Hey folks, I've been working on something for personal reasons but wanted to share some information I assembled. Basically, I'm creating a sort of "Radicon Index" - a spreadsheet/database of all Radicon custom threads - which will have tags on what figures/materials were used and what the custom was. The reason would be things like viewing all customs made from a Classic Mirage or Bumblebee, or what Optimus Prime customs were made not from another Optimus toy, or all Lego/Kre-o or CHUG customs. Things like that. Like, unless someone was searching for Cloudraker/Fastlane, they may never know you could turn Classic Mirage into a jet or Skullcruncher into Optimus. This is more for myself - and I'm not sure what the moderators or site people would think about it and I apologize if I've done anything wrong - but I'm open to share it at some point in the future if there were no objections. It's not meant to replace anything TFW by any means - just a more advanced search/filter tool to be able to locate the threads on the site or get ideas for a custom based on what you have. (i.e. what can I make with this left over *insert toy here*...) With that being said, we're nearing 20,000 custom threads on the site. As of an hour or so ago, there were 19,934 threads on the site. The stats I wanted to share was some of the breakdowns of the numbers. Number of customs by year: HTML: 2004 1 2005 200 2006 557 2007 1363 2008 2319 2009 4033 2010 3931 2011 4161 2012 3368 Number of types by prefix (unknown were before they were required): HTML: Minor/Repaint 12404 Heavy/Scratch 6020 Non-TF 1123 Repro/Sticker 345 Unknown 41 Number of customs by Radicon: HTML: sentinalsupreme 281 Solrac333 278 Shinobitron 252 SonOfNemesis 239 xaviercal 200 G60Force 187 Unicron9 177 dyingwill3rd 174 Delta Star 162 LimeWire 161 encline 149 chansformers 146 spoonman 143 thyvipera 136 Sabrina_Ng 131 ALPHAMAGNUS 131 TCracker 123 Treadshot A1 118 Zildjian 108 Sculpt-bot 107 As you can imagine, going through 20K threads to sort out what's in them is not a quick task. So any other cool stats, like # of customs per character, would take a while to find. I don't even know if I'd ever get through most of them... I just think it's cool to see the framework of the Radicon world and how it breaks down from just the basic raw data. Again, I apologize if I overstepped any boundaries. I love TFW and the all of the great customs and artists that are on it (myself humbly being one of them). I only wish to celebrate the community and everything about it.
Actually, I went back through some because the main Radicon's page shows 'displaying # of 19,988' and I wanted to see what I missed. There are some threads that were moved to other areas that were still listed and I think I missed some, so here are some updated numbers. Total Radicon Custom threads: 19,970 Number of customs by year: HTML: 2004 1 2005 200 2006 558 2007 1364 2008 2326 2009 4042 2010 3933 2011 4168 2012 3378 Number of types by prefix (unknown were before they were required): HTML: Minor/Repaint 12427 Heavy/Scratch 6031 Non-TF 1124 Repro/Sticker 345 Unknown 43 Number of customs by Radicon: HTML: sentinalsupreme 281 Solrac333 278 Shinobitron 252 SonOfNemesis 240 autobotx23 202 xaviercal 200 G60Force 187 Unicron9 177 dyingwill3rd 175 Delta Star 162 LimeWire 161 encline 149 chansformers 146 spoonman 143 thyvipera 136 Sabrina_Ng 131 ALPHAMAGNUS 131 TCracker 123 Treadshot A1 117 mattarmstrong 108 Zildjian 108 Sculpt-bot 107
Am I the only one wanting to know what chansformers and spoonman's field goal percentages are? Of course not! (great work there I used to keep up with stats like this a few years ago a bit more closely. Never to the point of making actual spreadsheets though. That's some good work )
Oh wow...I made it onto the list. I didn't know I'd posted so much stuff here. Wow. That said, always nice to see the community's growth, and to reach that number of customs (~20000) is great. Now I just have to post a few more things to get further up that list. I'm only at #21 right now. Coincidentally, 21 is one of my favourite numbers.
I'd imagine going through every thread would be the only way of doing this, but is there yet a difference in the numbers of WIP threads vs completed project threads? Because some people have posted one of each for the same project, and then there's people like me who've started WIP threads and never finished things. LOL
That's one of my tags. =) But short of going through all of the threads, you can only do so much by looking for "WIP" in the title.
I'd be at the top of the WIP list......& I'd be pretty high up on the "massacred bots" list. (j/k) Very cool! I've always been interested in seeing oddball info on things that some may not think about......like this.
Wow, it's been a busy weekend. From my count - which may not be 'official' - we're at 20,008 and thread #20,000 was: http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/radicons-customs/675869-wfc-optimus-prime-v4.html by speedlee. What would be cool would be, once all the threads could be tagged as WIP versus Finished, to see the number of actual customs posted instead just the number of total threads.
Practically all of mine would be WIP threads as I like to work on my TFs in stages. For example I've posted one thread for my leader Optimus when I did a little bit of detailing. Then I bumped it again later on when I made a trailer, again later when I added some chrome, again when I worked on the smokestacks, etc. I'm always displaying my customs as finished projects, but I keep going back and doing tweaks along the way...
The problem with trying to scrape/parse out anything from the title. You can't guarantee that the name or words in the title are really what's inside. Like, "My New Project" would be something someone could enter for their WIP thread that you can't filter out. And threads like "Runabout from Tracks" or something like "Leader Fallen from Voyager Fallen". You can't just filter a ton of threads and tag them at once without there being some odd ones like those. All else fails if I tag them that way, I'd have to just correct those later.
If anyone is interested in playing around with or looking at what I'm doing, here's an 'alpha' version so to speak of my Excel spreadsheet and Filemaker Pro database "Radicon Index" app: 21MB Excel file: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B_W0rGsBDbKsTlFLb0owbGMyV3c 23MB Radicon Index app (7z'ed): https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B_W0rGsBDbKsYW9fbDhCenpzcGs Excel has 2 sheets, the second one is the Pivot Tables with the stats I listed above. I pulled in the first post from each thread as the "Content" (a couple were too long and Excel couldn't handle it all in one cell, so that's why there's a Content2 column). It's the raw HTML, as through Filemaker Pro I render that in a box so I could flip through and read them and see the embedded pictures. In FMP, I put buttons to click to go right to the thread or Radicon member's profile page. You can hyperlink the URLs in Excel if you just want to check that out. I pulled in the first attachment for the "thumbnail" as I'm pretty sure that's the one TFW uses since the forum redesign years ago. I also render this in FMP. My plan is to use that and the HTML post to flip through and tag them without having to keep manually going to each thread. I plan on tagging those with multiple tags or items as comma-separated in the field (i.e. DotM,RotF,Movie). The as-you-type search fields I coded for FMP do a "contains" type of search. You'd have to set that filter manually in Excel but would accomplish the same thing. So a thread that's "Animated/Classics Rodimus" would have a Toy Line tag for the custom as 'TF:Animated,CHUG' and it is returned when searching for either word. The "Theme/Keyword" field is what I planned for things like G1 for G1-styled customs, Shattered Glass or things like "2pk" or "Pepsi" to identify specific Primes and the like. I haven't nailed everything down, so I may end up expanding if that doesn't fit the bill. The Source Character/Toy Line fields will most likely contain the Theme/Keyword in addition to the name - i.e. "2pk Prime" - as that's the easiest way to be specific to the right figure. Again, this is a work in progress and is really just me messing around and learning some tools/programming but I figured I'd share. As I slowly work on the tags and add all new threads, I'll post updated files.
I downloaded these, and I'll poke around with em when I get the time. Honestly, I'm happy to see someone besides myself looking this stuff up and keeping a kind of list of sorts. I mainly keep up with galleries and tutorials myself, though. I lost track a little while back, but then we were just shy of 500 tutorials for just customs. I'm betting we're over that now, as that was a few months back and I've been busy with tutorials as of late.
That's actually one of the main reasons I started this. The galleries here are sorted nicely but I don't think anyone ever submit their stuff. So 20K threads of stuff and only like 1300 galleries. That, and I thought it would be cool to find customs based on the source figure(s) and not what series/character/toyline the custom was for. Want to know something funny? Because Google or whomever tagged TFW as a malicious site, it's been blocked by my work's network/internet security as a "restricted site". That's where I've been doing most of this, on my downtime at work when I'm bored.
Back in the day, we used to spend a ton of time and resources sorting out the galleries here, preserving what we could of the falling Transtopia, and adding galleries indicative of TFW2005. Back when this hobby was much smaller, we got to the point where the goal was to have any and all customs made galleried. 2007 + customs explosion = impossible task. The galleries are sorted by the base figure used, though. For example, if someone uses an Energon figure for a Classics custom, you'll find the gallery in the Energon folder. I really hate that your work has done that. Maybe you can explain to them that it was a false positive and have the restriction lifted?
To be honest, that's where I came from. I was over on Transtopia for a while before TFMaster passed and the site went. TFW was the next best (and now is the best), so I've been here ever since. There are a ton of fantastic customs pre-2007 but I think the quality and ingenuity of the art form has increased exponentially since then just due to the influx of talented artists. Well, being that there's an "acceptable use policy" that we agree to that says we shouldn't be using company internet for personal reasons, I kinda can't complain. =) But it looks like it's cleared up now.
