Discussion

I thought adding this page would give us the chance to discuss things here. To reply, please edit the page and leave your comment below the last comment (start it with a heading that has 2 + infront of it, so that it creates an entry in the table of contents) and sign it with your name.

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Some concerns/issues I have…..

The main thing I think is that some of these issues should be sorted out before more brand listings are added, so that there can be consistency through the wiki and if changes need to be made, they can be done before adding more entries. I'm happy to help out a lot to get this site working, but I don't want to put a lot of work in when there are issues that I think are major that need to be addressed.

Tags - there isn't enough space to fit all the tags in - there seems to be a limit to the number of tags each page can have. So not all brands can have all their relevant tags - so really, I can't see how it's a useful system when you can't tag everything you need to tag. If I look up the "PUL" tag for example, it's not listing all the brands who use PUL - so what's the point of having it? When people search for pad brands by tag, they are going to miss out on seeing brands who couldn't display that tag, but have pads of that type. And searchers aren't going to know that the tags aren't complete.

I think we need to work out how many tags we can have, and work out the most important tags, and use only those, so that every brand has the opportunity to be tagged with all it's relevant tags.
For example I think we should keep only the most searched for things - eg:
organic, aio, base+liner, pocket, fold, wetbag, panty and perhapa a "no-pul" for non-waterproofed pads and pads with fleece instead of PUL. That should be enough tags to help people search the basics, and be small enough that any brand selling all those can be tagged with them all.

Reclaimed vs recycled: Is there a difference between the two? There are tags for each. - Tara

  • Good catch! The "recycle" tag is a relic from the days of a highly limited tag list per page. It was used to save characters, but since we can now add a lot more characters to the tags section, it's not necessary. They've all been consolidated into "reclaimed" now. —-fireaphid

Pictures - When linking to pictures on other people's websites its important to realise that if you've linked to a product listing's picture - that picture might be deleted once the product has sold. Plus this is called "remote linking" and it's stealing bandwidth - everytime someone looks at one of the wiki pages with that photo on, it's taking bandwidth from the website that photo is on. Its a big no-no in the Internet world. Plus from a practical point of view, if the photos are moved or deleted it's going to leave this wiki with broken image links. I think we need a central photobucket/flickr site that we can upload the photos to, and link to them there.

— Obsidian
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New Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=36730820911, Seems relevant to this, it's in it's infancy. I don't know how to use this website so I apologise if left in the wrong place! Christine

  • Thanks! I put the link next to the link to Plush Pants on the Wemoon page, as the group is associated with one particular brand. —-fireaphid

Suggestions for the cloth pad gallery page

Something about the cloth pad gallery seems like it could be improved. It seems almost stagnant at the moment. I'm wondering if a Flickr slideshow from the group loveofcloth would make it more like a community project, and more like a real gallery. Anybody else have an opinion on this?

-Taria

maybe create a flickr group and link to that instead of trying to have the gallery in the wiki? — Obsidian

Personally, I like Taria's idea better but don't have the skills to make it happen. My only concern is that flickr groups require people to volunteer their photos, and I think a lot of the great pictures of homemade pads are on relatively inactive accounts, so we'd get a huge bias toward pads for purchase, which already have their fair share of pictures on the rest of the site. I hope that made sense… I want to maintain a space for people to show off pads you can't buy so folks can see the diversity in design. —-fireaphid

The issue I have with galleries is that unless you are linking to something already in existence, there can be copyright issues. We don't want this to be closed down because someone complains that one of their pictures has been entered into a gallery/listing here without their permission. If a flickr (or any other group) was set up solely for this, then it could be put somewhere that by adding photos to that album/gallery that you are granting permission for your pictures to be used….. thus solving any copyright issues. As it stands at the moment, I could go link to lunapads or any other brand of pad for the gallery here, which is not only bandwidth theft, but breaking their copyright. Now while it's unlikely they would notice or complain, I don't think it's a responsible thing to do.

But, there are cloth communities all over the place (FB, LJ, Ravelry, Flickr etc.) - we could always put the word out that we are trying to get together a large gallery of cloth pads, and if anyone wants to join by adding *their* photos, that would be great. There could even be (maybe - I'm not familiar with flickr) an album for "professional" pads… and one for "Homemade" ones - if you want that distinction so that people can focus on everyday pads. —Obsidian

Right on, Obsidian! We should take down the gallery and ask the cloth pad ladies on flickr to work on adding more pictures. The only issue with the pictures on each page stealing bandwidth is that flickr doesn't allow us to add pictures that aren't ours… so it would require someone to save the pics to their hard drive and upload them… . —-fireaphid

Fireaphid, if you're still keen I would be happy to make a new Flickr group just for putting photos of pads up here in a flash gallery. I'm thinking to limit uploads to 3 maximum per person ever - just to prevent pad sellers from getting spammy, and to stop loading times from going over the top. Do you have any thoughts on this? — IndigoHoney

I think that's a great idea! Let me know how it goes or if you need any help. (I apologize that things have stagnated somewhat, but I've been busy with schoolwork for the past couple years; I really appreciate the help.) —-fireaphid

Flickr groups are fairly no-fuss to maintain, but if you are on Flickr I would be happy to make you, or anybody else very interested in the wiki, an admin. The link is http://www.flickr.com/groups/clothpadwiki/ . I will update the gallery on here once we have a few more photos in the Flickr group pool.
— IndigoHoney

I've just joined the group (I'm obvious who I am :D).. and I'm happy to help admin it… Can the pics be put into separate sets? - one set ("Pad Stash pics") for people to upload pictures of pads in their stash that they haven't made, or entire stash pics showing multiple brands that might include pads they made so long as there are other pads in there too (which is not limited to any number of uploads) and a set of "pad maker pics" (or whatever) that is for uploading pictures of pads you've made (limited to adding only 3)…. That way someone like me can upload several pics of my stash (including my favourite bought pads, and some nice stash pics - I have 250 of them, most not made by me, so I have a lot I could photograph :D) and that would go in the "pad stash pics" set, and then I could add 3 pics of my own brand of pads to the "pad maker" one… and us pad makers aren't spamming with our creations but can participate in making a gallery of pads we have in our stash that belong to other makers

Also, I think we're going to have to go through and clean up the images from the pad brand pages - I've noticed in my brief travels around the wiki that there are several whose pictures are missing - presumably as I'd mentioned before, when people delete their products from the server it then breaks all the image links we've set up here… and we need to go through and change the links to the cloth pad reviews forum, now that the old one died and we've had to move it.

— Obsidian

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