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So we have the content, now we just need to organise it.

Categories, companies, producers, artists, brands, etc.

I want the site to be as simple as possible, but to make the most amount of sense. I want to hear everyone's feedback on what would be a useful structure for the main database

Thoughts?

I'd say start with the big categories first then focus in:

Have / Don't Have as s discrete category

Country of Manufacture
Manufacturer
Production Company (may be more than one -e.g. midnight & HOPC)
Artist (may be more than one)
Year of release
Brand
Number printed
Title / Name
Edition
Variant
Type or Tags (anything else like Transformation, Ad, Novelty, Photo, Souvenir, Reproduction, Casino etc... again - multi select)

I'll copy in my comments from another thread and update it (EDIT - updated to include Joe's input):

Title / Name - KEEP this existing field
Year of release - KEEP this existing field
Number printed - KEEP this existing field
Producer/Creator - convert the current 'brand' field to this field that is simply the person or company who put the project together. I think this is the same as Joe's "Production Company" which yes it some cases it can be multiple. Some decks may need updates as a result, but this is the closest match I think
Manufacturer - who printed the deck...however, do we specify USPCC Ohio vs Kentucky? What about EPCC and Legends?
Brand - already handled via naming convention, but perhaps this could be moved into distinct field. Assume all recent Hoyle, Kem, etc would be USPCC and these would then be properly implemented as brand? In some cases this may be the same as Manufacturer if self produced and branded.
Artist - Could be multiple, but any collaboration (Ultimate Deck, goverdose, etc) could just be 'Varied'
Tags - free form mulit-select input, but ability to select or type ahead previously used values. Can be used for things like Transformation, Novelty, Photo, Souvenir/Advertising, Facsimile/Reproduction, Casino, Flourishing, Magic, Art, embossed, foil, inside tuck printing, gilded edges, etc... It's possible some of these would be better served as a checkbox stand alone field instead, especially Vintage (with guideline of >20 years old or a reproduction), but if you are able to make tags searchable and results sortable I think you'll accomplish the same thing with more flexibility.
Country of Manufacture
Edition - Already covered in naming convention, I don't see a need to group by this so not essential in my mind. It's also not used often unless there is a new version. Unless I am missing something?
Variant - same as above
Platform - Joe, what was this? I had a note of you mentioning it before.

I would also really like to emphasize the User defined values that people can use within their own collections which would handle a lot of the categorizing/sorting specialty requests. This would be good for features that only a small subset of users would need or care about.

Agree with just about everything ecNate!

I think EPCC actually do print their own, whilst Legends utilise Taiwanese printers without actually owning them (but I'm sure others have more accurate info than me!). Legends could well end up being a Manufacturer, Producer and brand!

Having two USPCCs would probably work, but you could also work it out by date.

Manufacturer for brands owned by USPCC may need a littl research - some are simply brands they use and print at USPCC, some still print their own cards but happen to be owned by USPCC (e.g. fournier, LPCC)
If a brand used to print their own but no longer do, the Manufacturer name could be suffixed with a date range .

Really the "Vintage" tag could be calculated too (Vintage = [This year - Year of manufacture >20] ).

I think platform was to take things like kickstarter, indiegogo, Cardlauncher, Deckstarter, KWFunded etc into account.

A few questions/thoughts.

So the Bees would be back under the USPCC umbrella, or whomever their producers were, rather than on their own. A search for Bee would still allow people to see them all together?

Current common makers in North America (alphabetical):

Carta Mundi
EPCC
LPCC
Make
USPCC (pre 2009 - Ohio, post 2009 - Kentucky)

There are also many international card makers, like Nintendo and Angel in Japan, and perhaps Fournier if we're still considering it separate. And though I'm not recalling the name there was someone in East India making quality cards, etc... Perhaps there could be a list somewhere on the site of the present and past card manufacturers by country? I'd be willing to research that.

When someone has their cards manufactured at an un-named factory, like in Taiwan, it could be designated as "Company Name (outsourced)".

So the fields of interest are:

Producer
Title / Name
Year of release
Number printed

with possible additions of:

Artist
Brand
Manufacturer (where 'Company' currently is in the deck pages?)
Country of manufacture

With all the more specialized designations being handled by the "Tags" you both mention. Would that be covered by user defined values then?

The intent of tags would be database wide and hopefully properly used. If collection level user defined fields are added there would be a place for people to insert in 'top 10' or custom fields that matter to them. Speaking of...Is now the time to also ask for the rating field at the collection level that gets averaged at the database level? Please, please, please? Usually tags are be truly dynamic and simply accept whatever is entered, but hopefully have a type ahead or something to help with proper case/spelling, hints, etc. For the rest I would see all these as being dynamic in that anybody authorized (hopefully more than just rhu) could add new brands, artists, etc to pick from.

Because there are now so many ways to categorize things wouldn't need to be grouped into brand/creator. Instead a simple select-able search or group by field can replace it. List by brands, manufacturers, artists, etc. Of course rhu may elect to initially only provide some of that, but Bee could show up under just Bee or under USPCC or under multiple groupings where it was used. If rhu is redoing these pages anyhow there could be a lot of code reuse and allow for dynamic options that result in many ways to slice/dice the data. Of course I've never seen the code, but in principal this should be workable.

You could think of tagging like #tag in a tweet. You can have as many as you want, and it categorises the item for searches in a freeform way.

Sharepoint does this too, in a semi structured way (offers you existing tags but allow you to create new ones on the fly)

Re Bee, it would be a Brand, and decks marked as Bee could have one of many different Manufacturers.
If Bee were a manufacturer in their own right at some point then a "Bee 18xx-19xx" Manufacturer could also be added.

Joe and ecNate, you've been nominated against your will to be full blown admins on the PCDB

You now get to see this horrible screen where you can update producer, brand, artist and manufacturer lists.



When you get some time could you possibly update the manufacturer and brand lists with some sample data for me? After we have some brands and manufacturer I'll roll it out to the rest of the site.

Admin link:

Ooh cool - will defo have a look later tonight.

rhu wrote:Joe and ecNate, you've been nominated against your will to be full blown admins on the PCDB

You now get to see this horrible screen where you can update producer, brand, artist and manufacturer lists.

When you get some time could you possibly update the manufacturer and brand lists with some sample data for me? After we have some brands and manufacturer I'll roll it out to the rest of the site.

It's not so bad!

I added a bunch of artists, brands and manufacturers. In some cases the brand and manufacturer are the same (Gemco, Piatnik), in others clearly they are not really branded and there is no brand (US Game Systems), so it's not just unmarked KS decks. Also, some manufacturers become to be brands over time if acquired by other companies (Kem, Hoyle, etc). Differences between artist and production company may not always be clear as a single person on KS may make it appear they are the artist, but the artist is actually never named. Still, once this is all implemented and we can group by any of these attributes it will be really cool.