintaining its tight knit of connections.