1. Go the Library Tab and search for the set that you would like to moderate. In the screenshot below, I have searched for 2008 Upper Deck and I have a list of all 2008 Upper Deck Sets.

2. Select the set that you would like to moderate from the search results. In this example, I have selected Upper Deck 2008 and I have been directed to the set directory page. On this page, I can search within the set, select different subsets and report any problems. On the upper right hand page, it will also show the set expert and give you the option to volunteer to help.

3. Select ‘volunteer to help’ and a pop-up will appear where you can add a few comments on why you want to become a set expert (this is optional). Josh and I will receive a notification of your request.

4. When your request has been approved, you will receive a message in your inbox notifying you that you are now a set expert. You will also see a Set Expert Panel on your dashboard where you will now see any flags for that set, new cards added to that set and any issues reported.

Congratulations! Now you are a set expert. Your power is endless!

We have had a lot of bugs and we appreciate your patience as we fix them. The good news is that we have not had anyone report that they could not access their collections or received error messages while trying to view their Wantlist. Our first priority was to make sure that the site could work for everyone – even if you had a massive collection. If you are having issues – please let us know.

Import/Export

The mass import/export has been working well and we are very excited that you have been trying it out. We have increased our user created cards in the database by 30% – with over 30,000 cards added to the site since we re-launched. That means in a year and a half of user submissions, users added 100,000 cards compared to 30,000 in that last few weeks. That’s pretty amazing! Thanks to jmurph8081 who has been busy importing and completing several sets as well as becoming our first set expert and taking the lead on the contributor leaderboard.

We hope that more of you will become set experts and help us build the Zistle database and moderate the library. I will be writing a post later about how set expert works and how you can give jmurph8081 a run for his money in the top spot.

Please give us your feedback using the side link

We are using Tender as our new feedback and FAQ tool. Not only will this be the way that Zistle users can report bugs and other issues, it will serve as an area where we can cumulatively add to the knowledge base for new users. If and when possible, it is really helpful to us to report one problem at a time rather than a laundry list of issues in one thread. Then we can say: “hooray! We fixed this problem!” and then we can move on to the next one. It also helps other users identify individual problems and then add to the discussion if they are also experiencing it. That being said, we sincerely appreciate the feedback and your help finding the bugs. It is ultimately our job to make sure that everything is working and we appreciate any and all help.

Over the next few days, I will be responding to some of your questions and suggestions on the blog as well as in the help and support section. I will also be addressing some of the features that did not make it into this release and how we plan to continue to work on the site moving forward.

We want to thank you again for your feedback, support and patience as we made this change over to the new platform. It was definitely not as smooth as we wanted it to be and we will be working hard over the next few weeks to rapidly fix bugs and make sure that the site is running smothly. The current version of Zistle is certainly not the last. Now that we have made this transition, we will be able to make updates more quickly in addition to being able to accommodate users with hundreds of thousands of cards.

This launch paved the way for all of the features that we have been planning for the last year. We are so excited to be on this new platform and to make Zistle what we know it can be.

One of the reasons why this release took so long to materialize (besides some complicated back-end changes) was a lack of focus in terms of what features to focus on first. There are so many ideas out there and so many things that we want to do – but, it is significantly harder to decide what to do first and how to prioritize. So to simplify our process we asked ourselves one simple question: what is stopping most collectors from using Zistle? It was an easy answer – we need better data. So our number 1 focus for this release is to make tools and features that make it easier for you to get your data into Zistle and allow you access to get it out. More data, better data, free data…

More data – Bulk import into the Zistle Library and to your collection

Many of our members have spent countless hours entering cards one by one into the Zistle database. With the next release, members will be able to mass import cards from a .csv file directly into the Zistle database. This allows Zistle members to leverage their own spreadsheets as well as spreadhseets and checklists that already exist online and import them into the database which will make it a lot easier to increase the number of cards in the database.

We would like to add similar functionality for adding cards to your collection and wantlists. We could really use your imput on whether or not you think this system would be useful to you and if you have any suggestions for how to make it the most useful process for you. Obviously, members without their entire collections will not benefit from this as much as users with more data to add. We are hoping that this will help people who have been on the fence about Zistle make the leap. Be sure to give us your thoughts in the comments below. Thanks!

Better Data – Tools for improving the accuracy of the database

So more data is great, but it is no secret that there are some issues with inaccurate and duplicate cards in the database. Right now, our flagging system works well for individual errors or updating a single card. However, when an entire set is incorrect or there are a series of duplicates, there is not a very good system for bringing that to our attention and correcting it. We are approaching this in a few different ways. First, you will be able to flag a set or a subset as being a mess (that probably won’t be the official term – but when I think of 1990 Topps or anything Starquest sets, that is the only way to describe them). This way, we can identify and track sets that need a substantial amount of work and resolve it more effectively. Those of you who have emailed me or shared feedback on Get Satisfaction will be able to appreciate that these requests often slip through the cracks.

We are also making some significant changes to the Library tab. Currently, the Library tab is designed to serve as a reference area to look up cards not in your collection. On the new site, it will serve as a wiki-style view of each set on Zistle. So for example, you will be able to go to the 2010 Topps page and see a comprehensive view of each set, with a list of every subset, the number of cards in each subset, and images of the cards. There will also be a discussion area to hash out style issues such as red ink versus black or misprints. In addition, we will have set experts that will be able to approve the cards added to that particular set and monitor any changes that happen to the set. This will help take some of the administration burden off of Josh and I and allow more consensus within the community on style points and the nuances of each set.

Free your data – Exporting your collection/wantlist from Zistle

This is a feature we have talked about for a long, long time. One that many of our detractors mention as a downfall of the site and certainly makes people nervous (especially when we don’t blog for a few months). We do firmly believe that you own your data and we recognize that it is nice to be able to print off your collection and wantlists for card shows, etc. As a disclaimer, there will be some limits to the amount of data that can be exported at one time (this is primarily a technology barrier). We haven’t worked it out exactly but it will be something on the order of a limit of 10,000 entries at one time – which seems workable to us. We will be monitoring the exporting and reserve the right to disallow this privilege or cancel someone’s account if we suspect abuse for obvious reasons ( mean spirited people be advised). To our valued members – thank you for trusting us with your data for the last year and a half. We are excited to be able to launch this feature.

We know that is a lot of information. Please give us feedback in the comments below. If you have ideas about how to make bulk importing into wantlists/collection better than we laid out above, please let us know. Can’t wait to hear what you think.

The Zistle live chat has become a pretty lonely place. The idea has been tossed around by several Zistlers to set up at least one time during the week when people would go online and chat. I saw now is as good of a time as any to get something started. So this Sunday night while the football game is on, we are going to have an official chat session on Zistle. People can organize trades, mingle and get to know newbies. Join in anytime. If you have a blog, please spread the word. One note is that you need to have a Zistle account to access chat so if you mention it to others please let them know. This should be fun. See you Sunday.

After we launched live chat, there were quite a few requests to add a forum. And well, we just can’t say no. There is now a Zistle Forum that you should definitely go and check out. As you might have guessed, this will help facilitate the writing of the style guide as well as give you an opportunity to have longer threads between members. If you want a category added, just let me know. The forum is housed at forum.zistle.com and if you are logged into Zistle, you will be automatically logged into the forum as well.

Private messaging is built into the platform and it is called ‘whispering’. If you want to whisper, simply start a new discussion and type in the user’s name in the appropriate field and only they will be able to see your message.Similarly, when you respond to a thread, you can simply enter in the name (the field will auto-complete so you don’t need to type the whole username) and you are all set.

Chat is still available for you to use. For now, they are different experiences but we will most likely integrate them down the road. As always, we love to hear your feedback on what you like, don’t like, think could be better, etc so don’t be shy!

UPDATE 4/24: Thanks for your patience while we finalized wrestling. It is now up and available for you to enjoy.

UPDATE 4/23 : This has been disabled for the moment as we are working out some details regarding the content.  We’ll update again when we know what the final verdict is here.

It was time to add another sport to Zistle. While racing may seem like the obvious next addition, there were a stack of WCW cards in our collection that forced us to add wrestling. Wrestling cards are purely amazing if you love bad wax. I mean I am not sure you could find a better example of the most absurd cards ever manufactured. Plus, pro-wrestling from the early 90′s brings back some great memories–so I guess we are being a little selfish. I mean I will just let some of these speak for themselves. There is infinite material but here are some of my favorites.

The honorable former governor of Minnesota aka “The Body”

This guy gives me nightmares. I mean look at that claw manoeuvre

The good old Bushwackers. If there was super glue in your shampoo wouldn’t your hands be stuck to your head rather than some else’s head?

I could do this all day. Oh Andre!

We have to give a big thank you to WrestlingTradingCards.com for supplying the photos. They have been compiling this online collection since 2002 and they are extremely dedicated to the great circus known as professional wrestling. Every card provided by Wrestling Trading Cards has a link to their site so if you are interested in learning more, please check them out.

]]> http://blog.zistle.com/2009/04/23/wrastlin-zistle-style/feed/ 0 http://blog.zistle.com/2009/04/21/zistle-launches-live-chat/ http://blog.zistle.com/2009/04/21/zistle-launches-live-chat/#comments Wed, 22 Apr 2009 06:29:47 +0000 ashley http://blog.zistle.com/?p=274

Live chat, our most requested feature, just came to Zistle and we are very, very excited to offer this feature to our members. Any member logged into Zistle will be able to access Zistle Live Chat to instantly connect with other Zistle members. There will be one main chat room where all members logged in will appear. You can participate in the main conversation or have a private conversation with any individual member in a separate tab. So you can discuss the topic du jour or work out trade details with other members simultaneously. To initiate a private conversation with a member, just click their username and click ‘ private message’.

You will be able to access Zistle Live Chat from your dashboard and the trading homepage. Members who do not log into Zistle chat will not appear in the chat room so you don’t need to opt out if you are not interested in chatting with other members online.

While we have tested the new chat feature, we anticipate that bugs will arise over the next few days. As always, we rely on you to let us know about any issues you encounter. We work hard to get new features to you as quickly as possible and we appreciate your help when we launch a new feature.

See you soon on Zistle Chat!

Zistle’s football library just grew substantially thanks to Mike from Nearmint’s Vintage Football Cards. Mike graciously shared the beautiful scans featured on his reference site the Vintage Football Card Gallery with Zistle and we are extremely excited. I mean you can just see from the image of his site above that these scans are beautiful. If you haven’t checked out the gallery, it is a well-designed site that contains various football sets from 1948-1975 with great images and more information than most sites.

Mike got back into the hobby after a friend got him hooked on 1989 ProSet. After a short time, he started collecting cards from his childhood and in 1999 started selling cards on Ebay.  When Ebay raised thier prices in 2001, Mike launched his own sales site Nearmint Vintage Football Cards and never looked back. TheVintage Football Card Gallery grew from the sales site and 98-99% of the cards in the gallery were at one time in Mike’s own personal collection or sold through his site–meaning that he has spent quite a bit of time with his scanner.

Mike is a true Zistle hero. Not only does he run a fabulous site selling vintage football cards but he has created an amazing resource for vintage football card collectors. We are truly honored that his gallery is now a part of the Zistle library.