Let's play the 'who can find the new features and start using them before Peter wakes up tomorrow and makes an announcement about them' game.
I didn't notice anything different until I saw Josh's post above. But I did want to tell you that I read the subject line of your post in Jigsaw's voice:
you added gallery folders and showcase. yes. thank you I have been wanting this for awhile. it's so nice to add and edit them now. thank you.
The showcase might be an interesting addition to CT. What's the general vision for it? (I'll post this in Josh's other thread on using the new features, too.) When navigating to the "Showcase" one lands on a 'gallery' type page displaying many different images. Clicking on a thumbnail image there that interests you, you land on the tab for "General Information" rather than an enlarged coin image or any coin image at all, and it seems in some cases there may be little to no "information" there meaning you have to hit the image tab to display content. Is there anyway to rearrange things so that users land on the image rather than the info page for those who post no image in the general information page, or to merge information and images onto just one page(tab)? Will other tabs be added? How does the "rating" feature work-- will one's rating perpetually accumulate over time based in hits by unique users or does it "close" like a poll after some period of time? So far I don't see uploaded images in Showcase pages that can be enlarged by clicking on them the way images in other parts of CT threads do, is that not possible here?
I was just wondering what it's for, myself. Gallery is for images. What is the purpose of a Showcase? Is it meant to be a forum within a forum?
What's the general vision? I agree that it might seem confusing at first, after all it's two different ways to do the same thing. Show off your coins. So, an overview of why I thought both would be useful instead of one or the other: A showcase is going to look more like an exhibit. For example, see this thread Charmy posted a while ago. The Gallery, on the other hand, would be more like a coin album. Just as we have different ways of showing off our collections in real life, we now have different ways to show them off online.
I guess in offering new features it serves to attract continued or re(new)ed interest, perhaps even inspires some to contribute, but do the features confuse by offering too much of the same thing and do the new features offer the same level of interaction we already have with threads and the long discussions that take place in them? More options for doing what was already being done is sort of like trying to fix that which was not broken. Charmy's threads are simple, elegant and well composed. It's the standard format, and she uses it to maximum effect while it's true most others under utilize by not filling with information, links and carefully edited and clear images of the subject matter. She and a host of others (such as the old Clinker Trivia threads) have been used to regularly inform and attract users to the profiled coins and their personal interests and experiences, spur conversations and interaction through thread oriented conversations. It seems that these "new" features are modeled a lot like "social media" sites, and serve less to communicate, share questions and have conversations, rather more about just showing something off, hitting a mindless "like" or "rate" star icon and fumbling along to the next shiny thing that distracts those of short term attention spans. Whereas threads have most of the information on the initial page when started by an OP, these new features have separate tabs for information and gallery photos, or an assortment of images that can only be viewed as a group in thumbnails, and others not able to be enlarged for greater clarity and scrutiny when it comes to grading. I just hope the multitude of ways to share isn't just spreading whats already pretty thin, even thinner still. I'll certainly give what's new a try and help test drive the features hoping they take off successfully.
