Sunday, December 28, 2008

Lost Minis Wiki


This new website, The Lost Minis Wiki, is dedicated to user created galleries displaying images of old miniature lines.

It is sort of a logical follow up to Stuff of Legends 2.0. SOL hasn't been updated in years and there is always the danger that because there is copyrighted content (the images of miniatures from OOP catalogs, the site may be taken down someday. This site, instead, puts the emphasis entirely on images of actual miniatures in people's collections. Because it is user generated content via a wiki, the site owners don't have to devote their lives to maintianing and growing it.

Sites like these are invaluable to collectors as reference tools.

The only drawback is that there is no chat interface to communicate with other users putting up the content so all questions back and forth become part of the user history and remain on the site forever.

I guess one other drawback is that while it is pretty easy to use and edit once you get the hang of it, I don't yet undersand how to create new pages. I have several minis that I know the maker and background, but can't post them to the site yet as there are no pages for these lines. I'm sure that will come in time.

I'd also like to see them create a page for Unidentified Minis, so that people could post their miniature and have the experts tell them what the mini information is. Once that info is known the user could either repost the image in the correct place and delete the mini from the unidentified page or Admin could move it for them after the information has been confirmed.

The hardest part is uploading a mini if you are not 100% certain of the ID, and this can only happen if you have a catalog or actual product box insert with the minis ID's on it. A lot of the pages don't have this information, so uploading a mini to the wrong mini slot is so likely that I have a lot of images I'm not willing to upload yet.

It would be nice if there were an email link where people could send the Admins PDF copies of old mini catalogs for their expert use in IDing those minis.

I realize my "suggestion" is actuall creating a tremendous amount of work for the Admins, but perhaps they could get some OCD volunteer to step forweard and agree to take on the work of IDing, at least share the work.

Consider this an offer.

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1 Comments:

Blogger Colin said...

Hi Shandar,

Thanks for reviewing Lost Minis Wiki on your Blog. I see you are one of our members too. The idea for the site was originally conceived at the two yahoo groups

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RalParthaMinis/

and

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollectingGrenadierModels/

If you join up there, you'll see that's where we discuss the site as well as RP and Grenadier models.

We have created an unidentified minis page, it just hasn't been linked yet. Still undecided on the format we should use. We have just made a member "Paint jobs" page too.

Most of our effort has been on compiling information and images so far, the site is still pretty new. We have many other ideas in the pipeline and a chat page may well be incorporated into the wiki site.

Any id's you make would be greatly appreciated, check out the unidentified page using the "Special page" then "All pages" links.

Thanks for your comments, and I love the Leonard Nimoy Video, absolutely fantastic find.

Colin "Lost Minis Wiki" site Owner

9:18 PM  

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