the new stuff

[adminpoll]49[/adminpoll]

For the next few weeks, community features will be the name of the game. (Along with slowly trying to build the next version of the site creation tools.)

All three of these will see daylight, provided there is a healthy level of community support. The question is, in which order should they be completed?

The question about editorials got zero responses. The poll results were mostly in favor of the idea but the apparent lack of tangible interest was quite dissappointing. I can't tell if anyone is interested and I'm hesitant to write anything that doesn't look like it'll have a large, captive audience. I made that mistake with the "cel collector guides" (which admittedly were quite poorly thought out) and I decided at that point I'd always ask before doing something big, whether or not *I* personally like the idea.

Side note about sales: These will most likely be free or practically free. This will be solely determined by our ability to secure inoffensive advertising (no pop-ups, no flash things that block your view, etc). For now, this site is run as an expensive, time-consuming hobby. However, if it's going to have a commerce component, then my business brain will turn on and I'll have to try making some of it back. At no point will advertising ever appear on personal gallery pages. I'm positive that the advertisers won't sell anything there (hence, wasted ad dollars) and you'd just be angry. So would I.

The other two options are purely collector motivated. I like hearing about and discussing this stuff.

If you feel strongly one way or another about any of these proposed changes coming soon, please let all of us know. Lurking gives you stomachaches. Let it out.


ps - hope you like the new forum paging feature. Threads with 30+ messages were starting to get really, really troublesome to read.

I think sometimes that people read, but somehow just don't get their fingers on the keyboards to respond.. for fear of standing out in the crowd.

Because I think that there is a lot of interest in all of those posted ideas. Some things like the editorial idea is probably a very good thing to keep, and there might be someone that would like to start hackin-away at it, if they get an official okay, invite, or offer to participate. Just a hunch. You may want to expand your volunteer army via a 'help wanted' approach =)

Also, with that feature wishlist of items are full of "pet projects". I am positive that some of us are waiting for some of that stuff on 'lay-a-way' (of course my wishlist includes the [new] moderator toolset/interface) , but to be honest it all starts to blend-in after a while, because you have narrowed down your list to mostly some really agreeable features and updates. It is just the "when" part of it that is left in the air hangin.. and this is in no way a complaint, but time-tables do drive interest to some extent.

I think by you positioning at least three items the way you have is a very promising way to approach building on interest and involvment with the site.

I vote for all three...now...

:) ;) ;)

Don't know exactly what the 2nd option means, but as for the 1st one (the sell/trade one) here are my thoughts:

1- At all means don't make it an auction style feature even if it's only optional. There are other places for that and it would give you unnecesary headaches.

2- Items for sale/trade should be items on his/her own gallery that have been placed on the owner's gallery posted for a reasonable amount of time (1-2 months maybe?). This is to prevent people to start dumping cels one after another just to be sold.

Personally, i would add a feature to mark a cel as available for sell/trade with a desired sell price and whoever wants can e-mail the owner directly via the feedback method or with an special option. Then in order to display items for sell/trade you can make a search option or slightly modify the current search option. Also, when you visit someone's gallery you should have the option to see items available for sale/trade. About fees, if you want to put a fee (you should do it) then it should be applied for each cel marked for sale/trade. Here you can consider if you apply discounts or whatever to gallery owners that have contributed etc.....

There has been a lot of discussions about store format in "the wizards chambers" dating back for quite a while now -- maybe some magic will come out of it.

=)