Perpetual "scanning" or "editing" status

[williamsGPA]

Hey all! 

I'm sorry if this was posted on another topic somewhere, but I'm inquiring as to the status of a few issues of magazines to complete my collection.  I've been a member for years and keep checking back for these issues every few months and they've had a "scanning" or "editing" label attached for what seems like forever.  I know that the process of obtaining/scanning/editing is an arduous one, but in this case it feels like someone just forgot about and/or mislabeled the status of these issues, as I can't imagine them taking this long to complete.

Electronic Gaming Monthly 108 - July 1998 -- "scanning"
Electronic Gaming Monthly 118 - May 1999 -- "editing"
Electronic Gaming Monthly 119 - June 1999 -- "scanning"

Nintendo Power 157 - June 2002 -- "scanning"

If these are close to being finished and uploaded, does anyone have a timeframe where we might see them?  If not and the projects were abandoned, can someone change the status back to "missing" to accurately reflect their true status so that someone else might be motivated to obtain/scan/edit/upload them to the site?

Thanks again!

[MigJmz]

I'm sure those EGM's are in the queue but E-Day has many mags to scan before that so please patient.

Watch his WIP thread for his updates: https://www.retromags.com/forums/topic/2673-e-days-work-in-progress/?do=findComment&comment=57775

 

[williamsGPA]

13 minutes ago, MigJmz said:

I'm sure those EGM's are in the queue but E-Day has many mags to scan before that so please patient.

Watch his WIP thread for his updates: https://www.retromags.com/forums/topic/2673-e-days-work-in-progress/?do=findComment&comment=57775

 

I understand that, and I'm as patient as can be, and I do not want this to seem like a complaint about it taking too long.  My question/issue is with the listed status of those magazines: if they aren't in the current queue (which they aren't on this thread you linked), why is their status reported as "scanning" or "editing" in the database if the magazines have not reached that step in the process yet?

It's not merely a semantic thing, because someone who may have those issues and the capacity for high-quality scanning might see the label and refrain from doing the work to scan and upload those because they believe someone is actively processing those specific issues as we speak.  I'm sure E-Day would appreciate the help too if someone could do that given the current workload.  It's also not as if those status labels have been recently changed to "scanning", as I've been coming back for months and months to see if there has been any change, but there has not been, which leads me to believe that they have not in fact reached that step of the process.  Is there no way to change the status label to accurately reflect what step they are in the process?  Maybe "obtained" or "discovered" or something? 

[MigJmz]

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It's not merely a semantic thing, because someone who may have those issues and the capacity for high-quality scanning might see the label and refrain from doing the work to scan and upload those because they believe someone is actively processing those specific issues as we speak. 

Rest assure thats not happening here.  They are not many scanners releasing stuff here besides 3 or 4 people and lets face it its mostly E-Day. Thats why you have to wait because theres no other choice!

 

Quote

My question/issue is with the listed status of those magazines: if they aren't in the current queue (which they aren't on this thread you linked), why is their status reported as "scanning" or "editing" in the database if the magazines have not reached that step in the process yet?

Maybe the word "In queue" or something like that would be better but thats not available as of now. Lets get Phillyman on that.

As for the EGM 118 i'm not sure whois editing that. Melki?? Crimson? Maybe there's something missing or wrong with that issue.

Also that Nintendo Power is available here: https://archive.org/details/Nintendo_Power_157_June_2002_U/mode/2up . Another Retromags release jacked by IA. Looking at the Database that release should say Preserved. Not sure why it says 'Scanning'.

[MigJmz]

Changing that issue to 'preserved'.

[williamsGPA]

Thanks for clearing that up, I appreciate it!

[kitsunebi]

4 hours ago, MigJmz said:

Also that Nintendo Power is available here: https://archive.org/details/Nintendo_Power_157_June_2002_U/mode/2up . Another Retromags release jacked by IA. Looking at the Database that release should say Preserved. Not sure why it says 'Scanning'.

There's no need to direct him to the IA.  We have that issue preserved in our own download section...

 

[kitsunebi]

6 hours ago, williamsGPA said:

Electronic Gaming Monthly 108 - July 1998 -- "scanning"

Electronic Gaming Monthly 118 - May 1999 -- "editing"
Electronic Gaming Monthly 119 - June 1999 -- "scanning"

 

All three of these issues are owned by E-Day, but are not in his queue, so far as I know.  E-Day is currently busy releasing donations (of which he has received nearly 1000), so won't have time to work on personally owned issues for some time.

Those issues were marked as in progress by a former team member who has since abandoned the site.

So I'll wait for E-Day to confirm before marking them as missing, but I'm fairly certain none of those are set to be released any time soon.

Btw, we used to have an "acquired" status, but it was problematic for this very reason - people would mark issues they owned, but had no time or intention of scanning any time soon, which led to confusion, so we eliminated it.  (I own hundreds of mags, but it doesn't mean I'll ever scan them all.  I'm not obligated to scan ANY of them, frankly, so marking them all as acquired serves no purpose other than to raise someone's false hopes.)

[williamsGPA]

Thank you so much, kitsunebi!  That's exactly what I was curious about, I greatly appreciate the explanation.  Thank you all for keeping up the site  

[MigJmz]

18 minutes ago, kitsunebi said:

There's no need to direct him to the IA.  We have that issue preserved in our own download section...

 

Yeah I didn't know that until I looked at the IA scan... lol.

[kitsunebi]

That's one reason I always ask people not to upload my scans to the Internet Archive.  It's too easy for people to check there thinking they have everything.  Even though they steal most of our stuff, I don't want people thinking that they're a 1:1 mirror of Retromags, since then no one would ever visit our site - they'd just download everything of ours at the IA (along with a bunch of other stuff that isn't ours.)  And then our community would die...and then, no more Retromags, meaning no new scans for the IA or anyone else to steal...

[williamsGPA]

32 minutes ago, kitsunebi said:

That's one reason I always ask people not to upload my scans to the Internet Archive.  It's too easy for people to check there thinking they have everything.  Even though they steal most of our stuff, I don't want people thinking that they're a 1:1 mirror of Retromags, since then no one would ever visit our site - they'd just download everything of ours at the IA (along with a bunch of other stuff that isn't ours.)  And then our community would die...and then, no more Retromags, meaning no new scans for the IA or anyone else to steal...

FWIW, I always check here first, because you guys have the most superior version of scans.  So many IA magazines look absolutely terrible, they're a last resort for me.  So no worries

[E-Day]

On 3/6/2020 at 4:30 PM, kitsunebi said:

All three of these issues are owned by E-Day, but are not in his queue, so far as I know.  E-Day is currently busy releasing donations (of which he has received nearly 1000), so won't have time to work on personally owned issues for some time.

Those issues were marked as in progress by a former team member who has since abandoned the site.

So I'll wait for E-Day to confirm before marking them as missing, but I'm fairly certain none of those are set to be released any time soon.

Btw, we used to have an "acquired" status, but it was problematic for this very reason - people would mark issues they owned, but had no time or intention of scanning any time soon, which led to confusion, so we eliminated it.  (I own hundreds of mags, but it doesn't mean I'll ever scan them all.  I'm not obligated to scan ANY of them, frankly, so marking them all as acquired serves no purpose other than to raise someone's false hopes.)

I do have those three issues, and I did mark them as scanning. I am not sure when I'll get to them though. I marked everything I have from the donations that was missing as Scanning because we no longer have the Acquired status. Normally I only mark what is the box I am processing as Scanning. However, a week or two ago Frank Cifaldi from the Video Game History Foundation emailed me about what we are missing because they are going through all of their magazines and organizing duplicates to donate to others. So in order to avoid him sending us magazines we already have, I marked out everything I have so that he can go through our database and and send what we don't need to others.

So if it's marked as Scanning, it's because I have it and it will be scanned eventually. But please don't change it to anything except Preserved if you happen to scan it before me

[williamsGPA]

11 hours ago, E-Day said:

I do have those three issues, and I did mark them as scanning. I am not sure when I'll get to them though. I marked everything I have from the donations that was missing as Scanning because we no longer have the Acquired status. Normally I only mark what is the box I am processing as Scanning. However, a week or two ago Frank Cifaldi from the Video Game History Foundation emailed me about what we are missing because they are going through all of their magazines and organizing duplicates to donate to others. So in order to avoid him sending us magazines we already have, I marked out everything I have so that he can go through our database and and send what we don't need to others.

So if it's marked as Scanning, it's because I have it and it will be scanned eventually. But please don't change it to anything except Preserved if you happen to scan it before me

If it's a signal for Frank Cifaldi, it's good enough for me!  Thank you for the response, keep up the great work

[gingerbeardman]

Frank just announced he's going to be live streaming the scanning tomorrow. 

https://www.patreon.com/posts/34953123

[kitsunebi]

22 minutes ago, gingerbeardman said:

Frank just announced he's going to be live streaming the scanning tomorrow. 

https://www.patreon.com/posts/34953123

As tedious and brain-numbingly dull as scanning magazines is, I'm pretty sure watching someone else do it would be worse, even if he's only doing cover scans. But I'm sure there will be something in the discussion worth paying attention to.

As for me, social isolation means that I was finally able to finish The Witcher (the game, not the show). The Enhanced Director's Cut shipped in 2008, making it one of the most modern games I've ever finished!  (That's the year I moved to Japan, though I'd pretty much stopped gaming a couple of years before that).

[MigJmz]

23 hours ago, kitsunebi said:

As tedious and brain-numbingly dull as scanning magazines is, I'm pretty sure watching someone else do it would be worse, even if he's only doing cover scans. But I'm sure there will be something in the discussion worth paying attention to.

Actually it was pretty cool. Love the bubsy poster in the back Frank.  Frank scanned some missing Computer Games Review covers we are missing along with the first Top Score on his beastly scanner. Hopefully more streams will follow (make sure to archive the stream next time!).