Painting showcase.

**Flying Officer Kyte** · 01-31-2015 04:17

Do you think we should have showcases for ancillary work, say one for Buildings, one for ground works, vehicles, ships etc? There is a lot of excellent modelling just getting lost in posts down the years.
Rob.

**matt56** · 01-31-2015 04:50

Perhaps a sub-forum like the "Painting Showcase" but for "Game Accessories" might suffice? Folks could post into it any sort of extra things they're painting or creating that are meant to be used with the game. This could include buildings, vehicles, other groundwork, ships and other coastal bits and bobs, flame and smoke effects, explosions, home-made range rulers, home-made playing mats - anything but planes and balloons would be fair game. And it would be located under one banner to make it easier for people to locate.

I know as I've been looking through things and discovering all the wonderful aspects of modeling and associated ideas on the Forum, it's been rather hit and miss sometimes. The search function works pretty well, but a narrowed "place" to look would certainly help, I think.

All the best,
Matt

**grumpybear** · 01-31-2015 05:01

A sub forum for that type of models would be great.

**Guntruck** · 01-31-2015 05:03

Good idea Rob.

**Blauer Baron** · 01-31-2015 08:52

I'd vote for that. I am an eye candy man.

**flash** · 01-31-2015 09:50

Originally Posted by Flying Officer Kyte

Do you think we should have showcases for ancillary work, say one for Buildings, one for ground works, vehicles, ships etc? There is a lot of excellent modelling just getting lost in posts down the years.
Rob.

Don't think the boss would let us have multiple sub-forums Rob but you could have one with an Index like the showcase and links to the threads.
Having said that you could just have an index sticky and link to the threads of the Hobby Room - would take a while to construct but could be done.

**Flying Helmut** · 01-31-2015 11:22

Good idea WingCo - it can be tricky to track down specific models last viewed some weeks ago.

**Pseudotheist** · 01-31-2015 13:02

Not to disparage any of the work put into setting them up, but I personally think the showcases would need to be completely revamped for this to be relevant.

**Flying Officer Kyte** · 01-31-2015 14:21

Originally Posted by Pseudotheist

Not to disparage any of the work put into setting them up, but I personally think the showcases would need to be completely revamped for this to be relevant.

This is just the sort of thing I was hoping to elicit from the members Todd.

Would you care to elucidate your ideas so that we can get a starting point to decide if it is in fact a viable suggestion of mine.
Thanks,
Rob.

**Pseudotheist** · 01-31-2015 16:40

This may go well beyond the scope of the topic, but here goes:

It is my understanding that the showcases are intended to be a distillation of the presentations of members' efforts dedicated exclusively to the topic. You want a one stop shop to see the best Hanriot repaints on the site? Go to the Hanriot painting showcase, and you'll find an efficient presentation of the works of the membership.

In my opinion, the showcases do a very poor job of this. Pull up any given showcase, and you'll see an opening post of one person's recent works, followed by the usual comments of "nice work" and "how did you do X?". Then you'll see another post of a plane or two, followed by more of the usual comments, repeat as necessary. What you end up with is a half-dozen "this is my repaint" threads concatenated on top of each other. Hopefully no one comes by 6 months after the thead is opened and tries to comment on the second model after three more have been posted. Now, the comments are well and good (and to some extent the reason some members may post their work in the first place), but they don't belong in that thread. The problem is, members posting to the "showcase" thread are using that as their ONLY channel for publicising their work, so there's no other place to have a discussion about the work presented. There is another problem that most people who actually do create independant threads for their work don't cross-post to the "showcase" thread, which makes it far from comprehensive. That problem is harder to solve, but more might cross-post if the showcase was presented differently.

In order for the showcases to perform the functionality I believe they were intended for, they need to be more curated. The first absolutely critical rule should be: no "comment" posts. If a post doesn't present a new repaint of the relevant topic, it is deleted by a thread administrator. Again, it's not that we don't want those comments, but the showcase is the wrong place for them. Users should be strongly encouraged to create seperate threads for their submissions, and provide links to them in the showcase. This is in fact already de-facto policy, but I don't recall seeing anyone put it into practice:

Originally Posted by Oberst Hajj

It is preferred that you initially post threads in the Hobby room where you can give full details of your models and discuss the paints/methods employed - then go into the showcase & attach your favourite photos to the relevant thread, or, if it is a new type create a new Showcase thread.

Please include details of the manufacturer, paint colours & makes, pilots, decals and so on for additional the benefit of the viewers looking for help & inspiration and/or create a link to your Hobby Room thread

I would consider making a seperate thread and link an actual rule instead of a suggestion. But if I were putting this together, I would personally go further. I would only allow 1 post per member, and 1 or two pictures per model. Members who have already posted to the thread shouldn't have any problem editing thier original post to add new models, the picture restriction would both prevent members from cluttering the showcase and encourage them (if it wasn't already an official requirement) to create the individual threads for further discussion, and users could quickly sift through the thread for overviews and to quickly find works that they would like to investigate in further detail on a dedicated thread.

Alternately, each thread could be completely locked, with new content only added by an administrator, who would regularly browse the forum and post a picture and link in the showcase to any relevant thread created.

If some method similar to the above described were implemented, I would consider the showcases a resource for quickly locating information I'm looking for, rather than a discussion I ignore half the time I see a new post listed.

**Pseudotheist** · 01-31-2015 16:58

So, as an example, my Hanriot showcase post would be something like this:

Mario Fucini (Shapeways):

Oreste Codeghini (Shapeways):

Flavio Torello Baracchini:

Mario Fucini:

**Dowters** · 02-01-2015 04:11

Very nice!

**Marechallannes** · 02-01-2015 04:46

A first stepp would be to separate them into WGF & WGS.

I'm not shure about other stuff, but in general the showcases should fit to the main theme.

A Zeppelin or a WW II Carrier Vessel would fit into those categories.

**Flying Officer Kyte** · 02-01-2015 08:50

Originally Posted by Pseudotheist

I would consider making a seperate thread and link an actual rule instead of a suggestion. But if I were putting this together, I would personally go further. I would only allow 1 post per member, and 1 or two pictures per model. Members who have already posted to the thread shouldn't have any problem editing thier original post to add new models, the picture restriction would both prevent members from cluttering the showcase and encourage them (if it wasn't already an official requirement) to create the individual threads for further discussion, and users could quickly sift through the thread for overviews and to quickly find works that they would like to investigate in further detail on a dedicated thread.

Alternately, each thread could be completely locked, with new content only added by an administrator, who would regularly browse the forum and post a picture and link in the showcase to any relevant thread created.

If some method similar to the above described were implemented, I would consider the showcases a resource for quickly locating information I'm looking for, rather than a discussion I ignore half the time I see a new post listed.

I appreciate this thought provoking and honest assessment of how the Showcase page has slipped off the Gold standard Todd. Your suggestions for righting this also have merit. Thank you for taking the time to answer the question so fully.
Have any other chaps a contribution to make, before I draw Keith's attention to the points made? We really want to get it right for the majority of you to feel at home with.
Rob.

**ReducedAirFact** · 02-01-2015 21:24

I think there's value in the discussions, but I agree with Todd that they can distract from the work and make it less of a gallery. I wonder if the software running this site has some way to attach "ancillary discussion" in a way that it is accessible but clearly secondary to the "primary posts"?

**Boney10** · 02-02-2015 00:08

We did try to have two seperate thread running a while ago, see the Sqn and jasta threads.
One was just for pictures and a second for comments, the comments linked to the picture number. Unfortunately it did not work too well as comments soon appeared on the painting thread as it was a bit confusing trying to lync comments on one thread yo the pics on the other .