As a big user of the site since early 2013, more and more inconsistencies with how the database is managed had began to occur to me. The most glaring being the following.
Say a user decided to add a game to his collection. However, this game consisted of both the game itself, and a separate soundtrack. How would one add it?
So far the approved way of doing this is to add them separately, one for the game and the other for the soundtrack. Users optionally later choosing to add notes signifying their relationship or using the description field and entering in duplicate descriptions of the item.
While this works, establishing the relationship between items here is cumbersome and efficient. A more efficient way to handle this would be as follows:
Allow users to create a parent item, that can contain multiple items. For example, Sword Game Limited Edition may come with Sword Game and Sword Game OST. So to create this, users can create the parent Sword Game Limited Edition and then link the two items (that being the game and soundtrack) to the parent, along with pictures of the bundled box attached to each item.
Alternatively if Sword Game Limited Edition was contained all in one case, users could make Sword Game the parent under the name Sword Game Limited Edition and then add the Sword Game OST to it.
This can work with consoles to, allowing the controllers to be included with consoles and even bundles that include games.
Once added, these parent items add the subitems to their respected categories, but when either item is highlighted, it could indicate that it is connected to a parent item.
Sub-items will still be available to add independently as they are now, but this method will help keep track of what bundles came with what certain items.
I know implementing this would be tough, and there's literally a backlog of updates that need to be done. But I feel like this may be one of the final steps to make this a more effective database.
This may have to be restricted to physical games only as digital games selling bundles is hard to keep track of.
Another inconsistency I notice is how the options for Cart/Disk, Case/Box, Manual, Other are applied to literally every item. These should be modified per item category, and the item creation should provide the option to delete or add checkboxes if necessary. Say if a game didn't come with a manual.
The same applies to the photos required for each item. A way to maximize pictures would be good to, as I remember reading that copies of the pictures are saved somewhere in their original size.
The last thing bugging me is that the items counter for our account counts everything from games to consoles. Perhaps another counter for just games only would make things a bit more clearer? I feel this isn't as urgent as the other two.
Thanks for reading. I haven't had to maintain a large scale database before so there may be some still be some inconsistencies with my ideas. Feel free to share your thoughts.
