News: all updates for our software and apps
Our programmer Robbert has been working on it behind the scenes for many months now, so we’re happy that we can finally tell you what it is:
Collectorz.com Core
Core is a new system that lets all Collectorz.com users help us improve the quality and completeness of our central online databases. It will replace the current “Submit to Collectorz.com” system. But Core is more than that, as it also lets you report data errors, missing entries and missing barcodes.
The book edition of Collectorz.com Core is live now and fully integrated in today’s 8.1 release of Book Collector for Windows.
About the Collectorz.com central online databases
At Collectorz.com, we are running our own central online databases for movies, books, music, comics and video games. These online databases are the source of all data that you get when using the Add Automatically screen in your Collector software.
Most of the data in these online databases is retrieved from 3rd party data feeds, but a large part is provided by you and your fellow users, through the Submit to Collectorz.com feature in your software. It is this Submit system that has helped us grow the completeness and quality of our online database since their start back in 2005.
In the first few years, while we were still building and growing the databases, our focus was on quantity and coverage. That is, we were trying to get as many movies, books, CDs, comics and games listed as quickly as possible. This focus on quantity meant that we were happy to see many users just submit their entire database to us, with our content managers weeding out the bad data from the useful entries as well as they could.
However, our current online databases have grown to enormous proportions, delivering sufficient coverage for most users. So it is time to change our focus from quantity to quality. That is, a new focus on providing better and more complete data for your collectibles.
What is Collectorz.com Core?
And that is what Collectorz.com Core is all about. Giving you better tools to help us with the quality of our central online databases. Tools that let you:
- Report data errors. E.g. to fix typos, wrong cover images, etc…
- Submit more data. E.g. to add missing credits, plots, cover images, etc… to existing entries in our online database. Of course using the data already present in your local database.
( This will replace the current Submit to Collectorz.com feature.)
But we’re not forgetting quantity and coverage. So Core will also let you:
- Report missing entries. E.g. to add movies, books, CDs, comic and games that are not in our database at all (yet).
- Report missing barcodes. E.g. add the barcode for a specific DVD edition of a movie already present in our database.
Connect account required
To be able to submit data or report errors and missing entries, you need a Connect account. Of course, a free Connect account is sufficient and can be easily created by anyone. This requirement introduces a small extra step that will hopefully discourage bogus data submissions.
It also lets us track Core reports per user, allowing us to:
- Reward especially helpful users.
- Block users who are only sending bogus or otherwise useless data.
Core is now live for books, in Book Collector 8.1 for Windows
From it’s What’s New file:
New: Help improve our central online book database with Collectorz.com Core:
- Report missing books: in Add Books Automatically, when an ISBN is not found,
you are now able to immediately add the book to our central database.
After adding it to Core, just repeat your ISBN search to retrieve the data
you entered for your local Book Collector database.
(this replaces the old “ISBN not found, please provide Author/Title” popup)- Report data errors: click the red “Report data error” in Add Automatically
to report errors in our central data. Your error reports are queued and
processed by our content managers as soon as possible.- Submit to Core: choose Submit to Core from the Connect menu or use button in
Edit Book to submit your local data to Core, to improve your central data.
(this replace the old “Edit / Submit to Collectorz.com” feature)
All Core functionality will be added to Book Collector for Mac soon.