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.

All of your current settings and information will transfer over to the site with one exception. Outstanding trades and trading history will no longer be accessible. Trader scores will be maintained but there will be no history of previous trades. We apologize for the inconvenience but this is one item were not able to migrate.

So, relax on entering more cards, clear up any outstanding trade issues, check the blog for updates and enjoy the weekend! Happy 4th of July!

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.

We are still cranking through the approvals and flags – thanks for your patience with this. There have been more delays recently as we continue to work on the back-end migration.

Look for a post this weekend giving a preview of what will be different in the next release. As always, feel free to drop us a note with any feedback or ideas.

So when DaClyde offered to share his collection of 30,000 images with Zistle as long as he didn’t have to add them individually – we were ecstatic but also knew that we needed a way to solve this problem once and for all. With a little testing we were able to come up with a solution that has worked beautifully – thanks in part to DaClyde’s meticulous organizational skills. Literally some of our sets have gone from zero pictures to being 99% complete. Let’s just take a second to relish in the beauty of the 1987 Topps Set…

And all 53 pages of the main set look that way with a few exceptions. Wow! We feel extremely lucky to have such generous contributing members and we appreciate your patience while we come up with a solution for everyone. In the meantime if you have complete sets or a large collection that is well organized and would like to save yourself from getting carpel tunnel – please let us know. Ideally – the cards for any given subset would be in their own directory and the names of the cards would be the card number. However – we can most likely work with any organizational scheme.

Thanks for all of your hard work – we’re getting there.

Since we will be migrating all of the information from the old Zistle to the new Zistle, we will need to take the site down for as long as 24 hours. We are hoping to be able to complete the relaunch this week. While the site is down, we will have information on the blog with current status as well as a preview of the new features.

We are really excited about this new platform. Thanks for your patience…it will be worth the wait.

This post is really meant to quell your fears as well as address some of the issues that are facing Zistle and how we plan to move forward in 2010. First of all, Zistle is not being shut down. We haven’t abandoned you or the site. What in fact has been going on behind the scenes is a long and involved conversation about how to take Zistle to the next level. Here are the major challenges that we are facing.

Larger capacity

If you are a member that has a large collection or wantlist on Zistle, you are no stranger to error codes. This is unacceptable to us but we frankly do not have the bandwidth to support it. The immediate fix to the problem is to pay for more bandwidth but this is not a real solution since this is a cycle that will just perpetually continue.

Zistle needs to stay free but have a path to sustainabilty

Our love for Zistle is deep but it is obvious that at some point Zistle will become a financial burden for us. We are committed to keeping Zistle free but it is also important that the site breaks even monetarily. This is our goal for 2010. We have ideas for how to make this possible and as always, we will be asking you for your feedback, thoughts and suggestions. Stay tuned.

More members

Zistle is only as good as the members of the site. We know that having more members is not only our  key to growth but also the only way to give our current members the best experience possible. Many of you have reached out with great ideas on how to increase membership and you will see us implementing some of them this year. In addition, we will be working harder to engage with the users that we do have to keep them excited about the site.

Better Data

While we have a great start and we have some rockstar members who have devoted so much of their time to add to the database, there are still major holes and we can’t expect you to fill them by hand. To tackle this issue, we plan to build more sophisticated tools for you to enter information and make it easier for us to edit and update changes on the back end.

More access

One issue for many of you has been the inability to export or print your information. While most of you trust us, we also understand that it is frustrating to not be able to access your data the way you want. This is an issue that we will be tackling head on. We appreciate your patience in waiting for this feature.

After reading all of that, these challenges might seem obvious and you might even ask yourself why I would take the time to write all of this down and make you read it. While the challenges are obvious the solution is not and this is what we have been struggling with for the last six months. We have decided that to face these challenges and reach our goals for the site that we will need to actually rebuild the site in a different platform. It may sound scary but Josh has convinced me that this is not only the best course of action but the fastest as well. Please don’t be scared by the proposition. Your data will be safe and Zistle will be better when it is completed. We are confident that this will allow us to not only implement many of the features that you have been asking for but also make Zistle a faster, easier to use site. If you made it this far in the post – thanks for taking the time to be a part of Zistle. 2010 is going to be a great year.

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.