Hi all,
Been a while since I've posted so hi to you who remember me and maybe a beer sometime in London or Oxford?
UGC can come in many forms, those forms will change, and some of them won't really be under your control.
Where you can get the information in to your core system easily then there's maybe merit in that, but I don't think there's a need to get hung up on the 'one big database' approach in most cases.
There are many ways to gather ugc, but so long as some basic principles are followed reuse should not be a problem. Web systems lend themselves to distributed sources of content because we can easily hyperlink between them. So long as there is a simple identifier shared between the systems, it's not such a big deal where the data is, it's still available and identifiable and reusable. You should store that identifier with the narrative - this narrative is about Item x. So long as x is permanent, eg a record number, the ugc data can be literally anywhere connected to the interwebs.
Just ensure that the software or service you use for UGC, be it local or remote, OS or commercial, allows the storing of metadata like identifiers and technically and contractually allows you to extract the data. Obviously that's a crude example, but the argument can hold if identification has more than one dimension!
As management systems develop they may allow the incorporation of this data, but they should also become flexible enough to incorporate 'calls' to or views of other systems also holding relevant information. The need for one system to hold everything isn't really relevant any more and can often lead to overcomplexity, when simpler more distributed web enabled systems can do the same job cheaper, but can be more responsive to change as innovation occurs.
So, for a start, don't let the fact that your CMS can't incorporate UGC stop you from gathering as much as possible now.
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