What this forum needs is a gallery

There are so many nice pictures posted here, but finding that certain "one" can be difficult. And the images on the different vendors sites rarely give an accurate depiction of what the hats look like on a real head. It would be really nice to have a gallery that is searchable by name or type so that we can see actual images of these hats on loungers heads. For example, have a section where we could see just photos of the different Federation IVs, or Stetson Chathams, or Open Roads, or whatever. It would be nice to see the different colors too. It would certainly be easier than going through the 10,000 posts in the What Are You Wearing Today thread.

At least that's what I'd like to see.

There's been talk about setting up hat (and vintage suit and shoe) galleries around here for years.

This is as far as it got: http://www.thegoldenera.net/apperal.html


For whatever reason, the idea has never been fully developed and perhaps never will. Why? Don't know.


In the meantime, there are plenty of threads in the "Hats" section with names like, "Borsalino Brotherhood" and "Open Road Society". Look for them: you'll find the photos you need. And yes, several of them really SHOULD be "sticky" threads -- but aren't.


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thanks Marc, but...

one cannot open the elavator doors to any of the Ladies' floors! This looks like a great idea though...

Once one got on the particular floor, it could possibly be subsectioned such as:
FL 32-
HATS Ladies
20's
30's
40s
50s etc

Marc Chevalier said:

There's been talk about setting up hat (and vintage suit and shoe) galleries around here for years.

This is as far as it got: http://www.thegoldenera.net/apperal.html

For whatever reason, the idea has never been fully developed and perhaps never will. Why? Don't know.

In the meantime, there are plenty of threads in the "Hats" section with names like, "Borsalino Brotherhood" and "Open Road Society". Look for them: you'll find the photos you need. And yes, they really SHOULD be "sticky" threads -- but aren't.
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Marc, Thanks for reminding us of of this. The elevator to the galleries is/was a good idea. Having no idea of the work and time involved to bring this to fruition, it would be a great compliment to the FL. I wonder if this is something a select few of the members could take on as a project?

The elevator was/ is a nice and vintage idea, but most forum software now has nice gallery add-ons. They are not as pretty as the elevator but they usually are searchable and some I have seen are cross indexed. So a gal, or fella could up their picture and say it's a fedora, Stetson, Whippet, brown, and then someone later could get it from on of those tags. It may be much easier to use something like this than to build our own.

Assuming that the Lounge isn't really set up to host a multi level gallery with standardized photos ... Perhaps a simple alternative would be to do PHOTO ONLY GALLERY THREADS without discussion and using only header captions. In addition to the various specialized chat and photo threads such as Carter mentions, interested members could begin true PHOTO ONLY threads to taste with formats something like those listed below.

With this end in view perhaps site administrators could set up a Forum Level PHOTO GALLERIES tab for gallery photo threads ONLY. Bundling in this way would make all and individual galleries easy to find at a glance. There would certainly be a strong temptation to ask questions and chat within GALLERY treads. But perhaps we could control ourselves (with or without Bartender assistance) for this limited purpose.

VINTAGE FLIGHT JACKETS - PHOTO GALLERY
STETSON OPEN ROAD HATS - PHOTO GALLERY
CAVANAUGH HOMBURGS - PHOTO GALLERY
40s EVENING GOWNS - PHOTO GALLERY
50s MEN'S SUITS - PHOTO GALLERY
30s WOMEN'S SHOES - PHOTO GALLERY
ART DECO WATCHES - PHOTO GALLERY
EDUARDIAN UNDERGARMENTS - PHOTO GALLERY
BORSALINO STINGY BRIM HATS - PHOTO GALLERY

Simplest way would be to use Flickr or Photobucket. You can create groups that other can add to and people can comment on photos.
You can then create subsets of this data using tagging (by brand/size/colour).

Would be simple and free to set-up. Admins could also keep an eye on it.

My £0.02 anyway.

Bill

zetwal said:

Assuming that the Lounge isn't really set up to host a multi level gallery with standardized photos ... Perhaps a simple alternative would be to do PHOTO ONLY GALLERY THREADS ...

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Jamespowers, a Fedora Lounge bartender, tried this about a year ago. For whatever reason, it went nowhere. Practically no one posted photos, and the thread (which wasn't a sticky) got buried under subsequent threads.


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The thought I was trying to express is that it could be helpful to have a Gallery Tab on the Fedora Lounge homepage alongside Hats and the Powder Room and the rest. I myself don't have a need for a gallery. But I was thinking that this could be a simple way to make one of easy access to those who do want it.

Marc Chevalier said:

Jamespowers, a Fedora Lounge bartender, tried this about a year ago. For whatever reason, it went nowhere. Practically no one posted photos, and the thread (which wasn't a sticky) got buried under subsequent threads.

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I like the idea. But I think what might be needed is a separate Wiki-section, where people can edit and post up photos and captions of the hats. The most knowledgeable members can help edit and categorize all the posted photos and information, as well as add appropriate commentary.

Other forums I participate in have gallery section. They are not big on inserting photos in the discussion threads as we do at the Lounge.

Marc Chevalier said:

Jamespowers, a Fedora Lounge bartender, tried this about a year ago. For whatever reason, it went nowhere. Practically no one posted photos, and the thread (which wasn't a sticky) got buried under subsequent threads.
.

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If a Gallery Thread, in any forum, isn't a sticky, it has little chance of success.

If someone has to use either the Subscribe to this Thread function (under Thread Tools) or Search engine to find it, it hasn't a chance.

Everyday there are more than a few questions/observations asked/made in new threads that could be answered if the person who started the thread would bother to
a. Read the FAQ's, b.Learn how to Subscribe to a Thread, and c. Learn to use the Search engine.

If someone cannot be troubled to use the available tools and thereby decrease the plethora of repetitive threads on the FL, they probably won't be troubled to actually determine the appropriate place to post pictures of whatever it is they think we need to see.

Does this make me a curmudgeon?

I'm with you, Carter. I wish there was some sort of setting, such that the next person to start a thread about their new hat (which could go in "new hats", some guild, brotherhood, canal, etc.), what makes for a good Summer hat, or their wonky conversion (we've got a corral) would get this:

:eusa_clap :eusa_clap :eusa_clap

I wonder who will be the 1st to use this?

I believe in looking before asking repetitive questions....unfortunately the search function on this forum FAILS! So, I resort to using another search engine upon occasion when I know something is there but can not find it. This forum still could use a gallery. Considering how into posting pictures this crowd is, the lack of a gallery of some sort is a major downside of the forums. As to whether Carter is a curmudgeon.....well you don't look crusty OR that old...

oh, Lefty that has got to be the most PC thread fail pic I have seen to date....lol

Belegnole said:

...unfortunately the search function on this forum FAILS!

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I couldn't agree more. I don't sound off about it usually because I am so appreciative of all the good aspects of TFL and the efforts of its administrators.

But the lack of an internal search engine which succeeds winds up causing tons of extra space to be consumed by people who are compelled to ask the same questions that have been asked time and again. And others can't help themselves sometimes from typing, "Just use the search feature.." Are they kidding?

Recently there was some scrutiny about what size and color of font a member uses when writing a post, and it was stated that (paraphrasing) "since TFL is a searchable database of information....certain colors and sizes of type would interfere with someone using it as a resource..." Never quite followed that, and was doubly confused to read that this is a searchable database. In fact, actual database programming seems to be the missing link in an otherwise fantastic site. Sad, but it's hardly a functional resource at all. It is, however, a great recreation area with volumes and volumes of largely inaccessible resource material deeply buried within.

HarpPlayerGene said:

Recently there was some scrutiny about what size and color of font a member uses when writing a post, and it was stated that (paraphrasing) "since TFL is a searchable database of information....certain colors and sizes of type would interfere with someone using it as a resource..." Never quite followed that, and was doubly confused to read that this is a searchable database. In fact, actual database programming seems to be the missing link in an otherwise fantastic site.

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I feel I am actually quite qualified to comment on this, as someone in technology whose job is to run development teams whose primary responsibility is to build applications interacting with databases and terabytes of content. The primary access method for our hundreads of thousands of is search.

Please feel free not to read on as this may be quite boring

I don't feel the issue here is database programming - the database itself seems robust and well designed - I imagine that each indivdual post is a row of a table consisting of the columns - most likely to be post id, thread id, forum id, title, body text, poster id, date etc.
In the site's "search engine" it is obvious that while searching it would just look at this post table and query certain columns in each row, this would most likely be title and body. The body column is probably a blob type and therefore contins the mark-up of the post - so when it searches the contents it sees all the markup as well as the text - therefore <font colour="red">akubra</font> might not be found when searching for "akubra". It then would return the thread id as the result (not the post id). Ideally mark-up should be ignored. The other problem would be word stemming - the database wouldn't deal with this - it's normally the preserve of the search engine - i.e. search for trim and it return reslts that include trimming, trimmed etc.
This is a guess obviously, as I do not know the inner workings of this site.

The way I see it is that there are many ways to get simple quick wins out of this - mostly around rankings - i.e. count up how many occuraces is in a thread and apply logic (may want to take into account % of posts so that longer threads are not always at the top). You could also run the query on the thread table and rank ones where your search terms in that thread title higher.
Another quickie is to provide a summary of which pages in a thread the results occur in.

There are other ways to also improve accessiblity to what you're looking for, such as community tagging, taxonomies etc.

Companies (such as mine), spend millions of bucks on searching strategies and technology, getting precision (accurate results) and recall (the right amount of results) to an absolute optimum. It's not easy.

The quickest win would be to provide a custom google search box on the site - takes about 10 minutes to create one that only searches this site.

I think the most important thing to note however is that this site is very well designed, built and maintained, some paid for services are not this good so we shouldn't knock it.

Obviously I am free to talk this over with any admins

Bill

Belegnole said:

....As to whether Carter is a curmudgeon.....well you don't look crusty OR that old...

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That's because he uses Photoshop before he posts photos!!!

gtdean48 said:

That's because he uses Photoshop before he posts photos!!!

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lol, I thought there was something odd about that smile.

Thanks Billy, and Gene I think we are on the same page..if not the same chapter. I have respect for the Owner, Moderators, Admins, and members here. I also do not hold the software against them. I am just not fond of some of it...heck I'm not always fond of the software on the forum I help maintain....

A note about searching...

http://www.thefedoralounge.com/showthread.php?t=21301


Go there..read...enjoy....and yes..its a workaround, but why not harness the power of the Google?