We will always pass along to our readers any new developments at HobbyDB. As I have said numerous times, I am a big fan of this site, and have a lot of interest in seeing it succeed. One place to catalog all models is a very good tool for collectors.
But of course it has to continue to evolve. Christian and the team at HobbyDB have just announced a major change in how they list variations, and it especially impacts Hot Wheels. I will let the update below explain it all.
Before you read that, I will let you know that I was fooling around with the new layout - I started with the 67 Camaro link below and ended up at the 2013 Super TH list - and found it much easier to navigate. I clicked on the Toyota 2000GT image on the Super TH page, and that took me to the Toyota 2000GT page, which then took me to all the versions and variations of the 2000GT page. I was able to maneuver through easily, and then go back when needed.
Of course for all this to work, HobbyDB needs Curators, and that can be you. You may not know all about a specific brand, but you know a lot about certain models. I HIGHLY recommend contacting the HobbyDB team about becoming a Curator. You will be able to pass along much of the knowledge you have compiled about the castings you collect. Email them at contact@hobbydb.com to find out more.
I am a Curator for HobbyDB, and plan on adding some of my favorite models to help expand the database. I hope you do the same.
Read below for more info on the new developments, which were instigated after comments from collectors. How cool is that?
Enjoy...
When South Texas Diecast moved their data over to the hobbyDB platform, one of the driving forces behind the decision was that hobbyDB would allow to ascend to new heights of detail in the cataloging of variants, including card variations and many other detailed points which, up til now, had not been included.
But with some items running into hundreds of variants, we rapidly realized that this meant we’d need to make some changes to how we displayed them in order to prevent users from being overwhelmed with information and leaving them unable to find what they were looking for.
Users told us that these issues were happening in search and on the variant pages (the page where you see all the variants of an individual item). We knew we needed to give our data Curators better tools to deal with this. So to start with, we introduced grouping.
At the highest level, the grouping function lets curators group variants by series. That lets them put all the (for example) First Releases, Mainlines, Treasure Hunts and Set Releases in together. Here’s an example, the Dairy Delivery;
This creates a nice overview page where you can see the high-level history of the casting, and the Curator can write about its overall history. Within the groups, however, it deals with something we rapidly saw was becoming a huge problem; variants that are different, but look identical in their pictures.
Curators can now group these items together too. That gives a convenient page where they can write about the detail differences between them. And then we made one last change to make things even better at this level.
From the start of the site, we automatically generated a list of differences between variants which showed in a pop-down on each variant. That worked fine when the differences were just things like Red/Blue paint and Black/Brown interior. But when the differences were across dozens of fields and hundreds of variants, the pop-downs stretched to gargantuan size and became impossible to use.
So we got rid of the pop-down entirely. Instead, Curators can now write a short description of what makes each variant different. This displays below the image on the variants and also shows up in the search results, taking care of the issue there.
We hope you all like the changes; we think they’re a big improvement over the old version, make things more accessible and minimize confusion.
Of course, now we need as many Curators as possible to help fill in those descriptions. We already have 162, plus STDC Hot Wheels Powerhouse Rob of course, but more are needed! So if you’re not one of those already and you’re interested in getting involved, just shoot us an email at contact@hobbydb.com.
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