I'm bad at this...

[DPsx7]

I must look clueless half the time. Every couple months I claim that I'm about to thin out my magazine collection and then I end up playing games instead. Today I'm wondering why the shoutbox doesn't work. Also why I wasn't able to upload things. Then realized I forgot to resize my pics and have screwed up the gallery as a result.

 

Speaking of gallery, oops. A few months ago I completed your collection of PSM covers. Only now did I notice that 'my' gallery is separate from the individual magazine galleries. The covers are in the database but the gallery for PSM ends early. I'm hoping there's a quick way to dump my gallery into the official ones or if someone is going to need to rename and reupload everything by hand.

[kitsunebi]

Jesus christ what a mess.     It was as if NO ONE who had ever uploaded an image to the PSM gallery bothered to consider naming their files sensibly.  I just spent an hour renaming almost everything so that it will sort correctly.

 

For future reference to anyone reading this, this is what should be the standard cover-naming format for all magazines:

 

Magazine Title Issue ### Month Year

 

So in the case of PSM, "PSM Issue 001 September 1997"

The extra zeroes are important for sorting.  Three digits should be adequate for everything except Famitsu, which already has more than a thousand issues, so obviously it requires four digits.

 

If you could, check to see which pics in your personal galley aren't already in the PSM gallery (there is some overlap) and please rename them following the above format (using the "edit" feature.)  Once that's been done, we can very easily move them into the PSM folder where they belong.  Thanks!

[DPsx7]

I've only checked the gallery to see if certain mags with alternate covers were preserved. I still never downloaded anything from this site so I've never checked to see how things were named. When I scanned those PSM covers I just put the issue number to make it quick. In 'my' gallery it made sense. It was when I sent the alternate issue of NP 215 I realized that when I add the cover to the database it wasn't filling the same info on the gallery. And yeah if the naming wasn't consistent then I'd be stuck anyway. What we need is a tool that names them automatically.

 

How are they sorted exactly? With names that big (compared to sequential numbers) I'm wondering how it works in your software.

 

Did you manage to delete that big image from the gallery? That was my bad.

[kitsunebi]

I've only checked the gallery to see if certain mags with alternate covers were preserved. I still never downloaded anything from this site so I've never checked to see how things were named. When I scanned those PSM covers I just put the issue number to make it quick. In 'my' gallery it made sense. It was when I sent the alternate issue of NP 215 I realized that when I add the cover to the database it wasn't filling the same info on the gallery. And yeah if the naming wasn't consistent then I'd be stuck anyway. What we need is a tool that names them automatically.

 

It doesn't matter if you download or not - the cover gallery and download sections are completely separate.  The only thing you need to be concerned with is the file names in the cover gallery.  Luckily, if you're uploading a cover into the correct gallery, you're already on the page you need to be on to see how everything is named.  Just mouse over any of the covers right there on the same page to see how they're named.

 

And yeah, it would be nice if the software could somehow automatically know what title/issue#/month/year the magazine in the jpg being uploaded was, but alas, that's still a bit too sci-fi for now.   

 

It doesn't matter what a file is named for the purposes of linking that image to other sections like the download section or database pages, but the cover galley is a valuable section in its own right for people wanting to quickly browse through the covers.  Sorting can be handled in a number of ways selectable by the user, but the default sorting mode is alphabetical.  This is why having every issue named using the same format is important.  It's important to also include information like issue number, month and date so that someone looking at the gallery can mouse over the image (or click on it for a close-up) and know exactly what they're looking at.  This is why the "MagTitle Issue xxx Month Year" format is ideal.

 

Naming a single file correctly before uploading it is an infinitesimally small inconvenience that if ignored can become a colossal headache when one of the staff here has to spend hours fixing hundreds of mis-named files later on - time they could have spent contributing something new to the site instead.

[DPsx7]

When I say I haven't DL'ed it means I really haven't explored everything you host here. I saw an upload button but didn't realize it was going to a separate area, my personal gallery. It still gave me the required numbers to fill in the covers in the databases so who knew? In other words when I added the covers I didn't see there were more sections that weren't being filled in. Because I started with an empty gallery there wasn't anything saying how to name them. If that makes sense.

 

That's why I kept it short. "IS100" is a lot quicker than typing out full names and dates. And I probably uploaded like 50+ covers. My backlog of games is why I haven't moved on to scanning whole mags. Then I feel bad getting rid of things you might be able to use so I never get around to clearing out these piles of mags.

[RetroDefense]

For future reference to anyone reading this, this is what should be the standard cover-naming format for all magazines:

 

Magazine Title Issue ### Month Year

 

We should also note this in the gallery sections themselves.  Along with pixel size, dpi, etc.  Currently, we ask everyone to "adhere to the naming standard" which isn't exactly clear.

 

What we need is a tool that names them automatically.

 

I believe Phillyman is working on an auto-rename solution but the cover scan will have to be matched with its respective magazine dbase entry before the rename can be performed.  So while having everything in the gallery follow a standard naming convention is nice, I haven't been as concerned with actually renaming the covers as I have been ensuring they've been matched.  

 

Thanks for uploading the cover scans, DPsx7!  Sorry the naming convention wasn't made more clear from the beginning.

[DPsx7]

I learn as I go. I was glad to help fill the PSM collection as I'm only missing the first 10 issues. The 3 recent NP's were found only because one was an alternate cover and I came across 2 blanks in the database. Now that someone has expanded the GI category I can add those covers when I get the chance. Maybe I'll get around to moving the stuff I already uploaded to their proper galleries. Or maybe I should let you do that so we don't end up with everything being uploaded twice.

[Sean697]

Ya I remember my first cover uploading 2 years ago and it wasn't easy finding information to do it right. It's only easy if you've done it it. We should make it more clear.

[kitsunebi]

When I say I haven't DL'ed it means I really haven't explored everything you host here. I saw an upload button but didn't realize it was going to a separate area, my personal gallery. It still gave me the required numbers to fill in the covers in the databases so who knew? In other words when I added the covers I didn't see there were more sections that weren't being filled in. Because I started with an empty gallery there wasn't anything saying how to name them. If that makes sense.

 

That's why I kept it short. "IS100" is a lot quicker than typing out full names and dates. And I probably uploaded like 50+ covers. My backlog of games is why I haven't moved on to scanning whole mags. Then I feel bad getting rid of things you might be able to use so I never get around to clearing out these piles of mags.

 

Yeah, the rules could be made clearer, but luckily it's really not that complicated.  When you go to the gallery section, instead of clicking "upload" right away, you need to navigate to the correct gallery.  First, you would click on the "magazine covers" folder, since that's what you're uploading.  From there, you select the country your magazine comes from ("United States magazines").  Next, select the proper magazine ("PSM").  NOW, you click the upload button, and you'll upload the file into the proper place. 

 

As for the naming conventions, like I said, properly naming a file isn't really that big of an inconvenience.  It takes, what? 10 seconds at most?  But when dozens or hundreds of titles get named incorrectly, it takes WAY longer to fix them all.  (I've uploaded over 3300 pics.  If I had to rename them all now...ay yi yi...)  Yes, "IS100" is a bit faster, but aside from the fact that it would be listed out-of-order if put into the proper gallery with the othe PSM covers, it is also missing vital information.  What month/year was the issue published?  What's the title of the magazine?  You may think this is unnecessary as the title is obvious from the picture, but another feature of our site you may be unfamiliar with is the search engine at the top of every page.  If I search for "PSM 100" in the gallery (or heck, even "PSM"), your image won't be included in the results.

 

It would be awesome if you could rename your files and then move them to the correct gallery (by clicking "image moderation" and then "move image").  Personal galleries should really be for pics that don't belong anywhere else.  If it's a magazine/book/comic cover or advertisement, we already have gallery folders where those pics should go.  And if for some reason we don't have a gallery folder for a magazine you have covers for, let us know and we'll create it for you.

[DPsx7]

Sure it all sounds so obvious now. I just happened to find the upload button in my gallery before the one in the normal gallery. I think right before I started I had asked for some clarification on the process but that was regarding image sizes and other settings. So yeah I agree it could be made a little clearer for anyone new.

 

Exactly. I would think some of the info was redundant thanks to the image containing the name/date. I've not used the search feature...

 

Yeah yeah, I'll try to shuffle them around one of these days. Don't feel you have to do it. Just know that before I'd go and rename/move all those files I want to get these GI covers scanned and keep working through this neverending stack of unplayed games.

[kitsunebi]

Exactly. I would think some of the info was redundant thanks to the image containing the name/date. I've not used the search feature...

 

You'd be surprised how many magazines don't include dates on the cover, unfortunately.  (Hell, some of them don't have dates anywhere, even on the inside.)  And even if it seems like it is, nothing is redundant.  Amazon lists the titles of all of the books they sell even though the titles are on the cover pics, too, after all.  And it's kind of the nature of the beast for those of us contributing here to have to spend time and effort making our additions to the site useful for other people even if they don't benefit us personally.  For instance, every time I release a magazine here, it amounts to 4-8 hours of my life spent debinding/scanning/editing, plus one less magazine I have the luxury of being able to read a physical copy of, since the mag gets destroyed in the process of scanning.  The only people who benefit are the ones who download the resultant file - I get nothing but a "thanks" or two.  It's a selfless job, but without the people willing to do it, this site wouldn't exist.

 

With the impending software update, I'm kind of waiting to see how it affects the nuts and bolts of the site.  At that point, if nothing has changed, I may write up a how-to guide for the gallery, since I think it's obvious we could use one.

[DPsx7]

Well, Amazon is a store so they need the title for their inventory numbers and in case they don't have a pic of the item. Slightly different case.

 

Sounds like a plan. If you find time to write something up I can give it a run through to see if it needs any further clarification. I wasn't aware of an update so we'll see what that does. Maybe it'll fix my ability to use the shoutbox.