Include images in your set reviews

Posted by Orthobotrex in Philippines, 10 Jan 2011 12:15

Is it sort of a freestyle review then? Or do we still need to follow the outlines provided herein? :-)

Posted by Alemas in Germany, 10 Jan 2011 12:18

*Rolls eyes* I would put images in my reviews... if it wasn't for the fact that you need to host the images somewhere else. A "browse" button to upload images in the review would be helpful. LOL, "...we can give EuroBricks a run for its money..." :)

Posted by aaronptrck in United States, 10 Jan 2011 12:41

It would be nice to see Brickset and Eurobricks collaborate when it comes to reviews. Eurobricks has a good chunk of reviews, however it can be challenging to find a review that you're looking for.

Posted by Be-Burger in Israel, 10 Jan 2011 12:45

Trust me, I'll give Eurobricks a run for their money! :D

Posted by Tervlon in United States, 10 Jan 2011 12:46

Great review, LegoDad42!

Posted by Superkalle in Sweden, 10 Jan 2011 12:51

"...so we can give EuroBricks a run for its money... :-)"

That's the spirit. Bring 'em on :-)

Posted by voyanui8768 in United Kingdom, 10 Jan 2011 12:59

I agree with aaronptrck, I find picture reviews SO much better than just text ones but it's just imposible to find ANYTHING on Eurobricks. I wish all their reviewers should come over here and review - life would be so much easier :)

Posted by Alemas in Germany, 10 Jan 2011 13:04

@superkalle10: Hello! :) You're the same "superkalle" from Eurobricks, right? :)

Posted by KimT in Denmark, 10 Jan 2011 13:16

Excuse me? Hard to find?
http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=18592
It's even a pinned topic - what's hard about that?
Plus I think Brickset is more than welcome to link to any of our reviews on EB.

Posted by Alemas in Germany, 10 Jan 2011 13:22

@KimT: Oh boy, the Eurobricks heavy-weights are here! :) Hey, can't you make a few reviews here at Brickset? :)

Posted by DrDaveWatford in United Kingdom, 10 Jan 2011 13:29

Agreed, Huw - a nice review, and hopefully a taste of things to come as the set reviews are not really a strength of Brickset at present.

It'd be great if Brickset set pages contained a hyperlink to the relevant Eurobrick review(s) as there are already many superb, comprehensive reviews over there; Brickset and Eurobricks would complement each other superbly in that regard. KIM T, if you're still reading, would Eurobricks object to that ?

Posted by Huw in United Kingdom, 10 Jan 2011 13:42

@Dr. D, and KimT, of course my comment about EuroBricks was tongue-in-cheek: It is a great resource for pictorial reviews and will continue to be. But I think there is also value in the textual reviews here as well, though: it's good to get the views of multiple people, and often the reviews at EB are little more than a series of pictures and facts and can be light on actual opinion. So they both have their strength and place.

I'd love to be able to add links to EB reviews here, but don't want to go searching for the data: Is there a single page that could be 'scraped' for it, whic could then be saved here and used for the links?

Posted by meyerc13 in United States, 10 Jan 2011 13:45

@Dr. D - Set reviews aren't a strength here? That's the main reason I come to this site! I like the detailed reviews at Eurobricks, but you can't beat the scoring system you get here once 10+ people have chimed in on a set. Typically I'll first check Brickset to see what the consensus is on a set, and then check Eurobricks to see if they have a detailed pictorial review.

My only gripe about reviews here is that I have seen a lot of reviews get flagged as unhelpful mostly because someone doesn't agree with the reviewer's rating. I've had it happen to a few of my reviews, but I've seen it happen on plenty of others when the reviewer takes a less than favorable viewpoint on a popular set. Those who use the 'helpful' question in that fashion are doing a disservice to this site because it will artificially inflate the review scores by eliminating the dissenting opinions. When I visit a site like Amazon one of the first things I do is look for the negative reviews on a product, to see why the people who didn't like a set didn't like it.

One example: I like to buy Creator sets for the parts. So I might give a less than 5 star review if the set is low on plates or other parts that would be useful. Someone who buys the set to build the included models might disagree and love the set. So if they look for low scoring reviews and find mine, but see that the only reason for the low score is the parts aren't useful for MOCs, that review was useful to them even if they personally would disagree with my score.

To me the only use for the 'unhelpful' rating is to weed out the reviews like "This set rockz! best set ever." That isn't helpful because it doesn't tell me why they felt that way. Generally any detailed, accurate review I find helpful, even if I don't personally agree with their conclusions or rating.

Posted by KimT in Denmark, 10 Jan 2011 13:48

I do believe we've got Review Indexes for all forums.
I've been quite busy with the Star Wars Forum, but I'll gladly add any reviews I've done there to the proper sets here.
I'll even ask our members to share their EB reviews here if you'd like me to?

Lemme just track down those review indexes and share a few links here, then you (Huw) can decide wether it's worth the work (and trouble) to look through them for links :-)

Posted by KimT in Denmark, 10 Jan 2011 13:54

Posted by Wiseman_2 in United Kingdom, 10 Jan 2011 14:00

@ KimT: You missed out the Technic reviews... not sure if they have a list like those though.

Also, I would have taken some photos of recent sets in build for reviews if I'd known that we could include them! I honestly had no idea - and I'm not sure many others did - that that was possible until now.

Posted by DrDaveWatford in United Kingdom, 10 Jan 2011 14:00

Huw, KimT, meyerc13 - I believe that the Brickset reviews and Eurobricks reviews complement each other very nicely, and hence the value in linking to the EB reviews from the Brickset set pages (and indeed possibly vice versa ?) so that readers can access both sets of reviews with the greatest of ease.

One thing I like about the EB reviews is the degree of quality control, which is generally high in order for a review to make it into the reviews index. Not always, but often. Huw's worked hard to try and address this aspect of Brickset reviews and hence the rating system, but as meyerc13 rightly points out, it isn't perfect. The diversity of reviews and number of opinions is however a strength of the Brickset reviews in my view.

Adding the relevant EB links to the Brickset set pages would likely be somewhat painstaking and time consuming, and would need to be done gradually over time, but I think the additional value it'd bring would make it worthwhile.

Posted by KimT in Denmark, 10 Jan 2011 14:13

Oops:
Trains: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=28418
Technic:Not sure - perhaps it's part of the same set index as Sci-Fi?

Feel free to use those links as you wish.

Posted by meyerc13 in United States, 10 Jan 2011 14:40

I find it interesting that the number of replies to this news item is so much higher than the number of people who marked LegoDad42's review helpful. Unless there is some lag in calculating that number, I'm only the second person to mark it helpful?

Posted by Berrybrick in United States, 10 Jan 2011 14:47

I was going to do a review like this for The Burrow a couple of weeks ago but found that my camera doesn't have any attention to detail, you couldn't make out the prints/faces on anything except for the torsos, which is a shame because Bellatrix looks quite creepy in a fez.

Posted by Doctor Leg O'Brick in United Kingdom, 10 Jan 2011 14:57

Can you "nick" images other people have posted on EB or other sites? I don't have any stuff to take pictures with, let alone post them anywhere on the internet...

Posted by I like Lego in Canada, 10 Jan 2011 15:04

Just a small question, on legoDad42's review, there was a badge next to his username. How exactly do you get them? Anyway, I'm thrilled that you can now add pictures. I think I'll get to work writing my Collectible Minifigure & Lego Atlantis reviews over to here. Thanks Huw!

Posted by Night City Dream in Russian Federation, 10 Jan 2011 15:14

Nice idea but I guess the Brickset administration should define the maximum amount of pictures per review otherwise there may be some that include more than 100 photos, like 8404, for instance.

Posted by Huw in United Kingdom, 10 Jan 2011 15:15

Excellent, Kim, thanks. I'll see what I can do with them soon.

@Doctor Leg, no please don't link to other people's photos without their permission.

@I Like Lego, see http://www.brickset.com/about/log/

Posted by DrDaveWatford in United Kingdom, 10 Jan 2011 15:18

@meyerc13, I was also the second person to mark the review as helpful, so maybe there's lag or a bug !

Posted by Ypres in Canada, 10 Jan 2011 15:23

I personally love the reviews here... usually if I find one too bias then I just right a more 'down-to-earth' one of my own. Though the only problem pictures bring to the table is the review's space. Pictures look great and all but they take alot of room. Kinda wish the pictures could be formated like set images or something... that way they appear small and the reader could click to inlarge them.

Posted by Berrybrick in United States, 10 Jan 2011 15:30

DrDaveWatford & @meyer13- I also was the second person to mark it as helpful, twice!

Posted by Niallskie in United States, 10 Jan 2011 15:34

I love that you can add pictures to your review now. Would be nice if you can only post 2 pictures per review. Pictures are nice and all but the flood the review if there is too many.

Posted by Niallskie in United States, 10 Jan 2011 15:34

I love that you can add pictures to your review now. Would be nice if you can only post 2 pictures per review. Pictures are nice and all but the flood the review if there is too many.

Posted by Haltiamieli in Finland, 10 Jan 2011 15:44

Good addition in itself, but very long reviews make it somewhat bothersome to browse through reviews - if for example I would just want to glance at different people's opinions about 8099 but wouldn't want to read through a very detailed pictorial review, I would have to scroll quite a bit down before I'd find other reviews.

Would it be possible to make "cuts" (that's how they're called in Livejournal entries at least, I believe) in the reviews after some standard mark-amount, so that the rest of the review would be shown only if you'd click for it to be shown? Like:

Read the rest of the review by clicking here.

Posted by Superkalle in Sweden, 10 Jan 2011 15:54

@Alemas: Yupp, that's me. So I guess the old "adding a 10 at the end of my username" didn't fool you :-)

Posted by Matthew in United Kingdom, 10 Jan 2011 15:59

@Berrybrick, DrDaveWatford & meyer13 I was the second person to mark it as helpful too!

Posted by Berrybrick in United States, 10 Jan 2011 15:59

Just scrolled over the review again, and now it looks like 47 out of 47 find it helpful. I think that's a new record (the previous being somthing like 25 out of 33).

Posted by Alemas in Germany, 10 Jan 2011 16:08

@Berrybrick: Now it's 51 out of 51! WOW!
@superkalle: LOL, if you don't modify the part of the name behind the "10", you can easily recognise the user! :)

Posted by Alemas in Germany, 10 Jan 2011 16:11

Uh, Huw, a bug: when the amount of comments increases, the time it takes to load the article increases too... Articles with over 100 comments take aaaaaaaages to load! Same happens when you post a comment; the more comments, the longer it takes for Brickset to "show" the comment!

Posted by legoDad42 in United States, 10 Jan 2011 16:22

I just go online now...WOW, thanks so much guys for likin' my review! I'm just happy it got posted...;) I thought maybe I put in too many pics and hog up the space. I'm very appreciative to everyone who read the review.

Thanks so much Huw for postin' it up. I noticed too that I think I saw maybe one(?) review with a pic and I thought while I was just startin' to build the Destroyer...let me see if I can do a review in the old 'eurobrick' style.
Thanks Huw for setting the reviews up to do this. I'd love to see others members with pics and details on their favorite sets.

@ Tervlon...thx man. Much appreciate amigo.
@ I like Lego...the badges I believe are people who get like at least 3 outta' 4 favorable reviews? I think that's the minimum. So if you get 5 favorable reviews you get a bronze badge, 10 or more fav. reviews a silver and I think 20+ you get the gold review status...maybe 50+ reviews puts you in platinum status, with free back rubs...;) just kiddin'....

Posted by shieldsy in Ireland, 10 Jan 2011 16:23

Thats a great addition!

Posted by Berrybrick in United States, 10 Jan 2011 16:44

legoDad42 is right, his is not the first, I just found this ten mintutes after reading his comment- http://brickset.com/reviews/?set=8092-1 However, it only has one picture.

Posted by atkinsar in United Kingdom, 10 Jan 2011 16:52

More reviews like this please. Great work legoDad42!

Posted by Duq in Ireland, 10 Jan 2011 18:38

@Alemas: a bigger page takes longer to load on your computer? You need a better internet connection mate...

I'm not a fan of reviews that are more picture than text which I why I like the reviews here at Brickset. To me the only relevant picture in that review is the first one under 'build' because it supports the paragraph about the clever construction. Removing all the other pictures would make it a better review in my opinion.

...and yes, I'm a fan of the Grumpy old men series :-P

Posted by Aquapolis in United States, 10 Jan 2011 18:48

oh man. this guy (legodad42) review just made mine obsolete (i wrote mine a few days before his.) He did a good job though. xD

Posted by jonbuddy in United States, 10 Jan 2011 18:57

72 out of 73 People?!?!?!?! I've never seen that high of rating of my almost 4 years of being on Brickset! That one person who put "no" better have slipped! ;)

EDIT: This one didn't turn out well - Where are the pictures?: http://brickset.com/reviews/?ID=38079

EDIT #2: @Alemas (first comment), I tried doing a C:/Users/Blank/Blank/Stuff, but it appears like the pics in the link I put above.

Posted by Legolijntje in Netherlands, 11 Jan 2011 04:19

@at KimT: there is a list of technic set reviews at Eurobricks: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=26714

Posted by vynsane in United Kingdom, 11 Jan 2011 13:11

Awww, man... the reason I like reviewing here more than anywhere else is I don't have the time to take pictures, and I figure the set details page already usually has more than enough pictures of the set, so I can get to the main talking points straight-away. But now everyone's going to scroll right past any reviews that don't have a bunch of pictures, because reading text isn't viewed as worth the effort.

That said, it could be cool if, instead of remote linking to flickr images, we could upload a select few images (say, 5 max) which would then also be added to the collection of images on the 'set details' page, in addition to the the review itself, kinda like the user-submitted images on Amazon.

Posted by LeiaR2D2 in United States, 11 Jan 2011 13:15

I would love to post pics with my reviews but why do you HAVE to host the pics on a different website?!? :'( NO FAIR! I TOTALLY AGREE WITH ALEMAS!!!! (Go to the second comment to see what I mean) A "browse" button WOULD be great!!!!!
legoDad42's review was great, though. 88 out of 89 people! Wow! I wish my reviews were that good.....:)

Posted by Huw in United Kingdom, 11 Jan 2011 13:46

@alemas, I'm not sure why this page has slowed down significantly since the upgrade but I'll make it a priority to investigate and speed it up if I can.

@everyone, I decided against allowing image uploads. Making it so you need to host them somewhere else kind of raises the barrier for entry and should ensure that only people competent at taking photos, resizing, uploading and linking to them add them. We don't want a load of rubbish after all...

Posted by Doctor Leg O'Brick in United Kingdom, 11 Jan 2011 13:48

Well, i will have to post reviews in the good old Brickset way. No pictures, just words. I agree with everything Alemas says, it takes me ages to post a comment, if you want to know how long, 10 minutes.

Posted by vynsane in United Kingdom, 11 Jan 2011 14:29

@jonbuddy... you can't link to pics on your local C drive, you need to upload them to an image hosting service (like flickr or imagebucket) or your own webserver in order to link to them.

@Huw... I rest my case :P

Posted by Huw in United Kingdom, 11 Jan 2011 14:32

I found the cause of the slow-down on this page, hopefully it's better now: let me know!

@vynsane, I rest mine: "Making it so you need to host them somewhere else [...] raises the barrier for entry". Do we really need loads of grainy blurred pictures taken by kids, because it's easy to upload them here, in what might otherwise be a useful review?

Posted by KimT in Denmark, 11 Jan 2011 14:37

The last you want is to host pics here. It'll be a living nightmare when it comes to server space and imagine the amount of time needed to moderate the pics and remove prelims posted as reviews prior to release. No thank you!

You're welcome Huw - feel free to contact me if you have any questions/ideas regarding the links or any future cooperations between our sites.

starwarsforum.eurobricks[at]gmail.com

Posted by vynsane in United Kingdom, 11 Jan 2011 14:44

Heh, we could go back and forth on this forever. I respect your decision on the merits of your reasoning, I just think we'll end up with as many broken image icons as we would grainy blurred pic taken by kids. In the end, it's probably a wash.

That said, maybe this will spur me on to point my new Nikon D3100 (woot!) at something other than my daughter for a change.

Posted by legoDad42 in United States, 11 Jan 2011 14:57

I really love now that we have options on the reviews. I still want to do more with just text and and also do some reviews with one or 2 pics of a cool feature of the model or even some turnarounds of the minifigs. This flexibility makes this a better forum for reviews. We have options to go text, pro/con list or eurobrick-style...even with eurobrick style we can just do text and describe all points from the box to the summary. Mo-options, mo-choices, mo-lego, mo-money(wait mo-lego means less money...;)

Posted by Dentarthurdent in Australia, 12 Jan 2011 01:55

@Huw: I think that making users host their images on another website obviously works against your aim to have more users include images in their reviews. Not very many people can be bothered to host images elsewhere. Creating an account, password and managing the account is in itself a disincentive, not because it is difficult but because it takes time. On the other hand, say I create a flickr account, there's really nothing stopping me from uploading awful pictures onto my photo stream and then including them in my review. I do not think that having users host elsewhere achieves anything in the order of increasing the professionalism of the photos. Kids can easily create flickr accounts and put their "grainy blurred pictures" on it. So you're not "raising the barrier" after all, you're only increasing the inconvenience of the entire process by making displaying a picture in a review a much more tedious and time-consuming task than it should be. Users should be allowed to upload images straight onto their reviews (and I believe reviews are moderated anyway before they go online for all to see, which is a sufficient barrier). Forgive me for the outburst, but I think when you wrote "kind of" before "raises the barrier for entry", you knew that "kind of" actually didn't actually mean much.

@legoDad: thumbs up on a great review. I hope that the 42 at the end of your username wasn't purely coincidental but in fact a subtle reference to the late and great Douglas Adams :)

Posted by legoDad42 in United States, 12 Jan 2011 02:55

@dentarthurdent....you are the FIRST to know that reference on my screen name...lol. Thanks for spotting that....it's life, the universe and everything you know...;) Everyone thinks it's my age....I'm not that old...;)...close but not quite...ahem....
You know also after I read all the Hitchhiker's Guide's I had forgotten about it and then when an old X-Files episode came on with Mulder's apartment number being 42 I was like...that's cool. I'm gonna' use that every chance I get. I put it sometimes into my own drawings hidden in the background from time to time.
Oh and thx for checkin' out my review Arthur...and for all the fish....

Posted by carding in United Kingdom, 12 Jan 2011 16:14

now that could be useful

Posted by legoDad42 in United States, 12 Jan 2011 17:32

Thanks to EVERYONE for making the review hit the 100 helpful views mark!
I really appreciate that so many took the time to check it out.
I hope to improve on it and make better reviews in the future.
Can't wait to see other folks post up their reviews with interesting pics and build techniques from their favorite kits!

Posted by Gus263 in Brazil, 14 Jan 2011 08:23

Adding images to review is a great idea and a very useful addition. I still have some old photos of sets I've already reviewed, but as someone stated, they take space, and are very large.

Commenting has ended on this article.

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