I don't doubt you understand all the implications of adding cards to your set, and I definitely admire your willingness to devote your time to updating your card set(s).
Right now, every designer who makes a card set has to put in those 24 hours a month (or more) to keep their card sets up to date. They also have to put in time/energy keeping their templates working, and potentially making improvements to those templates. By my admittedly hazy memory, there are at least six different designers working on card sets - which means six different designers all spending as much time as you are to get caught up to the current releases, as well as six designers who all have to put in time to keep their sets up to date.
The idea behind the UCS is to make it so all that duplicated data-entry effort is eliminated. Instead of 6+ designers each updating their separate game files, ALL of the designers can use the communal game file as soon as it's updated once. The advantages are many:
- Each new power will only be transcribed once when any new sourcebook is released.
- Every participating designer will have access to the most recent game file available, without having to expend any real effort at all - allowing them to devote more time to making new templates or improving existings ones
- End users will be able to use whichever style they prefer, without having to pick a different set just because it has more cards available.
- By having multiple templates available for the UCS, it will encourage more people to contribute to the UCS project, which in theory will keep it more up-to-date than any individual could hope to match
- With more people contributing, the UCS should be much less vulnerable to obsolecence. While you may be more than willing to devote 24 hours/month to keep your card sets up to date, what happens 6 months or a year from now, when your enthusiasm wanes or real life starts to intrude? By having more contributors to the communal project, someone else can step in and pick up the slack or carry on from where you leave off.
Distilled to its essence, the UCS is about making a team effort, pooling all our resources to make a better product for everyone involved (data-entry, designers, end users). It may also have the side effect of making it easier to incorporate new features - like the DDI character card generation project.
I don't mean to diminish your efforts - far from it, I think you've done an excellent job - but I (we?) are really hoping to harness your enthusiasm to help contribute to a goal I think will be an even greater benefit to the entire 4E gaming community.