Widen Your World – Why There's A WYW

Requests
A lot of people have sent e-mails to me since this site began in 1996. The majority of them have been messages of support and appreciation (thank you), or people trying to get a question about early WDW answered. Some e-mails come from people asking if I will send them something. Those requests generally fall into one of two categories: 1. People who really miss something specific and whose lives would be radically improved if they could just find this one song or a picture of this one thing. These people I genuinely tried to help as often as possible. 2. People who can’t bring themselves to use the word “please” and whose sense of reality is a bit strained i.e., “can you send me copies of all your videos?” I couldn’t usually figure out how to reply to those inquiries. Lately I make so little time for WYW that even many of the nicer e-mails didn’t get replies. Worse, most of the messages received prior to October 2010 are lost due to hard drive failures. And since I started gathering WDW-related stuff in 1977, I’ve had half a lifetime to misplace all of it. Given that and the number of pages that I still want to complete for the site, the chances of satisfying more than a handful of personal requests are slim. If you’re seeking one specific thing, it never hurts to ask. If it’s not something I can get to quickly, however, then it will probably just go on the list of new page requests and will hopefully make it to the site at some point. If I’ve replied to you with a link to this page, it’s because your request is not something I could get to quickly and thought you might enjoy this explanation or at least seeing a couple pictures that are only on this page. As for sharing videos, the reason I started posting footage on YouTube in the first place was to share them. It might be preferable to have some of the better shots in a higher-res format, but none of them were THAT good to begin with. Plus, once I captured them to a digital format I threw the original tapes away. So in most cases what’s on YouTube is actually as good as it gets. If you’re looking for a way to save the YouTube files to your computer, there are sites (such as keepvid.com) that will help you with that. I have not forgotten the kindness of others with their photos and videos back when I was still collecting things, so I want to honor that spirit of community. “Finishing” the site is the most practical way to do that, since it’s the avenue that will ultimately make the most stuff available to the greatest number of people for the longest period of time. On occasion I get messages about placing banners on WYW, other types of advertising, cross-promotional opportunities or notices about upcoming publications / online features that the senders would like to see mentioned on WYW. I’ll mention things sometimes if they seem pertinent to the range of topics this site covers, but at present I am accepting no advertising and limit promotion of third-party material to things I’ve actually read or can say I’ve used, like a napkin from the Columbia Harbour House.