Why are items on DC with no descripton?

[harpman]

I check the DC every day. I don't understand why there are assets posted to the DC with no description. Entire routes posted, no idea if they're US, AU, DE, BR, CH, JA? Folks, how tough would it be to include a description on where the route is, what time period it covers, etc.?

bill

 

[Euphod]

Some people are lazy, or young, or have short attention sp.....hey, is that a squirrel?

 

[harpman]

Some people are lazy, or young, or have short attention sp.....hey, is that a squirrel?

I guess the problem comes down to a question of downloading the route. If one does, and it turns out the route isn't your cup o' tea, then one has pulled down a lot of useless assets and material for which there's no use if you delete the route. Or am I wrong in assuming that if you delete a route, all the assets remain on your hard disk??

 

[clam1952]

I check the DC every day. I don't understand why there are assets posted to the DC with no description. Entire routes posted, no idea if they're US, AU, DE, BR, CH, JA? Folks, how tough would it be to include a description on where the route is, what time period it covers, etc.?

bill

Ongoing problem, as you say it's not exactly hard to add a description, or for that matter a screenshot, I now assume that those without descriptions or screenshots are probably rubbish anyway and ignore them, half of them are probably gadget users using the DLS as a file store.

Probably a waste of time but on the off chance that any of these "Guess what it is" route creators actually read this forum.
If you want people to use your routes you need to give a clue what it is otherwise it will probably get ignored, if you don't then why are you uploading it in the first place and wasting everyone's time? It may be a masterpiece but its not going to get appreciated or downloaded if we don't know what it is.

Yes the dependencies remain unless you delete them as well.

 

[JohnnyC1]

I guess the problem comes down to a question of downloading the route. If one does, and it turns out the route isn't your cup o' tea, then one has pulled down a lot of useless assets and material for which there's no use if you delete the route. Or am I wrong in assuming that if you delete a route, all the assets remain on your hard disk??

Nope, the assets stay on the HD.

John

 

[harpman]

Yep, my bad. I did d/l the route called GCR on the DLC this morning. No description but I could soon tell it was a British route, which is okay but not my primary interest here in the states. Once it had downloaded a ton of assets I went to run the route. Lots of unpainted terrain, dashed lines where trackage should be, etc. It's a shame because what does show up is very well done, and the scenery looks very nice. So, I deleted the route and now have a bunch of new assets to sift through on the hard drive. Route authors: please, please include a description of your route!

 

[cascaderailroad]

Usually an asset that has no picture at all, or that have 128 different assets all with the same generic non-discript picture ... they are pure junk, and you don't want them anyway (there are excepions to this though).

 

[mity22]

I agree a brief description takes no time to add. Many assets on there lack this.

 

[sparky15]

Download just the route, track and ground textures. If it looks worthwhile, then download the rest. You can check it over in Surveyor before downloading the rest. A name and description really doesn't mean much. I've seen some great routes that just weren't in my interest range. I always just load the basics in Surveyor before taking the time to download it all.
Individual assets are just the luck of the draw, I guess.*

 

[harpman]

Download just the route, track and ground textures. If it looks worthwhile, then download the rest. You can check it over in Surveyor before downloading the rest. A name and description really doesn't mean much. I've seen some great routes that just weren't in my interest range. I always just load the basics in Surveyor before taking the time to download it all.
Individual assets are just the luck of the draw, I guess.*

I hadn't thought of this method, but it makes a lot of sense. It'll save me a lot of hard drive space! Thanks to everyone who responded to my initial post. Great forum and great people.

bill

 

[sparky15]

Being on dial-up internet, I had to learn that through necessity.

Dave....

 

[stovepipe]

Yep, my bad. I did d/l the route called GCR on the DLC this morning. No description but I could soon tell it was a British route, which is okay but not my primary interest here in the states. Once it had downloaded a ton of assets I went to run the route. Lots of unpainted terrain, dashed lines where trackage should be, etc. It's a shame because what does show up is very well done, and the scenery looks very nice. So, I deleted the route and now have a bunch of new assets to sift through on the hard drive. Route authors: please, please include a description of your route!

Give this guy a break - it's his first ever upload to the DLS, of a route he's been working on for years. I gave him some advice on uploading, which included adding a description, but I'm not sure he knows how to do this yet.

 

[VinnyBarb]

Its not only this above uploader with no description in his route, as said, there are MANY items on the DLS without a picture to show what they are nor any description whatsoever. What are these people thinking, some of these uploads don't even give a clue in their name, what it is they uploaded? Some of the names of such uploads are often meaningless, have no connection with the content or are in a foreign language one can not understand or does not know which language this is.

Google translator, which is free to access in any browser, would do a good job for such CCs to at least give an English meaning to the asset name. A shame really, there should be a requirement/prerequisit from AURAN/N3V to have a description and screenshot picture included when uploading content and rejecting any content for approval which do not meet these conditions.

My 2 cents worth of observations.

VinnyBarb

 

[Scottbe8]

A shame really, there should be a requirement/prerequisit from AURAN/N3V to have a description and screenshot picture included when uploading content and rejecting any content for approval which do not meet these conditions.

They do now. Currently, assets without a thumbnails container are rejected by N3V, and assets created in TS12 Content Manager register faulty without one.

 

[JohnnyC1]

Yeah, but some folks will add the container with no picture.

John

 

[harpman]

Give this guy a break - it's his first ever upload to the DLS, of a route he's been working on for years. I gave him some advice on uploading, which included adding a description, but I'm not sure he knows how to do this yet.

I wasn't trying to be harsh, and there's no way I know of to have any idea of whether the upload to the DLC is a persons 1st, or 50th. Either way, it would benefit everyone if anything posted to the DLC has some type of description. How many sessions do you see listed, but they contain NO CLUE as to what route the session fits with? It happens often. As to this person's route, I was very fair about what I saw in the provided session, it looks like the scenery is very nicely done, but there are obvious areas where the terrain is not painted, and areas where there are white dashed lines where track should be placed. No track. To be honest, I liked what I saw enough that when a revised version shows up (with a description) I'll download it again. It the meantime I cannot use it without track gaps being fixed.

 

[JCitron]

I wasn't trying to be harsh, and there's no way I know of to have any idea of whether the upload to the DLC is a persons 1st, or 50th. Either way, it would benefit everyone if anything posted to the DLC has some type of description. How many sessions do you see listed, but they contain NO CLUE as to what route the session fits with? It happens often. As to this person's route, I was very fair about what I saw in the provided session, it looks like the scenery is very nicely done, but there are obvious areas where the terrain is not painted, and areas where there are white dashed lines where track should be placed. No track. To be honest, I liked what I saw enough that when a revised version shows up (with a description) I'll download it again. It the meantime I cannot use it without track gaps being fixed.

I agree with you on the missing descriptions and worse a non-descriptive name with no description.

Regarding the dashed lines instead of track, this is due to the asset not being installed on your system. I have had this issue myself when installing my own route into TS2010 from TS12. I did this to perform some baseboard surgery which cannot be done right now in TS12. When I brought the route into TS2010, the track was white-dashed lines. This is the place-holder for missing track in a route.

To find out what track is missing, look at the config.txt file for the route. All of the assets are listed in there. You can also see the assets in Content Manager by listing the dependencies. If you see which one does not have the description and only the KUID number, that is something you need to install. You can then do a DLS search and hopefully find the track you need for the route.

John

 

[Mick_Berg]

Up to now I have been using a generic thumbnail which just says "Mick Berg's Assets for the LNER". But since many well-respected people think there should be a dedicated picture, I'll add them. It's easy enough to do with good ol' Asset-X.
Mick Berg.

 

[stovepipe]

I wasn't trying to be harsh, and there's no way I know of to have any idea of whether the upload to the DLC is a persons 1st, or 50th. Either way, it would benefit everyone if anything posted to the DLC has some type of description. How many sessions do you see listed, but they contain NO CLUE as to what route the session fits with? It happens often. As to this person's route, I was very fair about what I saw in the provided session, it looks like the scenery is very nicely done, but there are obvious areas where the terrain is not painted, and areas where there are white dashed lines where track should be placed. No track. To be honest, I liked what I saw enough that when a revised version shows up (with a description) I'll download it again. It the meantime I cannot use it without track gaps being fixed.

No I agree with your general point, I just wanted to point out in this case it wasn't a deliberate action. I'm sure he'll get the hang of it next time.

 

[harpman]

I agree with you on the missing descriptions and worse a non-descriptive name with no description.

Regarding the dashed lines instead of track, this is due to the asset not being installed on your system. I have had this issue myself when installing my own route into TS2010 from TS12. I did this to perform some baseboard surgery which cannot be done right now in TS12. When I brought the route into TS2010, the track was white-dashed lines. This is the place-holder for missing track in a route.

To find out what track is missing, look at the config.txt file for the route. All of the assets are listed in there. You can also see the assets in Content Manager by listing the dependencies. If you see which one does not have the description and only the KUID number, that is something you need to install. You can then do a DLS search and hopefully find the track you need for the route.

John

Thanks John, that helped. CM3.6 said there were a total of 45 missing dependencies, none of which were said to be on the DLS but I did manage to find that there were some missing dependencies WITHIN a few of the yellowed out assets that were on the DLS. This got the list down to 25 still missing that I haven't resolved yet. I may just put this route on the back burner until I've more time to try to get it working. It is a very scenic route, and looks to have a lot of things to do, so it will remain on my wish list to have. Perhaps an update will be forthcoming.

bill