Subject:
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Re: Official and Unofficial theme categories
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.admin.database
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Date:
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Fri, 8 Jan 1999 04:38:01 GMT
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Viewed:
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1102 times
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"Mike Faunce" <mfaunce@earthlink.net> writes:
> A lot of what you guys are talking about goes right over my head as I'm not
> as familiar with set numbers vs. content as you all seem to be, but I've got
> some input "from a lowly user":
This is great input, Mike!
> I am an avid boater and SCUBA diver, I also like LEGO and collect a lot of
> sets that have to do with boats and diving. I don't really care what
> "Theme" or "Sub Theme" they are from. I've got a bunch of Pirates, most of
> Town/Divers, some Town/ResQ, some Town/Nautica, some AquaZone (the more
> "realistic" ones or the ones with aquatic life), etc.
Would you like it if there were alternative views such as this?--
:
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\-- aquatic (33% sub-set of terra-world)
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|-- under-water (100% sub-set of water)
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| |-- Aquazone (100% sub-set of under-water)
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| \-- Divers (75% sub-set of under-water)
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|-- at-water-level (100% sub-set of water)
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| |-- Nautica (100% sub-set of at-water-level)
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| |-- Boats (100% sub-set of at-water-level)
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| \-- Divers (25% sub-set of at-water-level)
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\-- above-water (25% sub-set of water)
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\-- pontoon planes (100% sub-set of above-water)
(This is the sort of thing that I want to head toward.) Note that Divers
appears twice there -- once as a strong sub-set of under-water and once as a
weak sub-set of at-water-level.
There are some Pirates/Islanders sets and some Adventurers/Amazon sets that
probably belong as partial sub-sets of at-water-level. (LEGO-sets as well
as whole categories can be elements of other categories.)
> Here's some of my "pet peeves" about the way things are now:
>
> * "Accessories" don't show up with the sets they "go" with. For example,
> the Diver's Accessories, are listed under "Accessories"/"Town" instead of
> (what I think is logical) "Town"/"Divers". I (personally) don't care that
> their set number doesn't fall into the appropriate range for Town. I know
> that this also applies to the Pirates and AquaZone accessories as well (and
> probably others).
Totally agreed -- 5389 Divers Accessories is both an accessories pack and a
Divers set. As far as fuzziness, it's certainly 100% an accessories pack,
but maybe only 20% a Divers set. The neat thing is, any percentage greater
than zero will make it show up when you ask for a list of Divers-theme sets.
> * There are "boat" sets in both "Boat"/"General" and "Town"/"General" which
> is confusing to say the least. This may be a TLG fault, but like someone
> else said, there's no reason LUGNET can't correct that.
Yup!
> * I LIKE being able to search by "Theme" / "SubTheme" but if it only shows
> the "TLG designated" sets instead of the "obviously a part of this group"
> sets it stops being useful (see the Accessories suggestion above).
>
> * A way to search for "objects". For example, if a set contains multiple
> "vehicles" or "buildings" those should be part of the database some how, so
> that I could (using my personal desire as an example) find all sets that
> include a "boat" regardless of "Theme", "SubTheme", etc. Or, to search for
> a particular Minifig (by picture would be best, but by description would
> work). I'm sure you get the picture.
Cool -- then I'm not the only one frustrated by black & white categories.
:)
BTW, the Fibblesnork LEGO Guide has a few model-attribute thingies that you
can search for -- like vehicle, base, ship -- but it's a pure keyword list
with either 100% inclusion of 100% exclusion. The new way, we'll be able to
say that a set is, say, 80% base and 20% vehicle.
And -- [if this doesn't make you drool, I don't know what will :] -- if a
set is listed in the DB as being 80% police-station and 20% police-car,
but you've got a "base" in mind, you'll still be able to find it by asking
about bases or vehicles, because the word "base" will optionally expand out
into other words like "police station," "hospital," etc. during the search
process. It'll list bases before police stations, but at least the police
stations will still show up, probably about 1/5 of the way down the list.
> * I'd like the "Intro" date but would like to see a "Discontinued" date as
> well. Since TLG doesn't "announce" this it's obviously going to be a "best
> guess" or SWAG but it would still be nice to know that if I want to find a
> specific set I can pretty much give up looking on shelves and concentrate on
> auctions, sales, yard sales, etc. if I want to have a snowballs chance of
> finding it.
I wonder how the concept of "discontinued" can be handled...this makes my
brain hurt...because old sets don't seem to die, they just fade away. First
TLG stops manufacturing a set (at some random point in the year for all we
know), then they start disappearing off shelves, and then they become "hard
to find" items in S@H catalogs, and then they stop appearing altogether in
S@H catalogs, and then they stop being sold by S@H, and then sometimes they
reappear for a week when S@H discovers a palette in some back warehouse or a
large retail chain sells back a truckload.
One possibility is to track all catalogs that every set appeared in -- or,
conversely, all sets that appear in all catalogs. This only gets us part of
the way there, but it's cool for its own sake too.
> * I've been reading the posts on "promo" and "holiday" sets. Again, I'm not
> the most informed, but wouldn't it be most logical to put them in the
> "group" that the objects inside the "box" belong with and then have a note
> that says "Limited avialability, only available at XXX during blah blah
> blah" instead of trying to come up with "groups" just for the limited
> availability sets? For example, the Target Halloween Special Bucket would
> be a part of Freestyle (by it's contents) with a note saying "Only available
> at Target during Fall '98".
That's basically it -- but rather than putting in lots of textual notes in
human-readable form, I want to leverage the use of real DB linkages as much
as possible, so that all the holiday sets can be viewed as a unit (if
someone wants) or all the promo sets can be viewed as a unit (if someone
wants) or all of the FreeStyle sets can be viewed as a unit (if someone
wants).
It's a "have your cake and eat it too" kind of thing -- multiple ways of
organizing the same data such that they don't conflict with one another.
> That said, I'm willing to help provide data by going through the sets,
> catalogs, etc. and help enter data or provide data to be entered. Just
> point me and I'll fetch.
Okie dokie... As the ball gets rolling more later, I think there'll be
quite a flurry of questions and "open spots" noted and put up for filling
in.
> If you are going to make it "truly" usefull, have a way to download a CSV
> version of the database. My personal desire would be to take a "complete"
> database and "outer join" a couple of columns -- Own X copies, Want X copies
> and Want Rank would be the ones off of the top of my head. I've been doing
> this on my own using the last Pause CSV that was available. It's a pain to
> keep up to date (espeically now that I can't get new CSV's), but it allows
> me to create and print a "10 most wanted" list that I can carry with me so
> that I can always "drop by" the LEGO section and see if they have anything I
> want without having to have a better memory that I do.
Good idea -- Are there any other universally acceptable output options
besides tab-separated ASCII, CSV, and XML? Can you take tab-sep ASCII as
easily as CSV? CSV has a less-rigid grammar than tab-sep ASCII.
BTW, you'll eventually be able to tell the DB which sets you own -- and
which sets you're looking for. It will then help you find other people (if
any) who are selling, trading, or auctioning those sets through the system.
Conversely, if you've got some extras to get rid of, you'll be able to mark
them in the DB and your name will show up when someone is looking to buy.
Cool?
> Oh yeah, and there would (obviously, to me at least) have to be a disclaimer
> to the effect of "data is as accurate as possible up to <date last
> updated>".
Should the timestamp of a composite object be the timestamp of the object
itself or the timestamp of the most recent object within it? Probably the
first, but with the ability to display the second.
--Todd
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Official and Unofficial theme categories
|
| A lot of what you guys are talking about goes right over my head as I'm not as familiar with set numbers vs. content as you all seem to be, but I've got some input "from a lowly user": I am an avid boater and SCUBA diver, I also like LEGO and (...) (26 years ago, 7-Jan-99, to lugnet.admin.database)
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