Homepage latest showroom entry display too cluttered with non model entries?

[ChrisB]

Kinda related to the resurrection of the thread on classification of

models, but different enough to warrant its own thread I think [].

Personal opinion coming up here so please just take it purely as that and note that I post it in order to generate a bit of reasoned discussion on this, not to criticise anyone in particular [].

Anyone else feel that over the last few months the latest showroom entries area on the homepage seems to be filling up with pictures of things like spare parts trees, motors and misc "stuff" that are kind of diluting the new model entries, making it easy to push them a few pages down the search where they can be easily missed (the cars / models that is).

Don't get me wrong its great to have photos of hard to find parts trees, motors, decals, but is there any way to implement a way for users to "filter out" for example "Misc" categories or "parts" categories? Or is that people are just misclassifying things as models that are in reality something completely different?

Has anyone else noticed this / see it as an issue, or am I in a minority of one [:$]. If so I'm quite happy to accept that, but I am interested to hear what others think.....

I love seeing peoples new models / custom creations / non Tamiya models, but sometimes I miss things because someone has added 25 showroomsworth of entries of dampers or motors.....

As I say this is not directed at anyone in particular, just something I feel is a more general trend in recent months.

Cheers,

Chris

[Stefan(2)]

Chris, can't say nothing more that i fully agree with you.

 

Stefan

[Hillman666]

  I agree too. I like to see rare parts and decals etc but maybe it would be best to list all decals or parts in one showroom entry and not have a showroom entry for each set of decals. You can get 6 photos in one showroom entry and if your clever with your photo editing maybe a few more. This would allow people to view decals and parts but would not hog all the slots for latest entries.

Just my thoughts on it. []

[OCD]

I can't find a reason to complain about this at all...

Showrooms are for just that: showing your RC related photos --

sometimes Tamiya, sometimes not.  Even if they're non-models, I

find no reason why I shouldn't post them in there.  Should we be

posting are parts in TC photos? You've also suggested that the parts-

etc. be edited into one entry... Does this lack of organisation somehow

improve things?

[Personally I think people are just jealous[:|] about the amount of homepage exposure they get]

Harsh?  About as harsh as being critical of members posting photos

of their hard-earned collections IMO.  Come-on guys!  Lets

spend a little less time being so picky, and start uploading photos...

Isn't that what we're doing here?

-Steve

[bangstick]

I think what chris b is trying to get across is it seems a bit unfair if someone spends say a year restoring a car to its former glory only to find it gets pushed off the homepage by someone posting 30 pics of some obscure parts trees which may have been the result of a single ebay purchase. Im not saying posting pics of parts trees or whatever is wrong i just think it could do with a seperate catagory that someone  who was into parts could check it out. It is a hard one though because the action event photos also push stuff off the homepage but i love seeing cars put through their paces.

[ChrisB]

As I said in my original post, I don't have anything against people having showroom entries with parts and decals etc. I was just wondering if there was some way to allow users to filter whats displayed under new showroom entries, or to filter them out from the latest showroom entries on the home page.

To re-iterate - I have nothing against people adding parts and the like as showroom entries - they all add to the useful resource that is TC.

From a personal standpoint though I think that recently this type of entry has tended to push interesting model / complete kit entries off the first page of the site, or the first page of the showroom entries section too quickly which has meant I've missed a few interesting showroom entries that I only found later on.

I put this forward for discussion just to see if anyone else felt the same, but its good to hear all sides of the arguments for and against [].

As to being picky........ Well maybe, but I think the old adage that sometimes "less is more" is often worth bearing in mind. 6 carefully chosen shots for a showroom entry can often convey as much if not more information as 6 seperate showroom entries with a lot of duplication. I'm not really too bothered about how long a new entry I put in stays on the homepage, (its usually pretty short anyway), but I do find I sometimes miss an entry of interest if it gets pushed too far down the new showroom entry pages too quickly.

I often have many, many more photos for each model in my showroom that I can display, but I make myself choose the 6 best ones to show as much useful information as possible without resorting to multiple entries (which is against the TC guidelines anyway I think).

Cheers,

Chris

[DJTheo]

Agree a custom filter would be great for different categories, i.e. Tamiya only, or action/event photos only etc.

Cheers

[richytanimal]

A filter would definitely be a good idea. More work for Chris[]

[tarznatz]

I agree with Chris, the amount of useless photos being displayed of late has increased exponentially it seems. I want to see cars, not parts.

One laughable example - someone posted separate entries for the same exact motors, three times. Whats that all about then?? Are we dealing with idiots here? All you have to say is you have three of these things in one entry, or better yet, just take pictures of all three at once. Or even better yet IMHO, don't list parts unless you intend to sell them or they are really really really rare and hard to find.

 

[OCD]

someone posted separate entries for the same exact motors, three times. Whats that all about then?? Are we dealing with idiots here?

 

Nice attitude.

I suppose if I upload a photo you do not like, that makes me an itiot as well?

Is it really all that offensive?

I would undrstand if it was about people uploading non-RC pictures, but this not the case.. AND if

a photo is deamed "boring" or " non-rare"  (why does this matter

anyhow?)  who should be the judge of whether it belongs on the

homepage or not? 

I find the rules in place are adequate,

unless that makes me an idiot; in that case I'll make sure I get approval from y'all before posting.

Cheers!

-Steve

[tarznatz]

To me it is idiotic and a waste of the person's time who is posting, as well as a waste of time to all the viewers of the web page, to post the exact same thing three times. You can defend your position all you want and have it your way too, since the rules do not forbid it, but i am entitled to my opinion, and that is that such repetitive and pointless posting is idiotic.

I am not totally against parts entries, asI like to see RARE/Hard to find or CUSTOM MADE parts as well, but I don't enjoy being bombarded with piece after piece of someone's ever growing collection of bits and pieces in their boxes in the basement. I can throw 10-15 boxes of parts on this site too, would you want to see them?

So, does it take too much for people to ask themselves a few basic questions before wasting time, bandwidth and server space, starting with the most obvious question : "is this worth the time and server space?" and ending with "does this have a point?" ; )

 

[OCD]

I guess I've made my point.

Tarznatz - if you go into the showroom entries logue, you'll see all of the recent entries to the Club:

If you look closely, you'll notice that out of the last 200 uploads,

less than 10% of them are non-car entries.  (I consider event

photos containing a car, as a "car" photo)

Is this the glut of entries that are preventing you from enjoying the homepage?

If you want state your opinion, fine.  Just please refrain from calling people idiots untill you've considered that facts.

As you said yourself -- everyone is entiltled to an opinion, even if it is contrary to your own.

Peace

-Steve

[tarznatz]

This issue has been a problem for a longer time than the last 200 posts - you are only looking at a snapshot in time with that amount of posts...

[OCD]

If you want to count back further, be my guest.

You will find that it produces the same result.  I'm sure Chris

could produce a statistic, but as far as I can tell, the "problem" your

refering to rarely exceeds 10% of the daily posts.

-Steve

[netsmithUK]

As a moderators/administrators we are not in a position to make judgements on what is interesting or not, thats just too subjective. What one person finds interesting another finds boring, Its not just parts its just about any aspect of the hobby, some people love NIB but then others find them pointless and often post "why do we need 20 pictures of NIB supershots" etc. You mention restored models taking 2 years to do, again some people will love them, others will skip over them looking for the latest models. Its just a matter of taste.

Bottom line is nobody pays to surf this site or look through the entries - looking is free. The people that do pay for the site are the subscribers and they pay for thier own showroom to show off thier collections. As long as its Tamiya and/or RC related what there collection is then what they put into it is up to them.  We can't make rules about people not entering items others have entered, because the newer item might have better pictures or date. We can't make rules about what is "interesting/rare" or not because its all subjective.

To be honest the showroom is now so huge its best off searching for what you want rather than just flicking through looking for items.

All that said I accept that maybe I need to make the home page more configurable so subscribers can pick and choose more what they want to see, eg parts, ebay items, particular sellers or members etc etc. I'll certainly look into this - the only reason I haven't rushed into it before is that, the last bit of development I did like this, the "tamiya only" option was only ever used by 12 members - thats quite a bit of development work for just a dozen people to use. The problem is if you turn on these filters you are never quite sure what you are missing.[]

For the record the current percentage of items listed as parts,motors or radio gear is 4.8%

Chris

[ChrisB]

I really wanted to focus on the "configurability" possibilities in my original post, but I guess I didn't phrase it as well as I could have [:$]

As a few of you have said one person's swan is another person's ugly duckling.... I really don't want to impose my preferences on others, hence some kind of member specific filter idea for the home page. The last thing I am interested in is trying to tell people what they can and can't post - they pay their subs like I do so are entitled to use their showroom as they see fit within the rules [H]

However it sounds like a lot of work for Chris and if only 12 people used it last time then I can understand why its probably a low priority when he's probably got a huge list of things on the TC "ToDo list" [].

Its good to get some hard facts on the numbers, and it just goes to show you can't always trust your gut instinct. 4.8% is not a great deal of the showroom entries, I must have just happened to time my visits at times when the parts content seemed higher on the homepage.

Cheers,

Chris

[netsmithUK]

np - like i said you only suggested something I had been thinking of already for different reasons.

The amount of information passing through the site is just too much to squeeze into the homepage and make it relevent to all people. Something needs to change, with the likes of live.com, my ebay and googles personalisation options it seems to be this months hot thing, so I'm always happy to jump on any teckie band wagon going. []

I'll start doing some homework as the best way to go about it.

Cheers

Chris

 

[tarznatz]

i used to use the tamiya only filter but stopped using it because i was missing stuff. however, a filter that would eliminate "parts" or "misc" or any possible combination you could create would be much more useful. Just a suggestion, which I am sure requires more work and headaches, but could be something to be implemented in the future.

Also, sorry for any unkind remarks in previous posts. they don;t come out of my head unkind, but they look it when read someties!

Pt

 

[ChrisB]

I think the whole "personalisation" / "configuration" of your web experience comes and goes over the years. I remember a good few years ago when web portals for grouping together personalised content first appeared there were some really nice ideas floating around.

Sony Ericsson had a mobile friendly configurable homepage for registered users (this what about the time when WAP was going to be the next big thing a few years back []). Anyway it let you arrange news and weather "portlets" or "windows" on your hompage on a grid layout along with other content types. You could then access the homepage via a conventional web browser or get a WAP version of the same page on your phone.

Personalisation is a nice to have, but I think as long as the high quality of content continues to keep rolling in, people will keep visting TC, personalisation or not!!

I think personally I'd place a higher priority on things like developing the HowTo section so people can submit articles with pics more easily and maybe developing a review process that allows you to delegate the review of submissions to others? The HowTo's that are up on TC already  are excellent, but it would be nice to see a few more up there.

Also I know there was some discussion about project showrrom entries or a seperate section allowing people to document their builds better with more pics mixed in with the text for example.

Having said all that, I still find myself on here pretty much every day at some point, and thats a testament to what TC is at the moment - the best online source of Tamiya related information and advice []

Chris

[backtomyroots]

Interesting, my only input is that for visitors coming to the site for the first time - they may be unlikely to see actual r/c models in the showroom updates section with all th extra little "goodies" being added.  I think if they are just passing by they may not use the "more" button to see all the latest additions which could be the "one" that gets 'em to stick around a little bit longer.  Me however, I check the site so often I seem to have the showroom additions memorized [].

[Bigwheels_inc]

i know some times i would like a backway into posting pics in my showroom so if i want to build up a record of a project etc with out it going through the homepage i could

it may sound strange but some of us want to put cars in our showrooms with out having to always show them off on the homepage maybe because we just want a record of the cars we own or because we dont like the car but think others might when they do a search

reacently i had a ford f150 ranger xlt i didnt like it and sold it pretty quick on ebay but then when someone noticed the earlier and later ones had diffrent sized wheel archs they did a count up to see how many on tc had the big archs and how many had the small archs

as i say usefull to some people but not my thing

maybe people could enter parts, cars, etc this way if they wanted to

just an idea hope i havnt upset anyone

cheers

pete

[netsmithUK]

lol - it takes a lot more than that to upset people around here!

I'll take what you said on board and look at it next time I review the showroom/homepage code.

cheers

chris

[scoobs]

Dunno about anyone else but I just *long* to see the homepage filled with pictures of battteries and motors. If you have 83 different batteries, I want to see pics of them *all*, in high res, from multiple angles.

Preferably a kitchen shot but failing that anything will do.

Beep beep goes the irony detector... []

Time for my pills...

[OCD]

How about a picture of your irony detector?

Seems like those are pretty rare around here now days []

[scoobs]

I was all set to, but when I try and add a picture I get:

"You do not have permission to upload or link to files. Please contact your system administrator".

In any case, it's now out on loan to a couple of guys who had more need of it than I did...