Contribute to Playing Card DB!

[rhu]

There's been some exciting updates today, anyone can now track and share their card collection on the website.

However, I want to break the 1,000 decks mark on the Playing Card DB, but I'm going to need your help! If you register and PM me your username then I will add you as a content moderator on the site. This means you can make additions to the database, upload scans and information about the playing cards.

The more you share with the community, the more points you get! I've created this dynamically updated hall of fame list for the top contributors so everyone will know how awesome you are

As always, this is a purely fun and not-for-profit site. Created by the playing card community, for the playing card community.

Link: http://playingcarddb.com/

Scans Sitch: http://playingcarddb.com/forumlink/forum-stich.png

[volantangel]

Nice ! I have been waiting for this for awhile ! Great to see you back rhu !

[montecarlojoe]

Very cool

Found a bug though - Apostrophes aren't being dealt with properly in deck names and breaks the SQL - found this out when I tried adding my Fulton's decks.

Also, you can only add to your collection from the company pages - for those decks with no company recorded it's not obvious what to do (you can click on the deck name to go to the deck page and then click on the dash next to "company", but maybe this could be clearer...

Also spotted Legends duplicates for the V1s - where would you like these posted - here or via the contact option on the site?

Looking great though - much needed and will be an awesome resource once people start to contribute! (I just need to get my scanner back and I'll start filling in some blanks )

Edit: Er, actually how do we go about filling in blanks?

[rhu]

@montecarlojoe: Have updated your account so you can add new decks

Screenshot of company page

The one catch being that I need to add company names still

[ecNate]

This is EXCELLENT news rhu! Good timing as well since I was off pursuing other options since I thought this had died off. There's still some minor issues, but I think you have enough here that people can start actively using to track and share their collection. With more users the database will increase and will feed on itself and hopefully keep growing. I added it to my sig and will be advertising it here and on other sites to help recruit users.

Feature Requests
- *** Mentioned this before (edit - looks like montecarlojoe did as well). There needs to be a way to add a deck to your collection directly from the main entry. There should be a HUGE button 'Add to my collection', but there's not even a small link for it. The only way I've seen to add this is to find the deck, then click the company where you can increase the count from 0 to 1. This is even more difficult for decks without a company since it's not clickable and then you have to navigate all the way down to 'unknown' and find it to add it. Example
- Having the collection views is awesome, but they should default to be sorted alphabetically. The grid version is sorted based on deck ID and the list view I'm not sure.
- This is more of a future possible goal, but having ability to rank or rate decks within a collection would be awesome. However, I realize that will require additional and more complicated database tables and coding. Just something to consider for the future.

Bugs
- Something previously mentioned is the login page should redirect to a new page or somehow show you have logged in. Reloading the same page after login makes it seem that it didn't work. Minor, but to keep new people interested this will help.
- Not really a bug, but a HUGE risk is not having more true admins on the site. There are tons of 'delete this' decks and others with errors in the content. It's amazing you got as far with the development of this as you have, but given your busy schedule to update the site itself I fear that without proper oversight of the content this will die a slow death from garbage content. EDIT - Looks like this is also what montecarlojoe mentioned about 'filling in blanks'

[rhu]

Nice ! I have been waiting for this for awhile ! Great to see you back rhu !

Yeah, it only took me 5 or so months to reply to everyone - sorry for the delay everyone!

Very cool

Found a bug though - Apostrophes aren't being dealt with properly in deck names and breaks the SQL - found this out when I tried adding my Fulton's decks.

Also, you can only add to your collection from the company pages - for those decks with no company recorded it's not obvious what to do (you can click on the deck name to go to the deck page and then click on the dash next to "company", but maybe this could be clearer...

Also spotted Legends duplicates for the V1s - where would you like these posted - here or via the contact option on the site?

Looking great though - much needed and will be an awesome resource once people start to contribute! (I just need to get my scanner back and I'll start filling in some blanks )

Edit: Er, actually how do we go about filling in blanks?

Thanks for the feedback! I've quickly "fixed" the comma issue I should of used a real content management system for this like Drupal to avoid embarrassing issues like this

Feature Requests
- *** Mentioned this before (edit - looks like montecarlojoe did as well). There needs to be a way to add a deck to your collection directly from the main entry. There should be a HUGE button 'Add to my collection', but there's not even a small link for it. The only way I've seen to add this is to find the deck, then click the company where you can increase the count from 0 to 1. This is even more difficult for decks without a company since it's not clickable and then you have to navigate all the way down to 'unknown' and find it to add it. Example
- Having the collection views is awesome, but they should default to be sorted alphabetically. The grid version is sorted based on deck ID and the list view I'm not sure.
- This is more of a future possible goal, but having ability to rank or rate decks within a collection would be awesome. However, I realize that will require additional and more complicated database tables and coding. Just something to consider for the future.

Bugs
- Something previously mentioned is the login page should redirect to a new page or somehow show you have logged in. Reloading the same page after login makes it seem that it didn't work. Minor, but to keep new people interested this will help.
- Not really a bug, but a HUGE risk is not having more true admins on the site. There are tons of 'delete this' decks and others with errors in the content. It's amazing you got as far with the development of this as you have, but given your busy schedule to update the site itself I fear that without proper oversight of the content this will die a slow death from garbage content. EDIT - Looks like this is also what montecarlojoe mentioned about 'filling in blanks'

You've always got good feedback!

Todo list:
1) "Add to collection" button from deck page
2) Give admins ability to add new "brands"
3) Give admins ability to delete duplicates
4) Login page redirect
5) Share collection improvements

[montecarlojoe]

Maybe make that "merge duplicates" - delete would only be safe if nobody had added the duplicate version to their collection.

I found how to add decks and pics now though lol! THanks for upping my access. Is there a standard size you'd like scans to be?

In the future it'd be great to be able to build trade lists too (wants & Haves etc) - you could even potentially run a search to see who has the best match to your list to facilitate trades

[rhu]

Maybe make that "merge duplicates" - delete would only be safe if nobody had added the duplicate version to their collection.

I found how to add decks and pics now though lol! THanks for upping my access. Is there a standard size you'd like scans to be?

In the future it'd be great to be able to build trade lists too (wants & Haves etc) - you could even potentially run a search to see who has the best match to your list to facilitate trades

It should resize the scans anyway - just so long as you don't do anything crazy like horizontal scanning then it should be fine Ah, now I remember why I hadn't just built the delete button. So many complications in retro-fitting simple features like a merge

The downside of admin access is that you get to see a terribly designed user interface for picking which image should be the box scan.

Yeah, there's lot of cool things that could be built around all this data. I'm going to try hard and resist the temptation of building features like that until I've finished putting in the basics! One step at a time.

[ecNate]

You're going to get A LOT of suggestions and bug notices, please don't be discouraged and just take what you can when you have time. I'm just glad this is pretty much functional and seeing new life. We can wait for perfection!


Additional new feature requests:
- Uncut entries, not sure how to handle this. Could simply be a long term feature addition that is applied to an individual collection, but allowing them as their own entities in the database would allow for a 'deck' image of the uncut sheet which would be pretty awesome.
- Simplify deck image selection - When adding a new deck you must add the deck from the company listing (see previous suggestions), then go to the entry to upload a deck, then refresh the page and locate the new image, then middle click (is this even possible on a mac or tablet?) to select it as the representative image. SUGGESTION, the FIRST image uploaded by default becomes the default/deck image.

We should also establish conventions and guidelines for adding decks, ideally also listed as a link or even directly on the page(s) where you can add them. A few things to consider:

Scan size, resolution, etc

Help for entry fields - Printed means number of decks printed, Release Date means YEAR it was printed, Name means ???

So what does 'Name' mean? I would assume it's simply the name on the front of the tuckbox, but sometimes we need to specify it's a version x or perhaps a subtitle is needed. What's especially challenging, and perhaps important to handle now, is what to do about Bicycle branded decks? I noticed there are many that prefix 'Bicycle' to the name if it is branded, but is that only important if it's a USPCC initiated deck? What if it's a KickStarter project that is branded, is it critical to have that listed in those cases?

This brings me to a next topic of discussion, where should KickStarter projects be listed as 'Company' if printed and/or branded by USPCC/Bicycle? My assumption is they go under the company that initiated the project so Civil War would be under USPCC, but Federal 52 should be under Kings Wild. This would then mean the vast majority would be under 'Unknown' since we don't have entries for every single 'company' that has produced a KickStarter deck.

[rhu]

Suggestion and bug reports are both very welcome It's seeing people contribute and discuss this project that makes me want to work on it

Just for fun: http://playingcarddb.com/forumlink/forum-stich.png" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; (This image will be kept up to date on the server)

Yeah, I think you're right. I need a wiki page or something about best practice when contributing to the site. How about "Misc. Kickstarter" until they reach brand worthyness? If one person agrees I'll make the category

[ecNate]

Yeah, I think you're right. I need a wiki page or something about best practice when contributing to the site. How about "Misc. Kickstarter" until they reach brand worthyness? If one person agrees I'll make the category

That could work, although 'Kickstarter Misc' would be easier to find.

For Emmanuel Jose and Jackson Robinson they can appear under a number of 'companies', kind of suggest that an artist field might be something to consider. I noticed that when I added Civil War (under USPCC and not KWP, not to mention new Hive deck with another artist) and Clipped Wings (his first is under HoPC, but new is self).

[montecarlojoe]

It strikes me that extra fields would help clear up the crossover of brands etc.

I suggest Principle Artist and Brand - then you can have USPCC deck branded Bicycle, and a Kings Wild deck branded Bicycle, or a Lotrek deck for RSVP, and a Lotrek deck forHalf Moon etc.

Naming conventions can get fiddly, certainly for searchability I would suggest always moving common words like The and Bicycle to the end of the name:

{NAME}{,The} {:VERSION} {[BRAND]} {(DATE)}

Persian Empire, The
Federal 52 [Bicycle]
Federal 52 [Unbranded]
Artifice :V1 (2011)

and so on.

With the right fields on each record, this could be a constructed display name.

[montecarlojoe]

Also I can see this exploding - I could create a separate forum for this, since UC is a partner site and all.

i.e.
Playing Card Database
- Playing Card Database (link)
- PCDB Discussion
- Bug Reports
- Feature Requests
- Deck submissions (because currently only admin can right?)

(And with Mikes permission we could even make rhu a mini-mod just for that area)

[Mike Ratledge]

Do what you think is best, Joe. I am a bit busy at the moment...

[ecNate]

Naming conventions can get fiddly, certainly for searchability I would suggest always moving common words like The and Bicycle to the end of the name:

{NAME}{,The} {:VERSION} {[BRAND]} {(DATE)}

Persian Empire, The
Federal 52 [Bicycle]
Federal 52 [Unbranded]
Artifice :V1 (2011)

and so on.

With the right fields on each record, this could be a constructed display name.

I corrected the few that I have edit authority to and updated with name change to place 'The' at the end as I also firmly agree with that and just copied/pasted so missed it before.

I also like your proposed naming convention with {NAME}{,The} {:VERSION} {[BRAND]} {(DATE)}, although I would like to see brand also included as a field. Hopefully we can get consensus or at least rhu's agreement so it can be documented and listed on the wiki/help for adding new decks.

It may also be nice to have the printer (manufacturer) as well since it seems that company here really means Producer (person or company that planned and delivered the release). In addition to previously mentioned artist and other previously mentioned fields. Although this is not critical and could be added later, the sooner any field changes can be decided on and implemented the less data updates have to be done later.

[ecNate]

This probably goes without saying, but it may be worth mentioning in the upcoming submission guidelines - Decks only added AFTER they are actually released (no upcoming, pre-order, Kickstarter decks in planning/production process, etc). Right?

[montecarlojoe]

Sounds sensible to me. Keeps things simple.

Unfortunately, just because a project exists or a deck has been scheduled doesnt mean it will actually get produced.

Perhaps if we get wishlist functionality in the future pre release decks could be allowed on those but not collection lists?

[rhu]

Company "Kickstarter Misc" added.

Ok, so each deck can have multiple artists. So I'll need to add that along with artist pages. What fields are needed for artist? Name, Bio (text area?), anything else?

Persian Empire, The
Federal 52 [Bicycle]
Federal 52 [Unbranded]
Artifice :V1 (2011)

^ love this idea!

Playing Card Database
- Playing Card Database (link)
- PCDB Discussion
- Bug Reports
- Feature Requests
- Deck submissions (because currently only admin can right?)

Would be handy to have somewhere that we can all edit a thread with best practice. Would save me setting up a wiki

Joe & ecNate, you're now super-mods on the site so can edit any content. You're trusted not to delete everything

Decks only added AFTER they are actually released (no upcoming, pre-order, Kickstarter decks in planning/production process, etc). Right?

Agreed! For now

[rhu]

I expect most of you know more about playing cards than I do, if you can agree on a simple set of tables and fields I will do my best to add it to the database.

Based on what you've said, I'll get it started. Please copy, edit and repost!

Tables/fields:

Producer (to replace "company" on the site, generally the person or company that planned and delivered the release. e.g.: Ellusionist, Theory11, etc.)
- ID
- Name

Manufacturer (The company that printed the cards)
- ID
- Name

Brand (e.g. Bicycle, Unbranded, etc...)
- ID
- Name

Artist
- ID
- Name
- Bio

Deck
- ID
- Name (to be listed in the format: {NAME}{,The} {:VERSION} {[BRAND]} {(DATE)} )
- Producer (links to primary producer)
- Date (4 digit to represent year only. e.g. "2014")
- Brand (links to primary brand)
- Manufacturer (links to manufacturer)
- Artist1, Artist2, ... (multiple )
- Printed (if limited, how many decks have been printed)

[ecNate]

Joe & ecNate, you're now super-mods on the site so can edit any content. You're trusted not to delete everything

Cool, will tread lightly. I do hope you have confirmed your backups are working though just in case something ELSE goes wrong.

Deck
- ID
- Name (to be listed in the format: {NAME}{,The} {:VERSION} {[BRAND]} {(DATE)} )
- Producer (links to primary producer)
- Date (4 digit to represent year only. e.g. "2014")
- Brand (links to primary brand)
- Manufacturer (links to manufacturer)
- Artist1, Artist2, ... (multiple )
- Printed (if limited, how many decks have been printed)

For the name, I think much of that was a workaround because we didn't have certain fields. If you create a field for brand, date, version I'm not sure that duplication is needed, especially if it is prominent on the listing so people can see the difference. I would see much need for encoding brand, version etc into the name format. We would just have the guidelines of '[Name], The (subname or clarification not represented in other fields)'.

Overall there's a TON of possible options to include (website, multiple social media sites for brand/artist, etc, deck features - embossed, foil, inside tuck printing, gilded edges, etc). I don't think it has to have EVERYTHING and we'll want to keep the fields to a minimum to avoid discouraging new entries from being overwhelmed. I had worked with Sparkz to create a shared spreadsheet and have a lot more information there, including if it was crowdfunded and that URL, plus options I mentioned above. It's a chore to fill a new entry out there though and we should avoid that here since the goal is to allow for tracking a collection and not a repository of every possible deck attribute for reference purposes.

I would suggest you make this complete, but simple. It has to be easy to add new entries and not too complicated so you can keep up with future updates!

[rhu]

It's a chore to fill a new entry out there though and we should avoid that here since the goal is to allow for tracking a collection and not a repository of every possible deck attribute for reference purposes.

I would suggest you make this complete, but simple. It has to be easy to add new entries and not too complicated so you can keep up with future updates!

I think that's an interesting point, perhaps my time would be better spent trying to make the system easier to use and maintain rather than adding complexity to it.

Any more ideas on how to encourage people to use and share their card collections through this system would be very welcome!

If we use that naming convention for now then I can always change my mind at a later date

EDIT: Fixed login redirection problem, only took me half a year

[montecarlojoe]

I agree with ecNaet - with the right fields the Name can be constructed.

It may be a chore - but this is because only a handful of people can make entries - if ANYONE could enter info and those got entered into a queue to be authorised or rejected the work would be spread out and truly community driven (like Wikipedia for example). If the moderators have controls like merge (with individual field selection - think of having the two similar records side by side and tick boxes to choose which data from each ends up in the merged record), Edit and Authorise it'd be good.

Alternatively a minimum dataset could be established and a subset of users allowed to fiil in the rest (like bios, images etc)

Re tables - you could quite easily add Bio to Producer, Manufacturer and Brand too.
You probably have it in the bag, but a normalising table to facilitate any number of artists per deck would be ideal (some have up to 54!). someting like this:
Deck Artists
-ID
-DeckID
-Artist ID

Then a select from the Deck artists table based on the Deck ID, and a simple join with the artists table to pull all the artists through.

I agree there is a point at which it'll becmoe too complicated - but I don;t think we've hit the threshold. Everything suggested so far enhances the collection and your ability to see it / them. For instance without the suggested structure it would be impossible to sort/group/filter a collection by artist, producer, maufactuer or brand - all of which would be really useful!

[montecarlojoe]

If we were to have forum based submissions we could require sumbissions in a certain format (i.e. CSV) to facilitate a quicker import of the basics maybe (you would have to write a basic parser but it could save time in the long run)

[ecNate]

I like the approval method for submissions, provided somebody has to actually be a member to do so. The merge sounds neat, but I would consider that a v15 feature. Some minor copy/paste can work for now.

As for adding fields now or later, I would bridge the gap and add just a key fields that are useful in identification (brand, version, etc) and not worry about classification (artist, embossing, etc), although having the data to easily lookup all of Jackson or Emmanuel decks across all brands/producers would be neat. Certainly we can make things work they way they are now though with a proper naming convention. Rhu, if you have the time and motivation go for it, but it's not critical. Although trying to add data at a later time, especially if this is eventually more opened up for crowd sourced input, will be much more difficult. An agreed, published and ENFORCED naming convention can work well for now (not to mention it would be easy to parse to populate fields later automatically if they are added).

I do now have the ability to edit all decks, but am limited to just name, description and company. I need to correct some qty produced and date values, but don't have the option. In addition, there are quite a few 'delete me' entries that should be removed. Same with all the 'test decks'. Is that correct for my access at this time?

[montecarlojoe]

I had another thought about a way to make the maintenance a community based thing without throwing the doors wide open - make access score based.

You start out being able to simply say "I have this deck", and by doing so you get contributor score (it's basically all I've done so far). But then when you get to 5000 point (for example) you then get the access to add images, and more score, and so on and so on.

Something for the idea bank anyway!

[ecNate]

Yeah, having people show an invested interest in the site through having a collection/points should improve data quality. However, I think initially having a submission with an edit/approval process will allow for quality entries and also populate the database faster. Assuming we don't get a mad rush of standard, vintage, casino decks it should be manageable as many moderns are already listed.

Which brings me to my next request - Can we get a new 'Casino Misc' category? I have a small collection of retired casino decks and I know a number of others do as well. Most would be USPCC based (Bee, etc) or Cartamundi, but I think grouping them all together as 'Casino Misc' makes the most sense. The only issue is they really don't have a tuck so scanning the card back would be the recommended method. Also, we would be grouping all retired (corner cut, drilled center, etc) with unused decks. It seems though that this would still be a good addition to the database.

I would also like to again bring up the idea about the uncuts. Any thoughts? I would LOVE to see uncut images with the rest of my collection on the site, but the challenge there would be how would the code handle it to properly display the image? My Loriot deck set images look fine in the entry, but from the collection or lists it gets very squished. This leads me to believe that the dimensions of an uncut image would be properly stored and individually displayed, but the group views would distort, although not as bad as a double box does. HOWEVER, I think this is fine in the short term and some code corrections in the future could easily improve it. Again, I would suggest these be individual entries and could either be it's own category or better yet listed by company/producer like the others with a suffix of [UNCUT SHEET] at the end of the name (later perhaps a selectable field if desired). Just looking for any approval or opposition before I start adding with that naming convention.

Joe & ecNate, you're now super-mods on the site so can edit any content. You're trusted not to delete everything

Lastly, can you check if I have the proper access you intended to give me? I can edit any deck, but only name/description/company. I can't update qty or date and no obvious way to delete. At least your comment implied I should be able to do that (still lots of test and delete me entries out there)

[rhu]

I know I have a few things I need to reply to, and lots of things to do on this - but in the mean time I've added the Casino Misc category

Also, I'm very jealous of your Goonies deck! I'll need to add that to my wishlist. Will try for another big code sprint this weekend on the project.

[CBJ]

I know I have a few things I need to reply to, and lots of things to do on this - but in the mean time I've added the Casino Misc category

Also, I'm very jealous of your Goonies deck! I'll need to add that to my wishlist. Will try for another big code sprint this weekend on the project.

Hey,

I sent you an e-mail a few days back. Get back to me

Jay

[rhu]

I know I have a few things I need to reply to, and lots of things to do on this - but in the mean time I've added the Casino Misc category

Also, I'm very jealous of your Goonies deck! I'll need to add that to my wishlist. Will try for another big code sprint this weekend on the project.

Hey,

I sent you an e-mail a few days back. Get back to me

Jay

I never received the e-mail, have PM'ed you

[montecarlojoe]

Nice to see you lurking Jay!

Also got my scanner back today so should be able to start uploading new deck images