For example, catalog of shared facilities/equipment across groups is a useful thing to have, but it can be centralised without centralising group web sites (and constructing a list by simply aggregating lists of what individual groups have will miss facilities shared at the department/division/university level).
I trust my university to continue providing web hosting. If I were to switch to your service, what assurace would I have that you:
- will continue operating for (at a minimum) several decades
- will continue providing the service for free, and not start charging
- will not add adverts
- will not redesign or remove a feature that I rely on
- not loose data (how should I backup a Labit page?)
as you grow, your costs increase, and network effects cause people to feel 'locked-in'?
The 'lack of sane structure' and 'redundant effort in designing' problems can be solved by creating good templates that researchers can use to create sites hosted by their own universities. I think that most lab pages that I've encountered have had a reasonable structure, and in many cases switching to the Labit structure would be a regression rather than an improvement:
- several pages are empty for many of the showcased sites, suggesting that they are not necessary, but cannot be removed (e.g. Gallery)
- details of people on the 'Members' page are displayed only on a modal panel after clicking on a person's face. It also doesn't seem to show the destinations of alumni, despite the medium article saying you want to help career planning.
- it is common (at least in certain fields) for papers to have a dedicated page on the group's website, grouping together the abstract, embedded demo video, links to supplementary material, etc. This doesn't appear possible with Labit.