Site Forum

What if every time a member replaces one of those stock images that are skewed with the black lines on the edges with a real, scanned, centered, properly cropped image they received 5x the points that the uploader of the stock image received to incentivize people to replace those poor scans?

It would encourage people to replace those Beckett/Ebay images with higher quality scans.

I would be all for this. Far too many scans in the DB that are not cropped/centered properly. 

I started doing this recently. Although, tbh, I felt  kinda bad about it... like I was telling some other person they were bad or something.

I wouldn't feel bad about it. They're too lazy to crop them even. Quantity over quality. It isn't like they are scanning the cards themselves. They just mine them off Ebay or Beckett and don't bother to touch them up (rotation, cropping, contrast, etc.)

I wouldn't replace more than a few myself but it might motivate someone else to replace them with quality scans so that they could climb the charts here, if that's their thing.

Though I have seen images that I suspect were taken off other sources than a scan of someone's personal collection, I do not believe in penalizing someone for a less-than-ideal scan judged by another member.  That is Admin's job to police the uploaded scans to make sure they are what this site is looking for.  Having uploaded many O Pee Chee cards from the 1970s, I can tell you that finding a really well cut, well centered card is sometimes difficult.  Also, from that era and before, not all cards are mint therefore the card that is scanned may not be perfecct.  But an image of a good or fair card is better than no image at all. 

I would like to see that if someone has a better card that can be scanned and uploaded to replace a poor conditioned card image, someone does so.  They would not offend me if an image I uploaded was replaced.  But rewarding someone for this would encourage chart climbing as said earlier.  Maybe an image that is submitted to replace another should only be approved by Admin.  But this may add too much to Admin's already heavy workload.

From my experiences, Admin will remove scans from cards that are in error and the person who notifies Admin can then go in and add the correct scan (and get the points). If you replace the error scan with the correct scan, no points, but the site is more correct.

I don't know if Admin would remove a correct scan if it's just not well-cropped or lesser quality. If it is in need of proper cropping (and there is still room to crop - that means it wasn't over-cropped), if you have the proper permission level, you can crop existing scans.

My theory is this, anything we can do to help the site be more accurate is a good thing. Admin has been known to go in and reward help that doesn't see instant points being added. Help the site, fix the errors, submit better scans, it gets noticed by Admin.

There was a user when I first joined who had uploaded a bunch of images with his own advertising included in the image. This person was pretty high on the points list too. I cropped a bunch of them to make the advertising disappear, but it left blurry scans. I can't remember if I cropped them all or not. It was only present with his most recent scans at that time. I checked a few months later and that user had never uploaded any more scans again. Personally, I don't care about points. I don't even know if I'm in the Top 100 anymore. Haven't checked in a long time. And I've given up on scanning because my computer is getting old and slow. I can't even add my collection easily anymore because the images beside the checklist take too long to load.

My M.O. for entering cards into My Collection: Right off, first thing is to overwrite the scanned image(s) when needed.(Yes, I do this for every single card I enter) The quality of existing scans on the DB has given me cause to re-scan approximately 90% of what has been submitted already, before they ever become a part of my collection. The reward I receive is a nicely presented image gallery when perusing my cards, as well as knowing that I am contributing to a more elegant looking site overall.

I have completely worn out several scanners in my endeavors, but the end result is more than worth it.  Where this site is concerned, I agree somewhat with the idea that a sub-standard scan is better than no scan at all, but I am more inclined to cater to that old saying "Why is there never enough time to do something right the first time, but always time to do it over?"

If I click Write One on the card of the day right now the guy with the most points on this site has a crooked, washed out crappy stock image of a baseball card pop up. If the rest of you enjoy that with it's black edges and skewed centering, than by all means continue to enjoy.

Like I said I am not going to replace all of their half hearted uploads but maybe someone else would if they wanted to climb this site's leaderboard. My suggestion was simply that maybe someone who cared could do it right or you can continue to enjoy Dave Sosidka or whatever his name is and the rest of the stock image uploaders.

I don't know what the reward is for uploading the most crappy, harvested images on this site is but it must be that t-shirt. I'm personally holding out for a Billy Kingsley Maxx rookie because now that he has shown me photoscape I am scanning and photoshopping and photoscaping and reuploading and it takes way too much time but I like the results better.

I personally prefer quality over quantity, like with my IPAs, bourbons, coded applications, women, entertainment options, etc. I would punish mediocrity every day and reward a quality effort. They are too lazy to even crop them correctly.

In the meantime I hope your collecting is fun and you pull hit after hit!

What sandyrusty said, well put.

That said, I'd rather see an image of the card as opposed to an empty space.  I'm grateful anyone takes the(ir) time put ANY image in it's proper place regardless of quality.  Especially considering the majority of scans here are still better than other places.

Seems the point thing causes more trouble than it's worth.  This is not the first post I've seen complaining about it.  I could care less about it.  Can we just do away with it?!