Hi Sue,
thank you very much for taking the time to compile such a detailed and
well formed response!
I do not know how much time you have spent within StarTiger so far and
its development over the years. This is not the same website anymore
that it was four years ago when we "went pay", and we have done
continous steps to address the issues you have raised in your post.
If this is ok with you, i would like to go through your post step by
step and address each part you mentioned.
Doing your own research is definitely the way to go! But StarTiger is
not something that is "aside" from research. It can be and should be
an integral part of your research.
Start your search at StarTiger. If you do not like the information you
get for a certain celebrity, continue your research beyond StarTiger.
If you come across a better address, you can submit it to StarTiger
(you can keep it private at first, if you want that - StarTiger allows
you to submit addresses as private and make them public later on). If
you don't, submit an address request.
In any case, i suggest referencing any address you find somewhere else
with our records. We also keep records of outdated addresses (of
course marked as such!) for this reason - so that if you find an
(outdated) address somewhere else, you can compare it and avoid it if
it is indeed outdated.
As for submitting information, there are many benefits for doing so.
It's not just simply for reporting your response to other collectors.
StarTiger is much more than that!
First of all, you get complete collection management when you submit
information. Everything you add is stored in your own personal
StarTiger area ("MyStars"), where you can access it, update it, change
it, search it and sort it by almost any criteria you want. You can
also connect the information, e.g. you can add scanned autographs to
your test results.
This alone can be a tremendous time saver if you use it.
Second, we also provide you with your own personal website,
"MyCollection". With just a few clicks you get your very own,
customizable website where you can present your collection - including
to non-members! And the great part is: Everytime you submit something
to StarTiger - be it scans, test results or similar, your personal
website will be automatically updated. This, again, can be a
tremendous time saver. MyCollection also comes with your own personal
blog, and it will stay online even if you are no longer a member.
You mention that you did not have time to annotate addresses; i
believe this is mainly the case because you keep a seperate collection
list, and would have to manually transfer this information to
StarTiger, one by one.
This would be completely different if you would make full use of all
StarTiger has to offer. For example, if you join for a year, the cost
per month will become almost neglibile compared to other costs in this
hobby. A year is less than 10 cents a day. Imagine how much time you
would save in terms of collection management alone.
Submitting information to StarTiger is easy, as in most cases the
address is already there. Simply click on "Mark as Pending" when you
send a letter, and on "Add Test Result" when you receive a response.
The current date is filled in by default, making it even faster for
you to submit the details. When using the "Pending" feature
beforehand, all the information you entered before are automatically
filled in when you submit a test result later on. And again: By doing
this you will have the benefits of a searchable, sortable,
automatically updated collection management and your own personal
collection website.
Additionally, if you submit information for a celebrity, a "notice
box" with this information will be shown to you when you visit the
celebrity listing. This way, when not sure if you already wrote a
celebrity and at what address, you simply have to enter the name in
the search box and view the listing to get all the information.
Third, and this is a rather new feature, you can create lists of
celebrities you collect. E.g. if you collect a certain sports team or
movie cast, you can create a list of all the persons you want to
collect.
And the good thing: The list will automatically show YOUR own
personal, current status for each of the celebrities, based on your
submissions. For example, if you sent out to 10 celebrities on your
Harry Potter list and received back 8 responses, the list will
automatically show "Success" for the 8 responses and "Pending" for the
2 remaining ones. This allows you to keep an excellent overview over
certain areas you collect.
Plus: To save you time, lists can be shared with other members, so
e.g. you can copy a list from another member as a starting point.
(there already exist several "Harry Potter" lists that you could use).
There are more benefits to submitting information, but i will stop
here for now because the text would simply get too long :)
Post by Sue H1) putting untested addresses on there without intentions of ever
doing anything after
Adding untested addresses is not necessarily a bad thing, if they are
valid. Of course this also depends on the definition of "untested" in
this case.
For example, we recently updated listings for almost 2000 agencies,
teams, records labels etc, resulting in tens of thousands of new
addresses (and tens of thousands of removed addresses as well). And we
will continue to do these frequent updates on a much larger scale than
we ever did before.
Of course these new addresses do not feature a "test result" yet, as
no one has written to them yet. But that does not mean they are
completely "untested", as they are updated regularly - they just have
not been "tested" yet for this particular celebrity in the sense that
no one has written to the celebrity.
Given that we now feature 178,000+ celebrities, it is only natural
that not every celebrity is written to all the time. But again, we do
our best to update all address records, and in the past six months we
have made more changes, updates and additions than ever before. And we
will continue to do so! :)
Post by Sue H2) people not really reporting what they are trying. (for the record,
I probably added 30 Pendings the other day and 10 RTS's overall). But
I was definitely NOT interested in giving you new addresses I found
through hours of research that I just tried. I want my success first
and that of Paul's and Friends groups first. You know, where everyone
is AWESOME and not talking about one another.
StarTiger allows you to submit an address with a "private" option set.
This way no other member - except you - will be able to see or access
the address. Once you receive a response, you can set the address to
public with a simple mouse click.
Post by Sue H3) there's a LOT and I mean a LOT of old info. I don't know how you
could police this, so I can't fault the site. I see where there's a
good job with plays and removing them when they expire (or other
venues) but there are many, many addresses where the person left the
agency YEARS ago.
Again, we are currently actively updating many, many address listings.
New technologies which we developed especially for StarTiger now allow
us to do this on a much larger scale than ever before, and make very
active use of this.
Should you notice outdated information of ANY kind, please report them
to us and we will take care of it ASAP.
To report or update an address:
- Select "Edit/Update" from the listing menu
- Select "Correct an Address"
Post by Sue HRecommendations. I don't know how much moneyStar Tigermakes. But
you have to SPEND money to make money. When you have volunteers,
that's well and good. But a paid position might be in order.
Literally pay someone a salary to do a few things to improve your site
and the potential for a money making site would be phenomenal. You
could have someone out there researching plays. Or someone going
through and calling agencies for current client lists (and then cross
referencing those lists to the 'extra' people being reported at that
same agency (so you can delete them). You need to have people
researching addresses... verifying. Getting rid of useless info.
Yes, we are already updating agency/team/label listings and will
continue to do so on a large scale.
For example, in the first 5 months of 2008 alone, more than 210,000
changes have been made to the StarTiger database.
Out of these were:
New Addresses: approx. 74,200
Removed Addresses: approx. 31,700
Of course we will also continue including more agencies and enhancing
our technologies to allow for even better, more acurate address
listings.
And, of course, more members would allow us to hire some more staff
for even more updates ;)
Post by Sue HYou need to have people shooting you ideas like holding a contest or other
"incentives" to get people to take a couple hours of their time and
post info there (for example, a free month if you take your list and
go through it and post at least 50 pieces of new information (whether
it be RTS's, Pending, or addresses they forgot to report before, or
scanning images). If you can track how many things people have
submitted (don't know what your capability is), then you could do
really well. Or start with 100 items (making it harder for first
level) and then a second free month for those posting an additional 75
and a third month for those doing 50 (to make it more to your benefit,
you can make it within a time limit; say a week, forcing people not to
do it here and there, but to actually sit down and do it immediately).
We already to something like this. It's called the "Free Membership
Giveaway". In short, we give away free memberships to contributing
members in a monthly drawing. By submitting information you collect
points - and the more points you have, the higher your chance of
winning is.
Post by Sue HNow, because I am on a free trial and even if I actually pay for
another month, I cannot simply report my successes anymore.... because
most of those will take a lot longer before they come in. I am
guessing a lot of people do this? So you need to make them stay. How
I am not sure. I would probably be more apt to stay if more info was
reported and I knew you did not allow people to talk about anyone.
Tell them stick to the subject of collecting and no more. No name
calling, no flaming. See, you can do what you want... you can boot
people. Word on the street is the ones who cause problems are
probably high contributors so you don't want to say anything. You
really need to find a way to combat that.
This (user attacks) may have been true for a limited period in the
StarTiger history, but we have since taken measures to ensure that
this is not the case. Since this text is already running very long; if
you are interested in further information i would suggest taking a
look at our set of "basic forum rules" as well as the forum thread
about the current warning/ban concept that went into effect at the
beginning of this year (both are available in the "StarTiger Related"
section of the forum.
Post by Sue HThe only HUGE problems I have with your site are personal ones. 1)
it's a closed off community that talks about other groups I hear
without benefit of those others hearing stuff about them. That should
be disallowed. NO TALKING ABOUT OTHERS if the others are not there to
defend themselves.
I am not sure what you mean by this. Could you please clarify?
If this is related to how user attacks within the forum are handled, i
suggest taking a look at our current forum rules and warning/ban
concept.
2) You really should NOT have to pay for address
Post by Sue Hinformation that is free, but I've been lightening up on this a bit
after I see you do offer "other information" that is of some limited
use.
It all depends on how updated you want the addresses to be. As
mentioned earlier, we actively update addresses on a very large scale,
and will continue to sort out addresses that are no longer valid. In
addition, StarTiger provides you with a large number of features that
you can find nowhere else and that can greatly enhance the way you
collect and manage your autographs - the ones mentioned in this post
are only some of them.
We also continouly and actively develop StarTiger, adding new
features, improving existing ones and just simply making collecting
easier. There is also a huge part of StarTiger that you do not see as
a member - The managing part, which allows us to do such a large
number of updates every day.
Keeping StarTiger up-to-date and the continous development of the
platform is a full-time service that simply cannot be provided for
free.
Please also keep in mind that StarTiger is completely advertisment
free, you will not be bugged with an flashing ads, annoying pop-ups
and the like.
When signing up for a full year, StarTiger costs less than 10 cents a
day - compare this with all the information, features and advantages
you get, and the time you can save. Just the personal website alone is
something other companies would charge you more for. Plus - especially
if you regularly send out requests - you will save this amount of
money just by avoiding return to senders by cross-referencing your
previous/other sources with StarTiger.
Post by Sue HYou need site statistics (like Ebay where you can track users etc and
who's doing what). You need a complaint system where a person is
flagged for being warned and then if a repeated offender of something,
is booted. you need to take that info and develop it. Star Tigeris
HUGE. It's on the verge of being something mega (and profit making)
but there is only staleness as the design and rest of it isn't
growing. Though I do appreciate INFO growing more than the looks;
ease of use etc. Don't get caught up in the Ebay trap where you have
to pay for too many upgrades that are not needed and then forced to
pass that to the customer. Subtle, easy changes to keep people
interested but stick with INFORMATION as that's what drove people
there in the first place and will always be why they are there. (as I
am writing this, I feel like I should start my own company.... LOL).
We already do this as well ;)
To access a members submission history, click on the name of the
member (e.g. beside an address he submitted). A pop-up menu will open
with several options which allow you to contacting the member, visit
his personal website or viewing his profile. Select the profile to
view scans and test results the member has submitted, or to view his
trade list.
We also have a warning/ban system in place which we use - you can find
more information about this in the corresponding thread in our
"StarTiger Related" section.
Plus, for trades, we provide a rating system similar to eBay where you
can give members positive (or negative) ratings for trades you made
with them.
Post by Sue HI hope something here helps. Just my thoughts from my recent perusing
(I have a few more films to go through and try too but not sure I will
be around to report the successes).
There are a few good things for a good researcher onStar Tiger.
People who've uploaded photos help by identification. So if you have
two people with the same name, you can look at what people have and
figure out which address is more the probability.
Yes, this is definitely true :) They can also help to some degree in
verifying the authenticity of autographs you receive back. Especially
scans of in-person autographs are a great help in this regard.
This has been a long post and again i want to thank you for taking the
time to compile and write your response, and for taking the time to
read through mine.
I hope i have answered all points to your satisfaction, and that my
answers will help you to make full use of the resources StarTiger can
offer you.
Thanks again,
Markus Geilfuss
http://www.startiger.com
StarTiger - The Autograph Community