[Mr.Spider]

Excited about the changes and updates. I know the previous iteration of moving stuff to the wiki got complicated when it came to completion. The pack plans and props section and such all got jumbled and what not.

[AJ Quick]

Yeah. Despite the fact that we're moving back to a completely custom solution once again, I think this one will be fully featured and do the things we need it to do. I am hoping people once again contribute to this Wiki. I have plans to make it much better than it was.

I had taken a break over the weekend from working on things. I am back at it today, working on the full social aspect of the site. I am revamping all the previous existing features, but hopefully things will be a bit less Myspace-y.

If there are any features you would like to see please let me know. Right now we have things like: Events, Calendar, Franchises, Wall Posting, Blogs, YouTube video imports, Prop builds, Fan art, Fan fic. Commenting, liking, social feed, notifications.. etc.

[AJ Quick]

Progress has slowed down a bit. All sections of the site are probably around 90% complete, it is that last 10% that is the hardest as I track down bugs, test things and improve the appearance. I am wondering if I can get this new site up in a week or two at this point?

One cool feature I am working on adding for the shop is a loyalty program. Still trying to figure out all aspects, but if you give your friend's a link to the shop, you'll get 5% in rewards for whatever is purchased at the shop in the form of a shop credit. Similarly, if you are a franchise and you give out a link to your followers, you will get 5% of their purchase as a donation for your charity.

[timeware]

If we can get permission, one cool thing i'd like to see are games on the main page. Giving people a chance to compete for the high score and bragging rights. It would keep people on the main site if that's doable.

https://www.retrogames.cc/nes-games/gho ... s-usa.html

[AJ Quick]

If we can get permission, one cool thing i'd like to see are games on the main page. Giving people a chance to compete for the high score and bragging rights. It would keep people on the main site if that's doable.

https://www.retrogames.cc/nes-games/gho ... s-usa.html

That's actually pretty funny! I was thinking about re-creating that game and putting it in as an easter egg.

[AJ Quick]

While I thought the shop was the part that was the furthest along, it also is the one that is the most complicated. I have had to go back and make more changes to the shop. Right now I am just trying to get it to function the same as the current shop does as far as shipping and fulfilling orders. Fixing the shop has been the last few days and will likely take a few more days in itself.

[AJ Quick]

Yesterday was a solid 14-hour day. I have been back to hitting things hard.

The franchise section is taking shape. I am taking things that we used to have in place and greatly expanding upon them. I know franchises will love this new hub/anchor page for their franchises. You will have a place where you can show off your charity efforts, show off your team's equipment, post news/articles, events, and member lists, etc. Have links to your social media accounts and website. I may even look at taking that a bit further by having the ability to bring in Facebook page content automatically. You will have founders and you will have members, and depending on permissions, certain users can help with content and editing of their franchise page, while certain members can make larger changes. Basically, it will all be available to you with only minor site admin involvement.

Everything is capped with an awesome, live, interactive map that shows all the franchises with their logos. One cool feature I am hoping to add is the ability to find gaps in the franchise system. For example, if a state has franchises in multiple large cities but not in one, it will hopefully encourage people who live around that area to find others nearby and form a franchise.

And then there will be a lot of pages and information on how to start a franchise, what is required, and what is important... how to work with charities, how to screen your members, how to set up a 501(c)(3), etc.

I have also spent a considerable amount of time getting the fan/community pages going. You will have your own profile page much like we used to have around 2008. You can add friends, chat, post on profiles, and post your props, videos, art, and other content. There will also be content feeds so you can check out the latest additions to the site, including from your friends. There will be active notifications so you also know immediately when someone has left you a comment, sent you a message, or other things. This is all going to be very awesome.

[AJ Quick]

Yesterday was another 12 hours, spent focusing almost entirely on the franchises and fan maps. I'm really liking how those sections are coming along!

[AJ Quick]

Yesterday was yet another 15-hour day with about a 3-hour break in the middle. I spent the day making it easier for fans in underserved areas to start their own local Ghostbusters franchise. If you live somewhere that doesn't have an active franchise yet, the site now helps you find that out and guides you through getting one off the ground. This includes a new library of guides covering how to run a chapter, what to think about for events, and practical safety and legal pointers.

Franchise pages themselves got a major upgrade: you'll see news, upcoming events, members, and equipment all in one place, plus a dedicated feed for franchise happenings across the whole community. The advertising side of the house also started coming together. You'll begin seeing some ads tested on the site, but supporting members will get a (mostly) ad-free experience as a thank-you.

A huge focus was on friendships and community. Over the years, I've heard from so many people that they met their best friends, their fellow franchise members, and even their partners through GBFans.com, so the fan directory, friends page, and profile pages all got rebuilt to make finding and connecting with other fans much easier. You can filter by location, see mutual friends, spot who's near you, and discover people you'd probably get along with.

I also rolled out a brand-new contribution system that spans almost everything you can do on the site, such as wiki edits, forum posts, photos, fiction, franchise activity, and more. The more active and varied your contributions, the more you're recognized. Each month the top contributors earn Gold, Silver, and Bronze distinctions, with badges for other top members too; the top contributors will even receive a free supporting membership as a thank-you for keeping the community alive.

[AJ Quick]

I had to take some time off from working on this to give myself a bit of time to reset. Sometimes we need to step back and take a bit of time to think things over before continuing.

I am back to working on the prop and art sections. I am happy with how the new system will work. You will have the ability to dump your photos into a gallery much like it used to work, but also have the ability to do real build logs. There will be a tagging and categorization system so when you upload a Proton Pack, it won't just let you say it is a Proton Pack. It now asks guiding questions like how was it made, what movie or show is it based upon? This will help people who are looking for very specific things like: Show me all heavily modified Spirit Halloween Proton Packs then you can focus on those builds specifically. There will also be generated linking so if you say you used XYZ part, it will try to automatically link to that product.

Fan Art will work similarly though with a bit less specificity. There will be more tags and importantly an AI filter. If you use AI to make your images, that is OK, but you must indicate that you used AI and users will need to opt in to specifically see that type of content.

I also encountered the first problem that many had mentioned about services costing a lot of money randomly. I found that the forum software does not play nicely with our database software. Basically the forum software always keeps the database alive, so our service that is supposed to scale down to zero (and not cost any money) is just not capable of doing so with Discourse. I will need to shift to a different hosting service for that particular database.

[AJ Quick]

While there are definitely several areas that still need work, testing and fixing.. I have officially shifted to working on the polish and design. Improving upon the design is important as it will help dictate some of the features and integrations that still need to be made. The changes now will help unify the design across the pages. I am also working on dark mode which I know a lot of you will be happy to see. I believe the changes, even minute are going to look great.

[AJ Quick]

Just when you feel like you're making progress! I switched by development over to creating issues and keeping track of them. It is more important as things go on as I don't want to lose track of anything.

[AJ Quick]

Still churning through this. Hundreds more issues taken care of since May 12th. I am hoping that the end is in sight soon. I've been navigating the site, testing things out, writing down issues. Still working on getting everything polished and functional at 100%.

[AJ Quick]

From 494 two days ago to 597 now closed issues.

[AJ Quick]

649 it is slow going.

I am still trying to get this done for June 8th though!

[AJ Quick]

We've reached the most time-consuming and expensive phase of this journey: updating the Wiki.

With thousands of pages to sort through, one of the main goals is to restructure the Wiki so it makes logical sense as our primary content section. To handle the sheer volume, I am utilizing an AI tool to assist with the cataloging process. It analyzes the existing structure of each page and helps determine the optimal location and categorization for that content.

This is working incredibly well to map out a much more organized layout for whole sections and pages, but processing that much data is costly. Having the tool analyze the site's architecture last night alone resulted in $2,000 in API usage. The results are impressive, and the new arrangement of the content is a massive improvement.

To manage costs moving forward, the focus is currently on analyzing and reorganizing the top 10% of our most critical pages. The remaining pages will be mapped and moved after the initial launch.

As we get closer to launch, the expenses for this overhaul continue to mount. The total cost of the project so far is approximately $20,000. If you value the site and the Wiki, please consider becoming a supporting member to help offset these development costs: https://www.gbfans.com/fans/supporting/

[Kingpin]

The total cost of the project so far is approximately $20,000.

f***.

[Nomake Wan]

Having the tool analyze the site's architecture last night alone resulted in $2,000 in API usage.

Is "the tool" some flavor of LLM?

[AJ Quick]

Having the tool analyze the site's architecture last night alone resulted in $2,000 in API usage.

Is "the tool" some flavor of LLM?

It is a chain of tools and scripts that analyze the contents of the Wiki and categorize, link and find similarities between one set of content and the next. It does use language models as it needs to read and understand, then convert text into vectors to find similarities. It then relies upon a LLM to stitch everything back together and each of these steps is very compute / storage heavy. The results have been incredible though, thorough and well sourced and cited Wiki articles have been written.

I will say the odds of getting this out today are about 1% however.

I would much rather get something that I know will function with high assurance than ship something riddled with bugs. My issue tracker is near 711 issues tackled. I keep finding these minor things that unfortunately would prevent the site from launching.

[mrmichaelt]

As we get closer to launch, the expenses for this overhaul continue to mount. The total cost of the project so far is approximately $20,000. If you value the site and the Wiki, please consider becoming a supporting member to help offset these development costs: https://www.gbfans.com/fans/supporting/

Oh, so that's why you asked for us to be supporting members... O_O

[AJ Quick]

Definitely rounding the corner on the Wiki.

A lot of changes have been made to how the editor works. It is a very thorough GUI editor, you don't need to know any syntax to use it. Essentially just drag and drop, or select and apply formatting. Much like a word processor.

One question I have for everyone is this:

What prevents you from contributing to a public knowledgebase / wiki, where everyone can edit and make changes?

Is it the fear of breaking something?
Providing inaccurate information?
Stepping on someone else's toes?
Not enough of an incentive / recognition?
No wealth / fame / power / free parking?

[mrmichaelt]

One question I have for everyone is this:

What prevents you from contributing to a public knowledgebase / wiki, where everyone can edit and make changes?

Is it the fear of breaking something?
Providing inaccurate information?
Stepping on someone else's toes?
Not enough of an incentive / recognition?
No wealth / fame / power / free parking?

I wish I knew that answer, too.

[timeware]

Is it the fear of breaking something?
Providing inaccurate information?
Stepping on someone else's toes?
Not enough of an incentive / recognition?
No wealth / fame / power / free parking?

Without an investiture, there's just no motivation. Lol.

[Mercifull]

What prevents you from contributing to a public knowledgebase / wiki, where everyone can edit and make changes?

Is it the fear of breaking something?
Providing inaccurate information?
Stepping on someone else's toes?
Not enough of an incentive / recognition?
No wealth / fame / power / free parking?

Just time these days. I used to be (probably still am) an administrator of the Battlestar Wiki one of the largest still independent Wikis around. Obviously interest around that series has wanes over the years since its finale in 2009 but maybe if it's ever rebooted again it will spark back up. I never sought fame or recognition... but others did. And often those people were the biggest pains-in-the-bum. More trouble than their worth.

I definitely preferred editing in wikitext/mediawiki markup though rather than a fancy GUI. I hope there's still an option to edit the old fashioned way.

[Nomake Wan]

I guess that means I'm in the minority, as when I see inaccurate information on a wiki I do bother to update it--so long as there isn't some barrier to entry preventing me from doing so. I do have a Fandom account (ugh), but at least on Wikipedia you don't even need to be logged in to make an update so that's nice.

If the question is specific to GBFans, the answer is "I don't believe I have anything new to contribute." If that ever changed, I would absolutely be willing to make an edit. Barrier to entry isn't really a big deal since obviously I have an account since I'm replying to this thread, so...

[AJ Quick]

Thank you for the feedback about the Wiki!

I am getting excited a little bit because I have gotten the Wiki just about where it needs to be and it is looking better than it ever has before. I have started putting the same level of polish on the Gallery section. After that, I feel like its only testing and bug fixes until it is ready.. along with some data migrations.

I need to make sure the following systems are working 100%:

-Email / Notifications
There is a whole new system that allows for more detailed notifications. Since there are a lot of places for content to go, commenting, replies, chat messages, forum tags..etc. It is important to make sure that is 100% functional from the start. I believe one of the features of the new forum will be the ability to reply to an email to post your reply to the forum. You will have the ability to get a push notification or a native phone notification if you have those setup as well.

-Shop
With the launch of the Hasbro 1984 Pack, the orders have been coming non-stop again. It has actually forced me to slow down with the programming because I'm the one that ships the orders too! That being said, the shop needs to function continuously with no interruptions. Without the shop there is no funding for the site. And it needs to keep working so orders placed before the launch can still get fulfilled after the launch. There are also a few spots that need a bit of polish to be done.

-Fan Profiles / Feeds
When you login to your account, you'll be met with a feed of activity. Props, Fan Art, Reference Photos, posts, forum posts, replies.. etc all streaming in. Since there have been no users on the site while testing, its been hard to make sure that feed is going to work as intended. That needs some testing and some mock data added.

-News Tips
One of the cool features I have made (but zero testing so far) is a news tip line. It will be an email address where you can email news that you have found or companies can send in their press releases for new product launches. Those emails will get fed directly into an inbox that exists as part of the news area, so to go from email source to news article will be very fast. The RSS feeds that are currently on the main page of the site will also be monitored, so if there is breaking news it will land and get a news article created quickly.

-Ticket Support System
Along with email tips, the system will be monitoring my email inbox. It will hopefully keep track of new emails that come in and assign a ticket. Your tickets will be something you can view from your dashboard as well. It should help me keep track of things like an email that has been sitting without a reply for a few days. I can also quickly answer questions about orders and help with account issues.