what I want for mycomics.org

[sangorshop .]

I don't use mycomics - not enough instructions, so some of the below
might already be there.
Also Henry, is there a way to announce the list on mycomics? or would
that bring in too many folks who just like to be on lists?

Glad to hear of the focus on mobile, as that is where things are
moving, and if "we" dont do it now, we'll still have to eventually.

What I'd like to foresee for the future:

One scans a comic's barcode, it checks to see if you have it - and
then let you add it if you don't.
If it was not in the database, it would both mark a temporary space
for it, notify the GCD that it was "requested" and after a period of
time send a message if the item was rejected from the database or kept
pending indexing by someone. .,

Ease of use, particularly for us folks with large fingers
appreciated. not to mention slightly larger font for those of us with
reading glasses.

for use at cons, ease of finding issue, the first thing would be it
will let us know if we have it, and if we click will let us know
what's indexed in it.

besides a want list, could it have a "have but want to sell" list?
not so much for retailers, but for collectors and readers .... If we
were making a database to sell, that would probably be more needed,
and with places for grading...

Note that I'm not expecting Henry or others to do the above, just
talking about what I would find useful.

Steven

[Merlin Haas]

As is often the case, Steven and I think along the same lines. Mobile is the future, like it or not. (I have an iPhone, but use it sparingly.) The barcode idea would help us add issues we're missing or aren't aware of their existence. I need better starting instructions. I've tried to enter some of my collection, but it took a lot of time to figure out the "collection" setup.
best -- Merlin Haas

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[Henry Andrews]

Thanks, Steven!  I meant to reply to your comment on chat but kept forgetting...

I will definitely be putting an announcement up on mycomics, hopefully will have something up for Jochen to review later today. I'd like as many people as possible here, and in particular if we can get folks who are interested in mycomics but not in being on the indexing lists that would be fantastic.  Those users probably look at mycomics differently than indexers do, and their perspectives will be valuable.  That's part of why I wanted a new list separate from lists discussing indexing.

The barcode stuff is a great idea- do we have some barcode integration on the main site?  I know we have a field for it but don't recall if there was any sort of scan-to-look-up feature.  I like the idea of an automatic "please someone add this" action, too.

A "have but want to sell" list should be easy enough to support.  I've been thinking about why multiple collections are a thing in mycomics.  Separate have vs want lists make total sense, as does a want-to-sell list.  You probably want to make your want / want-to-sell collections public, but may not want to make your other collection data public.  This also makes me think of a "used to have" collection- for those of us who like to track whether we've read things, I might want to know that I had something and read it at one point, even if I don't have it anymore.

Beyond those sorts of use cases, I feel like other multi-collection use cases would be better served by the sort of filtering that was brought up on another thread.  I have collections split by publisher right now, but that's pretty artificial.  I'd rather have one collection that I can filter to one or more publishers than manage separate collections by publisher.  Because sometimes I'd want to look across publishers.

I'm definitely interested in understanding what makes a good reason to have separate collections vs a filtering feature.

And yes, documentation and online help is key.  Particularly online help- stuff you can see while you're using the app.

To start with, I plan to add a diagram like this to the front page explaining the whole toggle thing (with some explanatory text).  Not the best diagram ever, but I feel like we take for granted that the dual-mode site thing is intuitive.  I suspect it's not, particularly since it's fairly easy to get stuck on one "side" or the other- only the issue/series/publisher pages currently have toggle links to switch.

thanks,

-henry

[Henry Andrews]

Note: front page of my.comics for the diagram, not front page of the GCD proper.

On Wednesday, December 18, 2019 at 11:56:38 AM UTC-8, sangorshop . wrote:

[Henry Andrews]

Thanks, Merlin- I think coming up with a streamlined and consistent "find issues and do stuff with them" will help a lot.  That will be much easier to explain than the various ways in which it currently works.  I'm happy to add some help text here and there to bridge major gaps, but I think producing a consistent UX will be the biggest win for helping people understand how it works.  And I'd build help text into the new UX from the start.

thanks,

-henry

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[Katie Delia]

Just a couple quick notes.

You can, right now, make "have but want to sell" list.  You can make any list you want.  The functionality we're missing is a good way to connect that list with others "want" lists.

Scanning the barcode is a great idea.  The problem is that many comics we have in the database we don't have barcodes for.  I don't know how to make that work with the "requested" suggestion you made.

Katie---:>

[sangorshop .]

I did confess that I have no idea what can and can't be done with the
current mycomics. Although I have been wondering if "collections"
could be renamed, thanks for letting me know that they indeed can.

Im sorry that I wasnt very clear at all, in stating that only folks
adding comics to their "collections" from the past 12 years would be
able to use only the barcode scanner, and only some for the previous
20 years to that, and not at all for the 60 prior to that.
I certainly thought about it, Indeed I;m currently indexing a 2017
giveaway for a donation comic that has no barcode.
I suspect most of the new folks collecting comics have mostly barcode
issues and books. I still buy lots of new comics, so am very used to
the barcodes. I personally might consider using mycomics if using a
scanner was possible, as at least scanning would be quicker for all
the books since Diamond demanded barcodes for everything.

Henry, another wild and not practical idea would be a possible "read
collection" that contained all the original appearances of stories
that one has reprints of.
I assume those folks who want to sell books, would need front and
center space to add condition (for easy viewing on the phone).
If I think of more "would be nice' things, I'll mention them - without
consideration for any practicality.

Steven Rowe


But

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[Henry Andrews]

On Wednesday, December 18, 2019 at 3:37:46 PM UTC-8, sangorshop . wrote:

Henry, another wild and not practical idea would be a possible "read
collection" that contained all the original appearances of stories
that one has reprints of.

So... what got me thinking about mycomics, before I even noticed comicbookdb was going away, is that I started reading comics again after barely having done so since 2015.  Mostly, I'm reading backissues that I bought ages ago but never read.

I have an *enormous* spreadsheet compiled from an unwieldy combination of Mike's Amazing World of Comics and the GCD, where I track what I have, whether I have it in its original printing or a reprint, where the original came from if it's a reprint (both the original and reprint show up, with different markings), whether it's a floppy issue or a trade paperback or a hardcover, and whether I've read it.  It started off as a spreadsheet downloaded from Mike's, and got expanded quite a bit with data he didn't track.  When I started doing this, i don't think we had a field for release date, but Mike's site did.

Anyway... I seem to have stopped updating it around 2007 or so, even though I kept reading comics regularly through mid-2015.  Since most of what I have is pre-2007 anyway, it's still pretty useful, but I didn't really want to update all of the post-2007 stuff.

Ideally, I would like to be able to replace that whole mess with mycomics.  I'd be able to do much nicer data visualization (e.g. show me all of the Legion of Super-Heroes stories, wherever I have them, in the order they were originally released) from a database than from a spreadsheet.  So while replacing that is not my most urgent priority (mycomics needs to be basically usable first), it's very much something I'm keeping in mind.

 

I assume those folks who want to sell books, would need front and
center space to add condition (for easy viewing on the phone).
If I think of more "would be nice' things, I'll mention them - without
consideration for any practicality.

Yes, now is the time to not worry about practicality!  Bring on the ideas!

thanks,

-henry

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[Katie Delia]

On Wednesday, December 18, 2019 at 6:37:46 PM UTC-5, sangorshop . wrote:

I  did confess that I have no idea what can and can't be done with the
current mycomics.   Although I have  been wondering if "collections"
could be renamed, thanks for letting  me know that they indeed  can.

That's why I explained it.  :)
 

Im sorry that I wasnt  very clear at all,  in stating that only folks
adding comics to their "collections" from the past 12 years  would be
able to use only the barcode scanner, and only some for the previous
20 years to that, and not at all for the 60 prior to that.
  I certainly thought about it, Indeed I;m currently indexing a 2017
giveaway for a donation comic that has no barcode.
I suspect most of the new folks collecting comics have mostly barcode
issues and books.  I still buy lots of new comics, so am very used to
the barcodes. I personally might consider using mycomics if using a
scanner was possible, as at least scanning would be quicker for all
the books since Diamond demanded barcodes for everything.

I buy a lot of current comics too, and here's the problem.  For companies like Marvel and, the different variants have different barcodes.  So while the issue might be mostly indexed, not all the variants have barcodes added.   For instance, I'll make sure the issues I have are indexed, but I can't add the variant barcodes since I don't know them.  If you scan a variant without a barcode, it won't come up, even if it is in the database.  For smaller companies, they likely have less variants, but are less likely to the barcodes added.  So it would likely work great if the issues were indexed; it wouldn't work great for those who aren't.

Katie----:>  

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[Katie Delia]

While we're not being practical... ;)

It'd be great to be able to enter our own custom fields.  

Katie---:>

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[Henry Andrews]

I've seen solutions similar to keywords where instead of single terms they are name-value pairs, so you can query them more or less like fields.  I've never looked into it in detail but there may be a library out there to make that easy similar to how we use a library for keywords on the main site.

thanks,

-henry