I have an idea on this, somewhere along the lines of Beladona's response.
Hwap /locate U'Cha
the response would be from everyone with a 1 if they have it in thier DB's. Then the others that don't have it in thier DB can then request it from one of the many people that responded (get an array of users back and randomly select one so we don't bombard the same user over and over). This would allow others ingame to quickly populate thier database and cut down on traffic in the end (possibly).
the only down side would be trying to figure out, other then /w, a way to directly communicate with the party you want to get the info from. Perhaps the response, instead of being 1, can be a channel that is created automatically, listened on for 10-15 seconds, and then disconnected from. so the response could be [channel#] [chanpass].
hwap /locate u'cha
zhala 5 abacadaba
shakalaka 8 xyzz
zhala creates chan 5 w/ pass (waits for 10 seconds, then closes it out)
shakalaka creates chan 8 w/ pass (waits for 10 seconds, then closes it out)
one channel can specifically be used to communicate queries, the response channel could be tricky
