The Cover Project
General Category => News and Announcements => Topic started by: Snowcone on April 12, 2021, 12:40:29 PM
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In the coming weeks we will be rolling out a pretty big shift to how we've handled covers here at TCP. In the past, we had a pretty strict process to ensure the absolute top quality covers were being made available. That same process created a multi thousand cover backlog that would be impossible for our team of Gurus and Admins to get through. Folks stopped uploading covers figuring things were never going to make it onto the site, and they were right.
The change we are making will allow the community to directly upload covers to the site. Covers that meet the high standards we have will be denoted with a "TCP Certified" badge on the download page. Others will be marked with a "Community Upload" badge.
This change should see a pretty significant increase in the content showing up around here and allow us to catch up on the backlog. I'll announce here once the new uploader is made public.
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Nice! I'm excited for what's next to come :) Thanks Snow
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Sounds interesting. Just out of curiosity, is there anything in place that prevents a troll from deliberately uploading garbage covers for the purpose of flooding the site? I'm not really expecting that to be a huge issue, but I'm curious just the same.
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Sounds interesting. Just out of curiosity, is there anything in place that prevents a troll from deliberately uploading garbage covers for the purpose of flooding the site? I'm not really expecting that to be a huge issue, but I'm curious just the same.
Yes. Covers will be spot checked before showing up. This is obviously to filter out inappropriate content as well. That said, you have to have a forum user setup to upload covers and they upload will be linked to that user account. This should hopefully limit the trolling.
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Sounds interesting. Just out of curiosity, is there anything in place that prevents a troll from deliberately uploading garbage covers for the purpose of flooding the site? I'm not really expecting that to be a huge issue, but I'm curious just the same.
I was thinking of some kind of voting (+/-) on the uploaded covers to show if people like it or not for the Community Badge covers. But I also see that hurting peoples feelings when some trolls come in and downvote everything...
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I was thinking of some kind of voting (+/-) on the uploaded
We the Cover Admins (maybe Gurus too) shall decide the faith.
Meaning probably that all decent ones stay atleast until better one is made.
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Yes. Covers will be spot checked before showing up. This is obviously to filter out inappropriate content as well. That said, you have to have a forum user setup to upload covers and they upload will be linked to that user account. This should hopefully limit the trolling.
We the Cover Admins (maybe Gurus too) shall decide the faith.
Meaning probably that all decent ones stay atleast until better one is made.
That all sounds good to me. I guess the other big thing I wouldn't want to see happen, is getting a dozen versions of the same cover with extremely minor differences between them. But it sounds like that will be covered. If I'm understanding it correctly, this new process will allow us to host some decent quality covers that may not meet the strictest standards, but can be used as placeholders until something better comes along. In other words, we will have more choices in the official cover section and won't need to spend as much time searching the forums looking for the covers that haven't been uploaded.
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Fundamentally this should make it faster to review/approve covers. The check will be "is it a cover" instead of "is it cover X that fits case Y and are the dimensions correct, and does it... etc, etc". No matter how high or low quality covers are, someone might want it so we should make it available.
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Sounds interesting. Just out of curiosity, is there anything in place that prevents a troll from deliberately uploading garbage covers for the purpose of flooding the site? I'm not really expecting that to be a huge issue, but I'm curious just the same.
Fundamentally this should make it faster to review/approve covers. The check will be "is it a cover" instead of "is it cover X that fits case Y and are the dimensions correct, and does it... etc, etc". No matter how high or low quality covers are, someone might want it so we should make it available.
Just to cause drama, lol... 8) (sorry rockabilly1983!!! your cover is amazing!)
(https://i.postimg.cc/yKM9bPMD/Untitled-1.jpg)
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Sounds interesting. Just out of curiosity, is there anything in place that prevents a troll from deliberately uploading garbage covers for the purpose of flooding the site? I'm not really expecting that to be a huge issue, but I'm curious just the same.
Fundamentally this should make it faster to review/approve covers. The check will be "is it a cover" instead of "is it cover X that fits case Y and are the dimensions correct, and does it... etc, etc". No matter how high or low quality covers are, someone might want it so we should make it available.
Just to cause drama, lol... 8) (sorry rockabilly1983!!! your cover is amazing!)
(https://i.postimg.cc/yKM9bPMD/Untitled-1.jpg)
You're funny, ShoothimNow. ;D Ha ha ha ha! I'm very happy you like my Batman cover.
My Covers: https://app.box.com/s/hote51vbfehfqo0yu5j0
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Thinking about it... knowing it probably would never be a thing due to bandwidth... it would be pretty awesome to host the raw scans as well (for covers that are not 100% TCP Certified), but you already don't ask for server costs and I feel that might eat into the costs.
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So I have access to a Google for education account with unlimited storage.
Is there any way to help out with that and not give out the account name?
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Looking forward to being able to contribute more!
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I was thinking of some kind of voting (+/-) on the uploaded covers to show if people like it or not for the Community Badge covers. ...
I like the (+/-) idea for covers. Should further illustrate which covers are higher or lower quality
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I was thinking of some kind of voting (+/-) on the uploaded covers to show if people like it or not for the Community Badge covers. ...
I like the (+/-) idea for covers. Should further illustrate which covers are higher or lower quality
That's a good idea. This should help streamline the process.
My Covers: https://app.box.com/s/hote51vbfehfqo0yu5j0
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I was thinking of some kind of voting (+/-) on the uploaded covers to show if people like it or not for the Community Badge covers. ...
I like the (+/-) idea for covers. Should further illustrate which covers are higher or lower quality
That's a good idea. This should help streamline the process.
Do you think people would vote based on quality?
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Do you think people would vote based on quality?
When 3000+ people download a cover, at least 2 people would vote if they liked it or not. Again, I would only have this on Community Badge covers and not official TCP verified covers.
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I think there should be more focus on users uploading raw scans. As it is now, you are dependent on the owner of the cover to scan and process the image. Not everyone can work with pictures and in my case not particularly interested in spending time on a picture you already own. Anyone with a reasonably modern scanner can create a raw copy with very little effort. This can then be the basis for anyone who wants to try to edit it. I'm uploading my covers which are all raw scans. It's over 1000 and it's not something I intend to sit and edit as I already have the original, but I make them available with the hope that someone needs the exact version I have scanned.
Please create a link on the same page as the edited image that goes to one or more versions of raw scanning.
Not everyone is or needs to be a photoshop ninja
My Covers (still uploading, takes forever)
https://archive.org/details/@ostafrallan
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We have plenty of raw scans and those are more than welcome as long as they are good quality.
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Great. My suggestion was to have a link to the raw cover on the same page as the processed cover. If there is no cover, you can always download it and edit it. Can also make it easier for requests if you do not have the knowledge to edit images yourself
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Great. My suggestion was to have a link to the raw cover on the same page as the processed cover. If there is no cover, you can always download it and edit it. Can also make it easier for requests if you do not have the knowledge to edit images yourself
While I like that idea, the problem is the links breaking unless TCP also offered hosting the raws. We've already seen this happen with only links around the site when the hosting site changes something with how their links work or the user deletes their account.
If you want your raws used, I would recommend creating a thread and linking to them in it or posting the link to the raw in the appropriate thread that's already created. Just make sure to put the name of the cover along with the link so the search feature will find it.
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Do not know how archive.org handles links, but TCP could create an account where they dump all raw scans. If it is not possible to link, you can at least look there. The forum is good, but it is difficult to navigate. Becomes like a maze with links that sometimes no longer work.
Anyway. Looking forward to the changes and that TCP is revived.
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Great. My suggestion was to have a link to the raw cover on the same page as the processed cover. If there is no cover, you can always download it and edit it. Can also make it easier for requests if you do not have the knowledge to edit images yourself
While I like that idea, the problem is the links breaking unless TCP also offered hosting the raws. We've already seen this happen with only links around the site when the hosting site changes something with how their links work or the user deletes their account.
If you want your raws used, I would recommend creating a thread and linking to them in it or posting the link to the raw in the appropriate thread that's already created. Just make sure to put the name of the cover along with the link so the search feature will find it.
I guess how I read this was:
TCP Verified Cover:
- None
Community Badge Cover:
- None
Raw Scan:
- Scan (1)
Once there is a verified cover, remove the raw scan
TCP Verified Cover:
- Cover (1)
Community Badge Cover:
- None
Raw Scan:
- No longer needed
Then again, that would create so much extra work...
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I'm of the opinion we could leave the raw up as a future resource. Why limit what people can get? That's probably how archive.org would handle it
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I have a small pool of users beta testing this. Once we have the kinks worked out of it I'll update the link in the nav and we'll open this to everyone.
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I can't wait to upload my covers ;D ;D
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Not sure if there's a glitch in the process, but I clicked on the links for many of the Wii covers that were uploaded today (I went to the Wii section and this took me to the newest covers page) and they are all empty. The thumbnail is blank and there is a note under it that says "There are currently only manuals available for this game."
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Not sure if there's a glitch in the process, but I clicked on the links for many of the Wii covers that were uploaded today (I went to the Wii section and this took me to the newest covers page) and they are all empty. The thumbnail is blank and there is a note under it that says "There are currently only manuals available for this game."
They hadn’t been approved yet. They have now, and are visible.
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I've been downloading from this site for years. Finally getting to the point where I can contribute. I think you need to allow user uploads but have an option for raw scan. Like you have retail cover and custom cover now. Add a third option for raw scan. A lot of users aren't going to care if it's the highest quality scan or not. They just want to print something and put it in a case. I'm sure a lot of covers I need are on this site somewhere. It would be a lot more user friendly if they were uploaded to the main site. I have a good but imperfect scan of El Shaddai that I would like to upload to the site but I don't see an option to. I can put it in the forum but no one is ever going to edit it and it will just sit there forever and not get used.
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It sounds to me like a kanban board or a SIM ticketing board would work wonders here, especially if filterable. Unsure if something like that could be built and automated though ???
But I do agree to earlier comments, posting a set of requirements for acceptance would be great both for scans and edited docs, potentially with examples. Perhaps even including links to guides for scanning, editing, and uploading procedures (maybe even rewriting the guides would help, I'm a technical writer and even I'm having trouble piecing together where things are and how to do things haha)