New MLP collector site. New Question

[lovesbabysquirmy]

Yes!  We can always use another MLP collectors' site! 

[Beth3346]

Thank you for all of the feedback. And thank you to everyone who contributed photos for my old site 

I do plan to add a lot more features including accessory tracking and more search and filtering features.

As for the countries I agree that listing ponies as belonging to a single country doesn't really work.  Especially with the European ponies.  I like the idea of associating ponies with multiple countries.  Maybe "sold in" or "region"?

I also eventually plan on allowing site members to make updates to the information on the site.  I'm not sure if it will be open to all site members or if I'll create editor roles.

[Baby Sugarberry]

I would not.

I don't care to have anyone else in the world to know what I've got, and I know all my ponies by heart.  I'd also be wary of committing a significant chunk of time to an online database that has no guarantee of existing in 1, 5, or 10 years, nor now extensively it'd be updated or how accurate.  Crowd-sourced editing is nice in theory, but the MLP collector community doesn't seem very active in that role thus far.

That said, I do wish you well on your journey, maybe you'll beat the odds!

[CinnamonOnions]

I love love LOVE every aspect of this!!! I definetly will sign up when you get this project more finished!

[Beth3346]

I would not.

I don't care to have anyone else in the world to know what I've got, and I know all my ponies by heart.  I'd also be wary of committing a significant chunk of time to an online database that has no guarantee of existing in 1, 5, or 10 years, nor now extensively it'd be updated or how accurate.  Crowd-sourced editing is nice in theory, but the MLP collector community doesn't seem very active in that role thus far.

That said, I do wish you well on your journey, maybe you'll beat the odds!

Thanks I appreciate the feedback.   I will have a feature that allows members to make their collections and wishlists private.  Also collections and wishlists will not be visible to anyone who is not a member.

[mlp4me]

As for the countries I agree that listing ponies as belonging to a single country doesn't really work.  Especially with the European ponies.  I like the idea of associating ponies with multiple countries.  Maybe "sold in" or "region"?

I like the words exclusive, selective / limited release area(s)... We can't make everyone happy, but we can try, right?

[chateaushelton]

I wasn't able to get on and see anything more than the home page - but YES! I would definitely use this 

[Taffeta]

I think a checklist is a great idea. It's something that a lot of people would get really good use out of, especially the ability to use to track collections.

I have only looked at the G1 section, because it's the only section I know enough about to comment! LOL f I have one constructive suggestion, it's geographical.

It would be helpful to to move away from the binary sense that ponies are US or European. That disincludes a lot of collectors and makes it confusing for many more, because of how ponies were actually sold. It is a big job to figure out where each pony was actually sold, so it would probably be less work to just take away the regional aspect.

Also Europe isn't a country. That kind of made me uncomfortable

One other suggestion, purely cosmetic - is there a way to make either a search system viable or a way to get more easily between sets?

Silly Taf. Everyone knows Europe is a city. I mean I'm sure we all paid attention in geometry class.

*throws fakies*

The reason I suggested removing geography is because it's a huge amount of work to do properly and we're still only at the brink of really understanding how distribution happened in different parts of Europe. So it's invariably going to either take the OP forever to get every single pony right, or it's going to leave gaps or inaccuracies.

Besides, I would like to think we should have moved beyond classifying ponies by imaginary geographical binaries. We all know by now that different countries had different releases from one another and some of those intersected. But for a collecting purpose, the more important factor is identifying and adding to the list what pony you have. You probably know where it came from because of where you bought it from, so geography becomes a bit redundant.

And I admit, I want to try and gradually remove emphasis on the dependence on the DV US system of classification, because it leaves so many gaps and problems for classifying ponies all over the rest of the world (whose releases are way more complex than the simple US release). It would genuinely be better to omit all geography than to try and catalogue ponies in the US timeline because so many places have release timelines that have no relationship to the US one. The Wiki has this problem and it's hard to resolve because of how the Wiki has set up. It just makes sense to avoid the problem at the start.

For the record, I welcome as many pony collecting or information sites out there as people are willing to make, because it helps with cross-referencing information. I just wish that more websites would move away from the US timeline year system because it is so problematic for non US collectors to manage or ID their collection when half the ponies they grew up with are in a completely separate section of the site from the other ponies they bought in the same year. You have to know your pony is international to know to look it up in an international section, but how are you going to do that if you don't know who your pony is?

For example, if you grew up in the UK with both Cherries Jubilee and Snowflake and you have the backcards for both from the same set, if you were to go looking them up on most ID sites, what you'd find would be that Cherries Jubilee would appear under year 3 as a "US" pony, whereas Snowflake is somewhere completely different as an 'International' pony. (And if your CJ was from that set, she wouldn't look like the year 3 one anyway.)

The other problem is that there's a tendency to tie years to the release of the US version of a pony. For example, Shady and Buttons etc from the movie star set get tied into 1985 because that's when the SS set came out - but they're from 1987.

I suggest rather than geography, you focus on actual release years in a more general way and include all ponies from each region in that year, and then maybe do as others suggest and include a rough list of countries or regions. I am tending to go with "Some European countries" and "North America" rather a lot as general terms in my page edits at the moment.

[katrine2309]

This look good - it looks like you’ve put a lot of work into this! I would love a site like this, although as it is currently set up it wouldn’t really work for me for most of my ponies.... I’ll try to Explain why below.

To be honest, I was a little confused about both country and year. To me, country should be i.e. Hong Kong, China or Italy. The country that is marked on their hooves. The same with year. Change it to the year the mold was made. This makes it much more easier to work on identifying the pony you actually have, and it is the same for all.

It’s confusing for most Non-US collectors to use the US release plan as a way to map, identify and structure our collection. But that doesn’t mean that the information should not be included of course. When browsing and looking at the brief info on each pony - I would prefer to only have information that helps me actually identify the pony. Clicking in further on the picture, you can add information on where and when the ponies were released.

My main issue with especially country as it is right now is that it suggests that a lot of the ponies are US ponies, only because they were released in the US. That is not true. Most of these ponies are not only US ponies- they are released on equal terms in a lot of other countries. It would be the same as if I would put up Truly as a Norwegian release. I could, because she was released here, but it would be gravely misleading as she was also released in Sweden, South Africa and Australia. It confuses people, and perhaps especially all those collectors who is desperetaly trying to understand release patterns outside the US. When it comes to year, many of the ponies from other countries release plan was released very differently from the US. Both in different sets and in different years. This adds to the confusion, and is the reason why I suggest to put the year from the hooves on the brief info page on each pony instead of the year of the US release

I’m sorry for «nagging» about this over and over again. I can understand that it might seem a little too much over something that might be perceived as unimportant in the long run. But I’ve spent years myself trying to understand my childhood collection and ponies picked up in the wild based on US information. The main issue always actually being country of release and year of release. I still come across collectors outside US who tries to work within the structure of the US release plan, because they still belieber this to be the correct one for them as well and it is demotivating and messy because it is not the same as the rest of the world.

It is of course your website, and you should of course put it up as you like. But if you do decide to keep US as country instead of the country on the hooves, could you perhaps put in a disclaimer that your site is using a US centric model in identifying ponies? At least that might help to increase the understanding that it is different ways of structuring releases and ponies

[Taffeta]

I’m sorry for «nagging» about this over and over again. I can understand that it might seem a little too much over something that might be perceived as unimportant in the long run. But I’ve spent years myself trying to understand my childhood collection and ponies picked up in the wild based on US information. The main issue always actually being country of release and year of release. I still come across collectors outside US who tries to work within the structure of the US release plan, because they still belieber this to be the correct one for them as well and it is demotivating and messy because it is not the same as the rest of the world.

You and I think and feel the same on this. I think it's genuinely the case that a lot of folk don't realise how different releases are and that it's not one integral set of dates and sets but a whole myriad of them that intersect and weave a complex web.

I know some people in the UK don't bother about how things are classified or don't mind classifying their stuff by the US methodology, but I also don't like seeing my childhood ponies labelled as US ponies, when they're clearly not. MLP belongs to all of us in all different places. I think saying it is unimportant is to basically say that all but the US release is unimportant, and I am pretty sure nobody is saying that. I think it's just that the information is harder to find, and people genuinely don't know. It's a self-fulfilling prophesy, because sites tend to follow the templates of other sites, which all use the same system. And people, not finding any other option, then follow suit, and so it goes on. (And if you break with that tradition, you get your information questioned or called hearsay, or you get told to change your system to conform with other sites.

 I speak from experience!

I love the concept of the site. I just wish that sites would look at things more globally, so collectors had more choice about how they wanted to classify their ponies (and also find out how their ponies fit in to the bigger picture).

[Beth3346]

I’m sorry for «nagging» about this over and over again. I can understand that it might seem a little too much over something that might be perceived as unimportant in the long run. But I’ve spent years myself trying to understand my childhood collection and ponies picked up in the wild based on US information. The main issue always actually being country of release and year of release. I still come across collectors outside US who tries to work within the structure of the US release plan, because they still belieber this to be the correct one for them as well and it is demotivating and messy because it is not the same as the rest of the world.

It is of course your website, and you should of course put it up as you like. But if you do decide to keep US as country instead of the country on the hooves, could you perhaps put in a disclaimer that your site is using a US centric model in identifying ponies? At least that might help to increase the understanding that it is different ways of structuring releases and ponies

Thank you and don't worry, you're not nagging.

I do agree that the U.S. centric model does not seem to work well for non-US collectors and for organizing ponies that do not conform to the traditional US release schedule.  I do have a field on each pony called "origin" which is the country where the pony was manufactured based on their hoof marks.  This would conform to the Hong Kong, China, Italy structure.  Maybe it would make more sense to display that more prominently on the site.  And instead of having a category called "country" use "released in" or "sold in" to document where the ponies were sold as far as we know.

I do think a lot of this information should come with a disclaimer.  I was born the same year that MLPs were first sold so I certainly don't have firsthand knowledge of release dates.  I'm not sure about the year category.  Maybe its not really important either?

This is very helpful feedback and even though there is a lot of information on the site I can update it fairly easily.  Please don't hesitate to provide your opinions or feel like you're nagging.

I'm a professional web developer and i'm very used to getting feedback.  You will not hurt my feelings

[Taffeta]

If you need any help with UK release info then let me know. Although I did promise to help the Wiki people this summer and then I had to move and some other stuff and never got around to it. But I will try. I think its an organisational question as to how much organisation you use, and if you use it, how you deal with contradictions. Most especially ponies in split sets (where some are sold in one place and not another) and ponies who have different names/set organisation.

I was also born in 1982, but I corresponded with Hasbro UK a bit in 1995 and got some information from them about release years according to what material they had in their own records. And I kind of built up from that with collecting information since then. I think we have maybe too much UK information compared to the rest of Europe because finding UK information goes back to the nineties, and we speak English as well, like the US, so it's easily transmitted. It's maybe harder with some other places because it's so far from the release years now - but I feel like we're getting some more good information lately on releases in some other places and so it must be possible to put something together that's at least some way helpful for people outside the US.

I'm working on messing with my site in between all the other stuff I have on at the moment because I actually want to try and incorporate more information about Europe, even though it's kind of outside the perameters of both my expertise and my geography. This forum is a great space to pick up information from other people and people are happy to share.

[katrine2309]

Thank you and don't worry, you're not nagging.

I do agree that the U.S. centric model does not seem to work well for non-US collectors and for organizing ponies that do not conform to the traditional US release schedule.  I do have a field on each pony called "origin" which is the country where the pony was manufactured based on their hoof marks.  This would conform to the Hong Kong, China, Italy structure.  Maybe it would make more sense to display that more prominently on the site.  And instead of having a category called "country" use "released in" or "sold in" to document where the ponies were sold as far as we know.

I think this is a good idea! And also use terms as «sold in» or «released in», would be more on point instead of «country». I mean, I do think that information is important. But unfortunately, there is still so many things we do not know about pony releases.

I was also born in 1982, by the way I actually do remember a lot from the early years of G1. MLP didn’t have their first releases in Norway before 1985/1986-ish (I am still trying to find the exact time and confirmation on the first release). MLP was my very favourite toys as a kid, so it was always a big deal when I got someone new

Anyway, I really like this idea. Most of us have a lot of fun collecting and likes to put everything in lists I’ll be following the development of your site for sure!!

Post Merge: September 29, 2018, 02:32:01 PM

I’m sorry for «nagging» about this over and over again. I can understand that it might seem a little too much over something that might be perceived as unimportant in the long run. But I’ve spent years myself trying to understand my childhood collection and ponies picked up in the wild based on US information. The main issue always actually being country of release and year of release. I still come across collectors outside US who tries to work within the structure of the US release plan, because they still belieber this to be the correct one for them as well and it is demotivating and messy because it is not the same as the rest of the world.

You and I think and feel the same on this. I think it's genuinely the case that a lot of folk don't realise how different releases are and that it's not one integral set of dates and sets but a whole myriad of them that intersect and weave a complex web.

Yes, I have a feeling we agree very much on this topic
And I also agree that it is this self-fulfilling prophecy, going around in circles with the same flawed information that is the issue. It is both time-consuming and confusing to understand other releases, but I can’t help to think that it’s only like that because we don’t recognize it yet. I used to think that UK releases was all over the place, but after your Scrapbook came along it makes so much more sense to me! I hope that will eventually be the case with other countries releases as well. But even though it is more difficult now, so many years after they were first released, I am still impressed with what we already know!

[Taffeta]

Make no mistake, UK releases are all over the place

[Khoufu]

I might use it. Would it be able to host images, or at least thumbnails, for tracking our collections and wishlists by image? How about a way to rank wishlist ponies?