How come nearly all covers recently uploaded are approved without any effort to get them aligned?

From the standards: "Covers and media need be aligned as straight as possible."

The user in question is contributing heaps of cover art which was scanned many years ago and where he does not have access to the source anymore. In those cases, we're a little more lenient, glad to have the cover art, but still hoping to have some of the images replaced one day.

I figured it would be something like that. :)

Besides THAT particularly user ;), many - mostly new - users have a lot of problems aligning CD's properly. But unless this isn't "way off" (even 1° is way off by the way), I tend to approve them anyway even if they aren't "perfect". As from my experience, many new users start to submit an entire set, but abandoning the discs after a certain number of WIPs and only continuing with front/backs then. Either they are impatient or simply frustrated about the alignment (without a proper tool and guessing the degrees, it IS a real pain).

By the way, is there a freeware image editing application that allows simplified/automatic alignment (like in Photoshop)? And no, Indra, I don't mean "freeware" like Photoshop. ;-)

GIMP

GraphicConverter has an alignment tool that I've yet to see Photoshop beat.

Hey, don't blame me if all software is "free" where I come from, mate. ;p

XnView is also pretty great. You can overlay a grid on top of the image and rotate the image by 1/100 of a degree. The grid allows you to see the effect of the operation in real-time. The grid works well for CDs, but for cover art I perfer to draw a selection box around the image and rotate it until the image's edges line up with the box.

On storehouses maybe? With that collection it's safe to assume that he has at least five. No, no five. Six. Yes, he has six.

Though it's hard if you do it manually. You may spent a lot of time and effort on it and still get it wrong. (yeah, I know, excuses :-))

I sometimes have a lot of work aligning my covers, but I think the results are worth the effort. :)

I have enough problems getting the brightness and contrast levels on my scanner to work right. :\

I guess this is something noteworthy for people submitting The Pink Box™. ;-)

Not one warehouse :( running out of space, and of guests (for which the space was made long ago ;) ... that's my hugest problem.

I still have access to 95% of the games (because they're part of my private collection), but yes, the scans are old - in the future i will do with higher resolution (even that i often think, they look horrible, unreal colors and so...) for Moby. My scans were almost all made years ago (for a german website, they wanted 150dpi). But, if you like to hear it or not, it was a really pain, damn' lot of work, to move thousands of boxes and cases in huge cartons, one floor downward on narrow stairs and up again. And now, that it's almost impossible even to move in this "room", i'm not willing to repeat this procedure...

Reject what isn't of good enough quality, replace when getting better ones - never a problem for me.

Hope i find the time - and not at least the nerves, years ago i only made scans of missing covers for the german website database, so there are many, many games (and i'm still missing lots of games in the Moby's Database, hoping to contribute in the future for new games, credits andsoon - not only for scans. That was "only" the "start" for me. (But i think, i will never make media scans, this must be really frustrating in case of align, hope not to many potential contributors, everyone knows it makes fun (for lots of people, results are good for everyone :) - but getting rejection after rejection, because it isn't "100%", can be so frutrating, many people give up and retire, and this will be the worsest thing that can happen to a database :(((( and i can only speak for myselves: when i look into several databases on the web, i prefer to see as much as possible, even if it's not 100% perfect. But the more pictures, scans, i personally enjoy more "colorful" databases - not too much "print infos" (lots of informations are important for "real collectors" - if such person really exists?, (i'm not one of them, even that i own more than a handful of games), but "print informations" are less important to most of the guests and users.

What's about "goodies" (okay it's often damn hard to prove or even to get really complete games) instead/additional to media scans ? Imho, this looks often much more impressive then scanned medias ... ever thought about this?

During your absence here, the replacement system was improved. In the past, a replacement was done with rejecting the existing (via rejection message and deduction of points) and approving the new one. Now this is completely transparent for the original submitter - only the name below the image/release info changes.


That this was just the start is actually great to hear. :-)

For the media scans, you could try scanning your diskettes. This is much much easier and usually don't need alignment, as you see the shape on the scanner.


From the Moby Standards, but I would substitute the "coming soon" with "planned for the future". ;)

Extra images - coming soon

Extra images are game related images that may be considered significant, interesting or important, but would not be classified as a screen shot, cover art, media, advertisement nor manual. Extra images may be console specific or cross platform. Images should be photographed or scanned at the clearest, highest resolution possible. A title and caption is required for each image. The caption should include a date whenever possibly. Optionally each image may have a description to describe in detail its significance.

Feelies

Feelies refer to extra objects included with the boxed version of a game. Feelies may include maps, figurines, dies, cards or any other extra physical objects. These extra objects and documents sometimes served as a form of copy prevention, as several games were impossible to solve without information found in their feelies. Images that circumvent copy protection will not be approved.

Promotional

Promotional refers to images of official promotional objects. Promotional images may include t-shirts, posters, key chains, hats, bags or any other object sold or given away by the developer or publisher to promote the game. Third person party and fan created promotional objects will not be approved.

Awards

Awards include images of physical awards for the game. Awards images may include plaques, statuettes, certificates or any other image of an award. Images of plaques commissioned for sales milestones such as gold and platinum sales are considered awards. Images of online only awards will not be approved at this time.

Props

Props include images of historically significant objects used in the creation and development of the game. Props include physical items used in modeling and motion capture, sets, locations and equipment.

Other

Other images are game related images that may be considered significant, interesting or important that do not fit into any category.

I've only been active here for three years or so. Nothing has happened in this area, even though it doesn't require much extra code or administration. Is Mobygames a former socialist soviet republic (with the bureaucracy), and if so, is support for "feelies" part of the next five-year-plan?

You may haven't noticed this in the past years, but we only have one single programmer. And most of the approvers have already all hands full of work, as there are way more contributions then approvers.

And about the five-year-plan, think positive, the next one starts March 2009. =)

How about contracting more approvers and programmers if that is the only problem?

Wasn't it you who said that approvers don't grow on trees? :)

Just like money, you have to work for it. You can't just sit back and wait for them to grow out of the ground.

Thought we already discussed this...dunno if you were in that appover chat thing when it was being discussed (years ago). Money. Actually need money to hire another programmer...and if I didn't interprete Brian correctly, he's a bit itchy to let a stranger grope his baby. :)

Mobygames is a commercial entity, so money should not be the problem.

Do you think the banners compensate for the hosting and bandwidth? I can't imagine that.

@Iggy: To cross quote here, the money apparently does grow on trees, or what? :)

Back to topic...


I would say that ads and donations would barely keep the site running, if at all.

Two things in consideration:
1) I've no clue how much money you or the others have transferred to Moby to receive that bronze star.
2) How many contributors have the ads disabled? If I remember correctly, the required points aren't that much anyway.

And finally, just because the site uses a com domain does not mean it generates gold out of straw. ;-)

No, it grows on banners and such things. Don't ask me, I'm not related to Mobygames in any way and I haven't seen the financial report either.


That money must come from somewhere. Who made up such a poor financial plan otherwise?


How would the site look without contributors in the first place? And why does a commercial venture ask its users for donations?


It should, otherwise it's not very commercial.

Who said it's commercially anyway?

Mobygames.com.

You know well everyone can register a dot com, it doesn't mean anything.

ehh, anyone can also register an org or a net, but there are particular connoations contingent on these choices. I personally always push for orgs 8)

I think www.mobygames.org would be better too.

Since I don't run any business I've never felt the need to register one. Don't tell me it doesn't mean anything. If it didn't mean anything we wouldn't have a .com domain.

com domains are the de facto standard when it comes to US sites; while in most countries around the world the country-specific TLD is the standard (or not?), I can count the us domains I've saw on two fingers or so.

Aye. Its a culture that one may or may not follow. And by similar culture, a dot.com is more inviting than a dot. org...depending on the audience of course...and may not have to be specifically commercial. Technically, by the way we seem to be "operating" its more of a .org than it is a .com (how many dot.coms have their shops closed :p) but, hey.

Tell that to wikipedia.org.

Try clicking on www.wikipedia.com and see where that takes you.

Hm, looks like Wikipedia too. =)

What we learn from this? Wikipedia is a paradox - they are a commercial and a non-commercial entity at the same time. :)

Note that the address immediately changes to wikipedia.org. What was your point?

That we unanimously agree, that you are indeed missing the point.

Iggy has a cogent point that I think most of us are willfully overlooking.

I always understood Iggy's point, the question is: is it such a problem that MobyGames is a commercial venture?

The way I see it, we're in a time when domain names doesn't matter that much. Wikipedia keeps .org as their main domain because they want to be regarded as such. Underdogs did the same, but then they got financial problems and so they had to use another domain, which was .info (and I don't know what .info stands for when it comes to domains). I can imagine Jim and Brian, back in 1999, thinking on creating this project (which by then was only about documenting Jim's collection). They could go like this:

Jim: Ok, Brian, now to the domain, how should we call it?
Brian: Well Jim, .com is the standard commercial domain, and I guess if we sometime in the future want to make any commercial deals in our site (like trading games or selling stuff), we'd rather go with it.
Jim: Ok, that sounds about right.

Also, Wikipedia sez:
Although .com domains are officially intended to designate commercial entities (others such as government agencies or educational institutions have different top-level domains assigned to them), there has been no restriction on who can register .com domains since the mid-1990s. The opening of the .com registry to the public coincided with the commercialization and popularization of the Internet, and .com quickly became the most common top-level domain for websites. Many companies which flourished in the period between 1997-2001 (the time known as the "dot-com bubble") went so far as to incorporate .com into the company name; these became known as dot-coms or dot-com companies. The introduction of .biz in 2001, which is restricted to businesses, has had little impact on the popularity of .com.

...

Many noncommercial sites, such as those of nonprofit organizations or governments (including the Moroccan Consulate in Bordeaux), use .com addresses. Some consider this to be contrary to the domain's original purpose and might say that a .org, .gov, or other more specific TLD might be more appropriate for such sites[citation needed]. However, many organizations prefer the recognizability of a .com domain to a less familiar one. As well, the original purposes of many of the top level domains are often considered irrelevant without restrictions on registrations.

In other words, I guess the domain name is really something we shouldn't bother.

Aren't you a bit contradicting yourself?

First you ask if it is a problem MG being a commercial venture, next you saying the founders might have thought for something in the future and finally you quote Wikipedia with the "open for anyone since the mid-nineties".

To conclude my point:

.com is not automatically commercial just because of the .com domain.

Any site, regardless of TLD, isn't automatically commercial just because they run banners/pop-ups/whatever to compensate the running costs. Note: I explicitly mean compensate, not exceeding this by twice/trice/etc. to "cash in".

By the way, just out of curiosity, since when are org/net freely available?

No, I'm not contradicting myself. What I tried to say is that it isn't a big deal having a .com domain. MobyGames is a commercial venture, we all know that, and I don't think it is a problem. As you said, we have banners, we had things being sold here, so being commercial isn't a problem. But in the end what I tried to explain is that nowadays, it really doesn't matter what's your domain name. Wikipedia is a good example: they're .org, but they registered the .com for obvious reasons. People are used to search for "something".com in the internet, because most domains are .com. I don't see why I'm contradicting myself.

It is generally understood that to the average internet nimrod (you know, the people who leave youtube comments), a dotcom is functionally equivalent to a website.

The point he's making is I think double: firstly, that if mobygames is a commercial entity, then a) it's not a very effective one, having some substantial growing pains, and b) that we're all chumps for working to provide it exclusive content for free.

(Also, I believe that underdogs changed over to a .info largely because the domain was "stolen" by registrar squatters 8)

You're so intelligent, Pseudo. That's what I mean. What the hell is this place, that asks its users for money (about as commercial as your typical beggar), relies on volunteer work, gives very little in return, is run by nobody, with very little information about the organisation, and can't even hire a programmer to further the project?

If it is run by nobody, why do you need information about the organisation anyway? ;-)

To find out who is not doing his job, that's why.

Of course it is. Do you think .com means .communism?




You're right there. There's not much that is commercial about having commercials to support operating costs. But then you don't need a .commercial domain name either.


Since early nineties, I would guess.

I thought we already agreed on this one earlier.

Yes, .com means .communism and our next five-year-plan starts April 2009.

So, what was the issue anyway?

And that is the major problem here. We're all frustrated...approvers whining to approvers and we all can't do squat....:p

Hold hands anyone? :p :p :p

I remember it as something more like:

Jim: We'll call it MobyGames! Because Moby is hacker slang for "the big one".
Brian: That's the most retarded thing I've ever heard.

But seriously, I can't remember why it was .com -- probably because we knew we had to put banners on the site to at least break even (bandwidth costs money, don't forget that kids) and we figured if it was going to try to make money it should be .com.

You make Moby cry.

I must say, I do get a bit tired explaining that over and over again. Why is it called Mobygames? Well, you see, uh, well, the founders were big nerds. That's the executive summary. (There's video game historian nerd and then there's jargon file nerd 8)

A simple, "why not?" should be suffice. Followed by a sarcastic gaze. :p

I suppose you're one of the people "in charge".

Which way is it? Is it a for-profit or a non-profit?

We understand Iggy's point, but the fact is...a dot.com is not mandatory by law to be commercial. It would be nice if people stopped using dot.com's for personal homepages, or that some authority do something about cybersquatters, but we forget that when it comes to domain names, the policy from ICANN has always been "first come, first serve" (not dot.com's for commercial entities and dot.org for NGO's) and unless there's some intellectual property infringement going on, which parties make a legal case out it (and recent RFC updates I'm not aware of).

Again I repeat, it isn't mandatory for a dot.com to be commercial. Stop confusing "what should be" with "what actually is".

[edit] Besides, that's what dot.biz is for. :p

The fact is, Mobygames.com is a commercial project until someone proves otherwise. That someone is who?

That someone is not you. If it is fact, then simply put it should be in the FAQ or official policy somewhere here in MG. Unless of course, you are forcing a possible subjective assumption as a fact. Mobygames officially is a research project who's trying to make money on the side (who isn't?). Or would you prefer the paranoid conspirator theory of a commercial project trying to make research on the side? Uh-huh.

This is someone else's car. I'm just here for the ride...

You're not making sense and you're not clarifying anything. Is it you who runs this project? Is it you who's making money while doing research?

If you don't understand that, mate. I give up. Try thinking outside your box for a change.

Try reading before hitting reply. You're not making sense.

And try thinking of something more argumentative different besides "your not making sense" ... it's getting old.

It takes you to wikipedia.org.

Why not?

Also, a valid argument related to the topic: The Con of MobyGames

And during my three years here, I've never met someone who's stepped forth and said "Hello, I'm the one responsible for all this."

I've always felt comfortable with the answer provided by our FAQ.

So it's run by a person who's not been logged in for a year, one who's deleted his account, a programmer who's moved to India, and Cornpopper?

At least Cornpopper does something, but what are the rest up to? They're certainly not answering questions about Mobygames, that's for certain.

Nice you've found out who's behind MG after all. :-)

But what exactly do you still want to know? Rob and Stijn are basically the site-admins as of now and Brian is the database-admin/programmer. The other two are inactive.

There is no company behind, no CEO or a board to lead the way.

Who died and made them gods?


I'm glad you told me so, because it's not exactly information that is out in the open.

(raises hand) Here!

Ask away, if the FAQ doesn't do it for you. Corn is the authority on day-to-day, I can be tapped on history and the overall philosophy of Moby, and Brian is Mr. Technical.

As I wrote, you're not here answering questions.

Here's a question for you: Why are you not here answering questions? And what's your association to Mobygames?

Who else here is a confused? Is it not perfectly clear to everyone else who is in charge and what Trixter's (Jim) role is? It's all spelled out in the FAQ for the site.

You're right, I'm stupid. Please point me to the correct section in the FAQ.

Who is behind MobyGames

That text doesn't explain anyone's real role, though I learned that you like to sail.

I'm not sure what else to write that isn't in that section or at the wikipedia page; in 1998 I called Brian on the phone for some programming help, told him my idea, and three days later he surprised me with a mock-up of the site. From then on we got it up and running, and for the first two years I was the sole admin (and for the first six months I was the sole contributor, which is why gameids up to around 300 are all me).

My involvement dwindled as my kids grew older and I had to deal with Real Life(tm). Rob stepped in as a long-time fan of the site, and eventually became head admin, taking over the job from myself.

Brian coded MobyGames for eight years, and only last year did he have to take on the day-to-day business of paying bandwidth/hosting bills, trying to work out advertising, etc. -- the revenue that MobyGames needs to survive. This has taken up 90% of his MobyGames time and the other 10% is for bugfixes and new features.

Hopefully that's clear...

What is your involvement with Mobygames and how much do you own?

I'm still confused. I thought I just wrote about four paragraphs explaining what my involvement, past and present is. If you'd like a more concise answer, please ask a more concise question.

As for how much I own, that is quite frankly none of your business. I would have just about as much right as asking you what your religious or political beliefs are.

Although valid, I can assure you that the legal notices are more meant to protect MobyGames against stealing or copying our content, rather than the enclosure of information. Brian has also assured me several times that MobyGames will not disappear and that the income generated from ads is only (mainly) sufficient to cover the hosting and bandwidth.

I keep in touch with him every now and then, and he's always working on some kind of fix or feature. The lack of presence of the founders on the site is somewhat misleading in this regard. I only wish he would accept IT interns who could code on the test server on certain new features. Brian just does not have the time to provide the kind of support and feedback you'd expect from a commercial site where people are working on full-time.

Well, unless he gets hit by a truck....

As much as I like you, Sciere, your word is about as valuable as mine or Indra's here, unless you know more than the rest of us. I think we have a right to know what happens, just as much right as you have. We have an investment in this site but we don't know how it is run, or why.


Full-time or not, at least they could show up here once in a while, or they should resign. I'm tired of hearing references to people you've never heard of, let alone met online, whenever the development of the site is discussed. If they're not involved in the operation (as you are), they should resign and hand over responsiblities to those who are already carrying out the ground-work.

That sounds like the pretext of a (potentially rather good) B-horror movie!

I don't know more, but from the contact I've had with Brian he's shown a lot of care for the project and I couldn't imagine being stabbed in the back over this trust. He's an honest person and has put an incredible amount of time or work in this. You know what happened to flipkin, and the reason Trixter is largely inactive is because of personal reasons. If you need some assurance of answers, have you tried mailing him about it? I've never had an unanswered mail so far. The project is not run as it should be in an ideal situation, but there are a lot of issues and work we don't get to see or worry about either.

Also, in the very worst case scenario when the people in charge would abandon the project, I humbly think I have the expertise to take over the project to run it myself. Not just to manage it, but I could take care of the hosting, design and programming too when I get some friends involved. It's not something I would like or hope to do, but based on the time invested I would consider it when there is no other way out (i.e. the site goes off-line). The only big question would be if the people in charge would release the data.

No, I don't. I read the approvers forum every day, and all I know is that Flipkin was one day called "nullnullnull".


Actually, that option hasn't dawned upon me. Not that it is very easy to find out who to mail.


What makes you think that you can take data from a database that guards its contents jealously?

Well, you could always click on my name and send me a PM... But any cursory search of "Jim Leonard" and "trixter" will get you my email...

Well, your username is not "Jim Leonard" and doesn't say that you're the one to mail.

On the other hand, you could at least read the message boards from time to time, if you are the person who's supposed to answer questions.

I'm not "supposed" to answer questions; I'm just one of the founders of MobyGames that is available, from time to time, to answer questions.

Sciere's word is more valuable. We (Brian and I) entrusted him with admin rights to the site. With those rights he can do a lot of stuff with the site as long as the functions work. I have the same admin rights as Sciere but have more insight as to each component and status.

Ownership in a company does not mean you have to be involved with the running of it. It would be good if they could help but it's not required. As an approver like you, you have access to the approver boards so you should have been able to look up the history of the status of people. But I'll break it to you here...

As Sciere said, Jim has personal issues that preclude him from taking an active role in the site. The site has changed a lot since he was active and to ask him about policy of how the site runs he would defer it to Brian or myself.

David is simply not active in the site at all and still remains an owner.

Brian is the sole programmer/marketer/legal/finance guy. Since he does have so much responsibility with the back-end of the site you won't see much of him here.

Myself, I have a lot on my plate as well and try and do as much as I can on here whenever I can... approving/contributing and answering emails sent to the site.

Overall the site is a side-project meaning everyone involved does not use this as a full time position especially since we don't really make anything from the site. How can you resign ownership and why would you really want to? The fact is the programming behind the site is all proprietary, so you can't just hand it over to someone and have them be able to run, add more features, and fix bugs... especially working for free.

Sure we had a "store" but that was mainly for the users' benefit... meaning if you're proud of the site and want to show it with a shirt then you could get one from us. We really didn't make anything if at all from the sale of shirts, it's not like we sold a ton of them either.

The legal mumbo jumbo you see quoted all over the internet about now it's MobyGames' property and such is to protect everyone's investment in the site and to have legal ground to go after sites that steal the whole database of information. I know I don't like see my stuff on some other site knowing they took it from here.

The legal mumbo jumbo you see quoted all over the internet about now it's MobyGames' property and such is to protect everyone's investment in the site and to have legal ground to go after sites that steal the whole database of information.

Here's a question for you: Jesper Juul has just asked me for permission to reprint one of my screenshots (Windows Solitaire for 3.x) in a book he's writing about casual games. He gets my blessing, but does he need permission from "the site" also? (Also; perhaps it has watermarked the shot somehow?)

If he is using the one from the site and it has the watermark, he can have permission as long as he credits the site.