The Completely
Unofficial Star Wars Encyclopedia -
August 13th, 2003
Interview with
Bob Vitas, webmaster |
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For
“Wars” minutiae enthusiasts and casual curious fans
alike, the Completely Unofficial Star Wars Encyclopedia
offers a wealth of information about the ever-expanding
worlds of Star Wars; a resource so complete that it even
bests any printed publication on the subject. With tens
of thousands of entries culled from over 700 different
sources, this unofficial encyclopedia is literally
unrivaled in its use of official material. The Furry
Conflict interviews Mr. Bob Vitas (Vob Bitas from
Holonet News), the man behind this immense and
invaluable Star Wars reference database with questions
about the “CUSWE,” it’s history, and Star Wars at large. |
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Bob
Vitas, webmaster and the man behind the Completely Unofficial Star Wars
Encyclopedia, has granted The Furry Conflict an interview with him to discuss
(among other things) the origins of “CUSWE,” some of its sources, the Star Wars
saga, and some thoughts on the Expanded Universe.
The
Completely Unofficial Star Wars Encyclopedia began its online voyage in late
1997, with Bob Vitas as the sole administrator of the website since the day of
its inception. Upon hearing information that Steve Sansweet (Director of Content
Management and fan relations for Lucasfilm LTD) was beginning work on the
“official” Star Wars Encyclopedia, and was doing so through a working
relationship with some Star Wars newsgroups, Bob made contact with him through
his assistant, Mr. Josh Ling. Sansweet was looking for “a few hundred key
entries,” but at the time the CUSWE had well over 10,000. Unfortunately, no deal
was formed and the two parted ways.
Bob
however, didn’t let that discourage him as he realized that his library could
fill another purpose—filling in the gaps that the Lucasfilm encyclopedia would
inevitably leave out because of their space limitations. With this new direction
in mind, Vitas took the CUSWE (which had been on a lowly piece of AOL web
real-estate at the time) to MosEisley.com in late 1998, where the project grew
to about 15,000 entries.
However,
problems formed at MosEisley.com fairly soon. With the release of The Phantom
Menace for the beginning of the prequel trilogy in 1999, the CUSWE began to
chronically overload the bandwidth limitations of its host. Burned out from all
the work of trying to hold down the fort after the release of TPM, Vitas decided
to take a break.
It was
during this sabbatical that an individual by the name of Michael Potts, one of
the folks behind Star Wars Timetales, began to suggest to Bob that he join the
staff of TheForce.net. The move to what is arguably the most popular Star Wars
website on the internet today helped rekindle Bob’s waning interest in the Star
Wars saga and the CUSWE project at large. The Completely Unofficial Star Wars
Encyclopedia (version 5.1) is still on TheForce.net today, with a record of
nearly 38,000 entries, standing uncontested as the most extensive reference
database of its kind.
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Base Interview questions with Bob
Vitas:
Link to:
Bob Vitas Interview Chat Log (abridged, edited & spell checked):
Q: Good evening Mr. Vitas, may I call you Bob? How has life been
treating you as of late?
A: A good evening to you, too! Bob is OK… although I go by the name
of Vob Bitas in the Star Wars universe. (Not too many people have a
Star Wars character named after them… refer back to the old
HoloNetNews.com site, issue 48! Life has not been too bad… I just
got back from a vacation on the big island of Hawaii, a second
honeymoon with my wife. It took us 15 years to get back, but that’s
OK. My wife actually ran the Kona Marathon while we were there. Just
over 5 hours, but she did it! I was going to run the 10K race the
day before, but I ended up being a spectator after I suffered a
stress fracture in my right ankle during training.
Q: What first got you into Star Wars?
A: Well, I was one of the unbelievers to start with. I remember
sitting on the back porch with my dad in 1977…all of 12 years old,
telling him that Star Wars was going to be another run-of-the-mill
sci-fi flick. I refused to waste my money going to see it. About six
months into the first run, an old friend (we had moved away a while
back) called and invited me to go see Star Wars. He said it was a
good movie, so I agreed to go see it. Needless to say, the rest is
history. I was blown away by the story and the special effects. I
thought, “This is great!” To this day, I ardently maintain that I
saw the scene with Red Leader and Biggs in the Massassi Temple on
Yavin 4, just before the Battle of Yavin. It’s one of the few things
I remember vividly!
Q: When did you first found the Completely Unofficial Star Wars
Encyclopedia? Where was it hosted? Did it have the same name?
A: The history here goes like this: I was 12 in 1977. By the time
“Return of the Jedi” came out, I was a senior in high school. ROTJ
was OK, but I hated the Ewoks. I had become “too mature” for the
film, and pretty much left Star Wars behind me as I went to college.
Four years of college went by… I graduated in 1987, got a job in
North Carolina with IBM, got married, and celebrated the birth of my
first daughter in 1991. During a routine trip to the library, I
found “Heir to the Empire” by Timothy Zahn. The love of Star Wars
overcame my so-called maturity, and I checked it out. As I read
through it, I encountered terms like “Lancer-class Frigate” and
“Barabel” that I hadn’t encountered before. I started writing down
the things that I didn’t recognize, in the hopes of eventually
learning what they were. It was about this time that I was working
on IBM’s ill-fated router products, and I found out about the wealth
of Star Wars resources on the Internet. It was then that I learned
of the entire West End Games RPG series, as well as the “Dark
Empire” comics. I was swiftly and completely drawn back into the
Star Wars universe. My list of strange terms continued to grow,
until it filled several small binders. I decided that it was time to
start doing research on the computer, saving my growing encyclopedia
in text files on a diskette. Then two diskettes, and then three. I
eventually started collecting information in a WordPerfect document,
and used its ancient HTML converter to create web pages with it. In
those dark days, there were a handful of “encyclopedias” on the
Internet, but nothing with any kind of completeness. I decided that
the time had come for a truly comprehensive Star Wars encyclopedia.
However, it literally took hours just to generate a letter or two of
HTML from WodPerfect! Back then, the only Internet connection I had
was AOL, which only offered a few megabytes of storage. Thus, the
original online editions (circa 1997) only had about nine letters
available! At this time, I knew that LucasFilm was starting to crack
down on fan sites (what a mistake!, so I decided that my
encyclopedia would be “completely unofficial” and would not have any
pictures or images. Thus, The Completely Unofficial Star Wars
Encyclopedia was born.
Q: What first gave you the inspiration to start such an extensive
website? What was your original motivation?
A: I had been online for a year or so when I learned that Steve
Sansweet was starting to work on the “official” Star Wars
encyclopedia. I managed to make contact with Mr. Sansweet through
his assistant, Josh Ling, after learning of their working
relationship through the newsgroups. We exchanged a series of phone
calls in which I offered to help in any way possible, but at the
time he was looking for “a few hundred key entries,” where the CUSWE
had more than 10,000! We ended up parting ways without any kind of
deal, but I realized that I could fill in the gaps that the
“official” encyclopedia might leave out. It was also about this time
that I got fed up with AOL’s web space limitations, and started
hunting for a host. The guys over at MosEisley.com (which is now
pretty much defunct, unfortunately) agreed to host me with no
strings attached. Their generous offer allowed me to have the
complete encyclopedia online at all times… all 15,000 entries in
late 1998. The problem was, as The Phantom Menace came and went, I
was continually exceeding the meager bandwidth of MosEisley.com. The
guys there were continually adjusting things to help keep up, but it
wasn’t working. After TPM, I was also pretty burned out as well, so
I took a break. It was during this time that Michael Potts, the
owner of the TimeTales website (http://www.theforce.net/timetales)
began urging me to join the staff of TheForce.Net. With their help,
I was able to rekindle not only my own love of Star Wars but the
website as well. As of the new edition (Version 5.1, which came out
in July 2003), I have almost 38,000 entries!
Q: How long have you been administrating the CUSWE? When did you
first start?
A: As I said, it all began online in late 1997. I have been the sole
administrator of the site from the day of its inception, migrating
it from a pure text document (its original form), to a WordPerfect
document, then a MS Word document, to its current incarnation as an
MS Access database. Although much of the design work is my own, I
couldn’t have done it without help. Matt and Stan at MosEisley.com
helped with a lot of formatting and HTML issues, then Anthony and
Brittany at TF.N helped with getting the database created and
linking in the pictures and sounds. I was pretty good at writing
JavaServer Pages (JSPs), but TF.N was running a Microsoft server
using ActiveServer Pages (ASPs). It took about a year before I was
comfortable with ASP, but it’s worked out pretty well.
Q: What are some of the sources of information that you use on your
site?
A: Although I have received e-mail claiming that the only thing that
I should have in the encyclopedia is information from the films, I
have chosen to use anything the LucasFilm Limited considers Star
Wars in compiling the encyclopedia. The films are obviously the
basis (which is why I added the ‘advanced search’ option of finding
information specific to the films themselves), but the Expanded
Universe provides so much more detail and color. For a while, I
resisted using the old Marvel Comics series, but with the releases
of the first “Essential Guide to Characters” and the reprinting of
most (if not all) of the comics by Dark Horse Comics, I’ve begun
adding the Marvel stuff back in. It gets a (sic) but hairy when you
encounter something that’s 100% apocryphal (Jabba the Hut drawn as a
Nimbanel!, but I use artistic license to write things into the
encyclopedia with certain grains of salt. Phrases like “Rumors
persist…” or “Some historians believed…” allow me to include a lot
of stuff that many readers don’t consider ‘canon’.
Q: Have you had any help with the site since it first began?
A: Once, and only once! I had a reader send me a bunch of
information he claimed was from “Galaxy Guide 6: Tramp Freighters”.
I didn’t have a copy of that WEG book yet, so I started adding his
stuff. Turns out that half the stuff he provided was from his own
RPG campaign! I spent an edition or two removing the erroneous
stuff. From that point on, I’ve done all the information collection
myself. That said, I have had plenty of readers agree to loan me
their WEG books and/or comics, so that I could read them and gather
information. If you look at the main encyclopedia page, there are
nearly twenty people who agreed to loan me stuff – sight unseen,
without any knowledge of me or my practices! My grateful thanks go
out to them all, especially Nan Galliher, who was the first to loan
her books out. She was a pioneer!
Q: Honestly. Which Star Wars movie is your favorite? And what do you
think of the New Trilogy versus the Old Trilogy?
A: My favorite is still The Empire Strikes Back. It was a film in
which so much happened to make the Galactic Civil War seem real –
the defeat of the rebel forces on Hoth, the treachery of Darth Vader
in forcing Lando Calrissian into a bad deal, the depth of the
universe by introducing Boba Fett and the bounty hunters. I still
remember standing in line with my brother to see it, and getting
goosebumps when the AT-AT walkers came over the horizon to attack
Echo Base. It made you want to see the next film, even though I
didn’t like it. ;-) The scene which had a tight view of just the
heads of the AT-ATs, looking around for targets (only on-screen for
about 3 seconds), is my all-time favorite.
As for the trilogy question, it’s a tough one. My answer is
temptered by the fact that I’m doing the encyclopedia, since it’s
been more fun gathering information as soon as I can from the new
films, versus gathering it slowly from the originals. Obviously, the
new trilogy is visually much more appealing, but the youthful fun of
the originals makes them my favorites. Heck, I saw the first Star
Wars 27 times, using my own money!
Q: Do you find you like Star Wars more or less since you began the
project?
A: Definitely more, although as I mentioned there was a point where
I was pretty burned out trying to keep up with things. I enjoy
exploring the depth of the Star Wars universe afforded by the
novels, RPGs, computer games, comics, etc. Despite the few
individuals who will only swear by the films, I enjoy reading
everything I can get my hands on, hoping to find another weird
nugget of information (ten credits if anyone can identify who Xad
the Falleen was, without heading to the encyclopedia website!.
Q: Do you receive quite a lot of fan mail concerning your
achievement? How about nitpicks, do you get a lot of those? How
about additions?
A: Most folks who e-mail or otherwise correspond as pretty
appreciative about the encyclopedia. Readers use it in their RPG
campaigns as a sort of bible, since it goes well beyond the
“official” encyclopedia and collects information in a format they
can easily access. (I’m sure LFL isn’t happy with this … probably
why they executed the character known as “Vob Bitas” on the old
HoloNetNews.com for cheating!!! There are a small group of readers
who want to help me make sure everything is accurate and complete,
and I welcome their comments and suggestions. Flamers I pretty much
ignore at this point… it’s useless to try and engage them in
conversation. As for additions, I generally ask readers to make sure
they provide a source reference, so I can check it against the “real
thing.” (As I said, I’ve been burned before.)
Q: What are your thoughts on the canon/official structure of
Lucasfilm? As you understand it, how does the “EU” fit into the Star
Wars universe, and how has Episode 2 affected that position?
A: As I stated earlier, I used to think that there was a clear
distinction between ‘canon’ and ‘non-canon’, and it centered on what
source material was actually trademarked/copyrighted by LFL.
Obviously, for a long time the films were the only true ‘canon’, and
for the most part they continue to be. George Lucas, however,
changed the perception (at least in my mind) about what’s ‘canon’
when he released the Special Editions. By altering the ‘canon’ from
the truly original films, he allowed the EU to become canon by
default. Mike Beidler came up with a good definition of ‘canon’
versus ‘non-canon’ on his website (The Star Wars Literature
Compendium -http://www.geocities.com/mike_beidler/starwarsliteraturecompendium/compendium.html).
“When a particular work is considered "official," it means that
although the events in this work didn't necessarily happen, future
authors must take "what came before" into account in order to
maintain continuity throughout the entire gambit of Star Wars
literature.” LFL has made a tremendous investment in ensuring
issuess like continuity and connection to the films as well as the
EU, so they have – by default – make an investment in the
‘canonicity’ of the EU. That’s good enough for me to consider the EU
as canon as the films.
That said, I continue to find inconsistencies in various works. I
try to point them out when I find them, but I also try to fit them
into the entire Star Wars universe with caveats such as “Some
historians believe…” or “It was rumored that…” |
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