Shipbucket

I'm not a naysayer, I think this would be a far superior system and if it increases exposure to the whole archive then that's a good aim.

My only point was that the database and the forum should complement each other the best they can. In my view the archive at the moment is just that and offers little connection to the detail behind the drawings that can only be found here. Colo's plan rectifies this to some extent.

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Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

Well, if we're incorporating that sort of thing in, would a drop-down to select from "Real Life", "Never Were", "AU" and "Personal Designs" (and "FD", etc?) combined with a free text field to indicate which AU (e.g., Republic of Texas 2.0, yada yada yada - you'd want a free text field for that one, I should think, rather than trying to keep a drop-down up-to-date) work?

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Public Service Announcement: This is the preferred SB / FD font.

NSWE: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5695

AU and personal design is a forum thing.. The archive for the real thing.

After reading some more... To get your AU or personal design in the archive, should be sort of bonus. I'll come back to it when I get home.

Would it be possible to add links from datebase to forum and back ?

So the datebase had a link of any relevant threads in forum for more information and the forum had a link to datebase in case the image host failed ?

I agree on the need of policing the non-IRL designs, but I see two "simple" ways of setting the AU designs apart reliably in a common archive: 1) add AU-specific entries in a list-based country field, or 2) a separate "reality level" field where you can tag your drawing as real/never-built/AU during upload, which can then be used to filter the DB (say, with "AU" category filtered out by default).
Now if the aim is to reduce the amount of AU stuff on the site or the workload for the checkers, the submission itself might have to be reviewed...

I feel that the current rules should stay; only real-life and never-were designs should be in the archive. That is the main aim of Shipbucket and always will be.
AU and Personal Designs are just a bit of fun but should never be confused with real never-were's etc. Especially by people who are not knowledgeable about ships in general.
Generally there are too many AUs and personal designs to keep track of, especially when artists continually revitalise their AUs (Golly for example most have done at least 5 Novogorod AUs over the years!).

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Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

Good point Hood.

Where a lot of AU/PD work is noticeably 'not real' the latest works by Garlicdesign, BB1987 and others are so good and with such detail, the drawings could easily be mistaken for RL/NW. Also, the reams of text that is now used to create the setting for an AU, and how the AU differs from RL have no where else to be displayed except in this Forum.

Alternate universe and personal designs will not be included on the revamped archive. Like you've stated there are just too many different AUs and personal designs to keep track of.

That said, I'm interested in the ability we would have to use the revamped archive as our own image host, eliminating the need to fool around with Photobucket and Imageshack and all the other broken image hosts. Perhaps established users can receive 10-15MB of upload space for their own personal drawings, to be linked from the archive? Something to consider. I believe our hosting plan includes unlimited storage space and bandwidth.

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USN components, camouflage colors, & reference links (World War II only)

Well good news guys, this is officially underway. My friend has started work on it. I'll post screenshots as he works and keep everyone updated.

We will most likely be offering free drawing hosting for AU/personal designs (in 25 and 50MB blocks) to users who meet some criteria. Further info to follow.

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USN components, camouflage colors, & reference links (World War II only)

So should we crowd fund this work or are you paying him in beers?

Excellent news Colo, it is very good to see this come to life.