we'd mutually pay each other a visit and burn down the other's house down ........
To be fair, Mike is the "tech savvy" part of the team. My job is to pick up any pieces if he rides his bike under a bus... (God forbid)
To be serious though, the amount of user generated "additional content" for IL2 is quite frankly enormous. Not all of it is compatible ... not all of it is of acceptable quality. There are also different iterations of IL2 itself ... not to mention the "Team Dead-loss" factor...
A lot of work went into the creation of the BAT packs to address some these issues. I would suggest that, ( if you wish to go down this route), any archive strategy should be based on these arguably large but easily manageable collections.... and additional material only included once tested to ensure it is compatible. In other words don't waste storage space (and your money) on holding useless rubbish.
You envision a sort of universal IL2 library with open "read only" access to all, and some selected administrators, acting as librarians, to sift duplications, catalogue, curate and maintain it. The problem as I see it is that all human life is
finite and all storage systems are susceptible to corruption or failure.
A good central hub, like SAS, with an active community who hold various pieces of this vast content in various and separate locations ... and who are willing to share with any other member of the community when requested, does fulfil most of what you are seeking to achieve IMHO. In effect exactly what happens atm.
I am not saying what currently exists is fool-proof though (as nothing is .... given a sufficiently talented fool
). However, in any event, whatever you eventually create, it will become part of this community network and will only strengthen it.
respectfully,
Glynn