How To Be A Shelf Life Curator: Video

[faustx]

Hey all,

As you may have noticed, we're running a pretty special beta test this month on Cybertron.ca. You can get the full details on the launch and the community feedback we're gathering over here:

http://www.cybertron.ca/boards/showthread.php?t=36546

To avoid confusion with the general site feedback thread topics, we're going to move our discussion surrounding curation over to this thread.

A big part of making ShelfLife awesome is the build out of permanent product catalogues within our platform. Catalogues form the backbone of the site and are generated mostly by curators.

What's a curator?

Well curators are collectors just like you that want to help make ShelfLife the best site possible. Basically takes on the responsibility to build out a list of all the relevant information about the catalogue, find photos to support it and submits the finished catalogue to our admins for review.

Here's some more detail on how the whole thing works:

1) First you pick a catalogue of collectibles that isn't on the site yet and hasn't been assigned. Catalogues are generally set up based on full product lines. Here are some examples:

Generation 1 > Series 1 (1984)
Classics 2.0
Generations
Masterpiece (Takara)

2) Next, send us an email at curate@shelflifex.com requesting your catalogue, telling us a bit about yourself and why you want to be a curator. (A few lines will do.)

3) If we seem to have a fit we'll send you a basic curator contract clarifying that you are a volunteer and signing away the IP rights for your work to ShelfLife (critical to our control of the site.) You'll need to esign this and send it back.

3) We may email/talk to you a bit about the specific needs of your catalogue and make any adjustments to our database necessary to get ready to accept your data.

4) We then upgrade your account to curator level and provide access to your catalogue management tools on the web site. We'll also provide a spreadsheet template in case you prefer to use spreadsheets to organize your data for inclusion in the site.

5) Regardless of how you choose to enter the data you'll be handling the recording of information like:

• Product Name
• Manufacturer
• Character
• Allegiance
• MSRP
• Colour
• Etc


Then you fill out all the details, variants, equivalencies and so forth for the products. You don't need every detail done to take your catalogue live, but it sure would be nice. Every product should ideally start with at least one photo but if you have to you can leave it for the regular users to contribute. Certain fields are required and you'll see this in the site and the spreadsheets.

6) Finish a catalogue, we vet it, make adjustments, discuss issues and clear it for launch.

7) When vendors and power collectors sell on ShelfLife (starting Jan '12) the plan is that you get a cut of the transaction fees in the form of credits that can be spent on the site. Final policies on this stuff are forthcoming but we aim to please.

8) We have set a ceiling of $1500 (could change) on the fees that can be collected by curators on any single catalogue to encourage repeat curation.

9) Once you have one catalogue done, you can request another, and so on.

10) Users flag catalogues with issues, which the curator must resolve within 7 days. Fail to do so too many times and we reserve the right to reassign the catalogue as necessary.

That's pretty much it.

The How To Be A Curator Video

We now have a video set up to let you guys see what curation is all about before you commit. Have a look and let us know if you want to be a bigger part of the future of collecting.

http://vimeo.com/shelflife/how-to-be...lflife-curator

Feel free to post your questions here.

Thanks!

James Chillcott
CEO
ShelfLife

[faustx]

Here's some specific notes on photo sourcing for ShelfLife (I should point out that our lawyers will be posting official terms of service to our site shortly, but this is the quick version):


Regarding image sourcing, here are some tips:

1) Never take them from fan sites, photographers or blogs who make money/get eyeballs from their custom photos. A great example of a tempting but inelligible target is Seiberton.com galleries.

2) Best bet is take them yourself.

3) When you can't, try to get them from a fellow collector.

4) Where that fails, you can try to borrow them from online retailers who likely have nice photos and will discard them within months and never use them again. This really only works for new stuff.

5) Where #4 fails you can checked expired ebay auctions for personal use photos on products that have sold and will likely not be used again. This is less cool if it's a regular ebay vendor who may reuse their photos (think wheeljackslab).

6) If none of that works, leave it blank! One of the other site members will eventually fill it in.

Summary: Do your best, don't break any laws and we all win.

[gagagalvatron]

Curating question:

How do you want to handle comic books that come with Transformers? They're not unique to the item -- usually there's only a handful of distinct books that ship with most or every item -- and while some people consider them part of the package, others don't.

So far, I have been putting them in as an item, but not as required to be considered complete and not "belonging" to the item. This seems a good compromise for those who want to track them and those who don't.

I, of course, want to be consistent with the norms.

Same question could apply to catalogs, posters, etc.

[faustx]

Originally Posted by gagagalvatron

Curating question:

How do you want to handle comic books that come with Transformers? They're not unique to the item -- usually there's only a handful of distinct books that ship with most or every item -- and while some people consider them part of the package, others don't.

So far, I have been putting them in as an item, but not as required to be considered complete and not "belonging" to the item. This seems a good compromise for those who want to track them and those who don't.

I, of course, want to be consistent with the norms.

Same question could apply to catalogs, posters, etc.

You nailed that perfectly. Continue on good sir!

James

[Bruticus82]

Two things:

1. Is there a way you can "view" the product you're currently working on the same way others will without going back to curate, view, and picking the product? Then going back to curate, manage, etc. to fix things?

2. Is there some reason the system doesn't accept the formatting you use for descriptions etc.? I use paragraphs, but it all runs together as one long description in "view" mode.

Also, is there some way to have you review some of our submissions without "submitting it" as complete? I've done a few figures but I want to make sure the classes, item relationships etc. are being done consistent with the way you've set things up.

[faustx]

Originally Posted by Bruticus82

Two things:

1. Is there a way you can "view" the product you're currently working on the same way others will without going back to curate, view, and picking the product? Then going back to curate, manage, etc. to fix things?

2. Is there some reason the system doesn't accept the formatting you use for descriptions etc.? I use paragraphs, but it all runs together as one long description in "view" mode.

Also, is there some way to have you review some of our submissions without "submitting it" as complete? I've done a few figures but I want to make sure the classes, item relationships etc. are being done consistent with the way you've set things up.

1. Nope, but that was bugging me too yesterday so onto the upgrades list it goes. For now I usually put two windows side by side to view the live catalogue as I build.

2. Yeah, paragraphs likely don't support hard returns at present because they are meant to be fairly brief. I'll review with team and see if they think we can make it work. Can you send us a sample of something you think requires it?

3. Yep, tap me on the shoulder by email at james@shelflifex.com and lmk when you want a review. I have superadmin privilege and can see everything.

James

[Bruticus82]

Oh, here's another question, for those of us with "reissue" lines (or let's say, for whoever is doing the Japanese G1 line...) is there some way to take the good work you've already done on the north american g1 line associating items and whatnot, and copy that over?

It would probably be easier to use that as a starting point and change things rather than going through and making the new entries from scratch (and possibly introducing inconsistent uses of terms, associations of items, etc.)

[gagagalvatron]

Some feedback for curation (Using Firefox 8.0):

It's a little clunky, so I've been using browser tabs to reduce the amount of back-and-forth. For example, rather than click on New Product or Add Item, I'll create a new tab so I don't have to click back to the Manage screens to add something else.

The only problem is the Browse Catalogs button. If you move the cursor up through this button, the pop-down menu persists no matter where the cursor is. The only way to get rid of it is to move the cursor down through the Browse Catalog button and all the way through the pop down menu.

Sometimes quickly moving down through the Browse Catalogs button will cause the submenu to pop up and persist. Seems to be related to speed, because if I go slower, it disappears like it should once I get past the submenu.

This is kind of annoying because browsing the catalog is the last thing I want to be doing when curating and the pop up menu obscures info or entry boxes. I'm trying to train myself to avoid it, but it's right there in prime real estate.

[brr-icy]

Originally Posted by Bruticus82

Oh, here's another question, for those of us with "reissue" lines (or let's say, for whoever is doing the Japanese G1 line...) is there some way to take the good work you've already done on the north american g1 line associating items and whatnot, and copy that over?

It would probably be easier to use that as a starting point and change things rather than going through and making the new entries from scratch (and possibly introducing inconsistent uses of terms, associations of items, etc.)

i was asking the same (since i am doing some of japanese g1 soon)

[faustx]

Originally Posted by gagagalvatron

Some feedback for curation (Using Firefox 8.0):

It's a little clunky, so I've been using browser tabs to reduce the amount of back-and-forth. For example, rather than click on New Product or Add Item, I'll create a new tab so I don't have to click back to the Manage screens to add something else.

The only problem is the Browse Catalogs button. If you move the cursor up through this button, the pop-down menu persists no matter where the cursor is. The only way to get rid of it is to move the cursor down through the Browse Catalog button and all the way through the pop down menu.

Sometimes quickly moving down through the Browse Catalogs button will cause the submenu to pop up and persist. Seems to be related to speed, because if I go slower, it disappears like it should once I get past the submenu.

This is kind of annoying because browsing the catalog is the last thing I want to be doing when curating and the pop up menu obscures info or entry boxes. I'm trying to train myself to avoid it, but it's right there in prime real estate.

Yep, agreed. I noticed this myself. It is the result of the request last week by several users to make that mega menu activate on hover rather than click. We'll fix it by adding a 1s delay so quick motions don't open it by mistake.

James