Doug, do you know the skills of the people involved at hobbes today? or you are just telling about your experience some time ago. I don't think we must disqualify nobody, specially when it is a community effort and nobody is paying hobbes to be online.
No, I don't know, for sure, but it is pretty obvious that at each semester change, there is a new person learning the ropes. Sometimes, HOBBES goes for a whole semester with nothing happening. I expect that there is an overall supervisor who makes sure that nothing too serious happens. The actual person in charge is probably the guy who asked for contributions, to upgrade the system, a few years ago.
Your structure looks okay, but there are probably a lot of different ways to do it, and all of them would be equally acceptable. Something that follows the current setup would probably be the easiest to implement. Some cleanup would help more.
Shame they don't have a LEO archive as that was the other large OS/2 repository before they lost everything in a crash
Hopefully, HOBBES has a good backup plan in place. Since HOBBES itself is only a small part of the whole site, I expect that it is well looked after. It is reassuring that there are a couple of mirror sites.
The classic example is the link Return to homepage at the bottom of each webpage which does *not* return to homepage
Hmmm. I never noticed that, since I never use it. Yes, things like that should be fixed.
I can probably add them for OS/2's access if there is interest
Ian, you have a great site, but general access is a bit awkward, although not difficult. I think your site could be used as a template for any changes at HOBBES, but I still question whether such changes are actually necessary (some cleanup would be nice).
While we discuss backups, and mirrors, I assume that you have a good backup plan in place, but what happens if a small asteroid clobbers your residence? Is there anyone mirroring your site? (I know it is "forbidden", but exceptions can be made). It would be a shame to lose your site too.