I meant to get more content into the wiki before announcing it, but Jim Duncan’s post today about the NAR’s MLS Presidential Advisory Group prompted me to move things up a little (well, actually, a lot) and just see where it goes. Because I’m about to board a plane to Boston for some RETS schema definition meetings, all I have time for now is to copy my comment on Jim’s post:
Jim, thanks for the update on the PAG! Excellent to hear the discussion is progressing. I, too, would love to see the discussion broadened. To that end, I’ve spent a little (very little) time setting up a wiki on the future of MLS. I meant to do so much more but, with your post, thought it might be worth putting forward now. The details can be filled in as we go along. The URL for the wiki is http://futureofmls.wiki.zoho.com/. I’m hoping it will prove easy for people to use. To edit documents, users will need to sign up with Zoho, but it’s free. A great start would be if someone could post the initial MLS PAG report to the wiki. Next, I want to review the CAR’s principles, because I think they have a lot of great points, but there are areas where they should be extended or modified, too, such as by clarifying that data standards should follow RETS and by making declarations regarding advertising and public display of listings by the MLS. There’s so much more and it will be great if the conversation can be done in the open.
I’ll try to post more later, but if you have anything to contribute to the wiki, please do. I hope this becomes an easy for everyone interested to exchange ideas on this important topic.