CSP Corner Blog

I’d like to welcome anyone visiting from New York OA Trader after he posted about CSP Corner on his blog.

There are big dreams for this site!  I’ve never been happy with any of the resources out there for CSPs.  Personally I want Scans!  I want Details!  I want everything listed in one resource, not one for JSPs and one for CSPs!  (I know I’m picky)

Functionality is not all here… you can tell that.  First off the design ended up not suiting us well, not enough content space so that will be fixed eventually.  The marketplace is going to be the last feature of this site activated.

What are we working on?

We are working on getting all of the Councils listed and at least one CSP from each Council listed.  While this is happening, we are trying to fix the back end (the administrative features) to make updates easy.  Eventually what we want to have is one or two “experts” from each Council who will be in charge of keeping their Council’s issues up to date.  The local individuals are the best resource on knowing what is what from their Council.  We have already started collecting realized prices from various sources, however they have not been analyzed or formatted yet.

The major promblem we are facing:

What classification system to use?  Everyone we talk to suggest we just use An Aid to Collecting Selected Council Shoulder Patches, however due to copyright restrictions, that is not possible.  So we’ve been trying to come up with a new system, which is a lot harder than it seems.  If you have any thoughts or have a good system let us know!

Please post any suggestions or thoughts!  They will be considered.

Things have been progressing slower than I had hoped.  Here are the answers to a few questions I have received…

1) I am keeping the 2010 National Jamboree Shoulder Patch (JSP) list up to date.  I decided to add the Buckeye Council Pre-Order JSPs however I am now regretting adding them before they have been produced.  I will probably leave them up for now.  My goal is to list every 2010 NJ patch as I am made aware of them.

2) I was only going to add Councils when I added at least one patch from that Council.  I decided to add all of the Councils at once which is making the data entry process a lot faster.  The main problem this is causing is a lot of “empty” Councils appearing in the directory.

3) The design will be modified.  My initial sketches turned out not being very productive for the information that is being displayed.  My goal at this time is to set up the back end and populate some more of the database.  Once I have good testing data set up I will open up a Beta area with a new design.

4)  My plan for images is to soliciet scans from Council “experts”which will allow me to add of a Council’s scans at one time.  The goal would be for these “experts” to assist with the approval of new scans and to answer questions related to discrepencies that may occur.  I need to get the programming finished before this will happen.

5) I am still looking for a good solution for a classification system to use.  If you have any ideas for an all inclusive classification system for CSPs feel free to drop me a note.

6) I started collecting sales data on 9.1.08.  This will be analyzed and used for the price guide.

I would like to say progress will be noticable starting now, however that is probably not going to be the case.  Other things in life have been slowing me down a bit.

I know things have been slow around here, unfortunately my time has become super limited with my new job. I’m planning on setting a side a small chunk of time each day to work on the to do list. Hopefully it will start to show.

Anyways, I wanted to wish everyone who celebrates it a Happy Easter. I went searching for an “Easter” themed CSP, and at first I thought I was going to have to settle for the Killer Rabbit Patrol Patch. Yes, this was the first patch I thought of when I thought “Easter.” The second patch I thought of was actually the 2006 NOAC Set issued by Ku-Ni-Eh Lodge #145, if you haven’t seen it just picture pedro stomping on the energizer bunny. I know these aren’t CSPs, so I kept looking…

I was just about to give up when I ran across this CSP while browsing ebay:

According to the auction it’s the SA21 from Buckeye Council. Right now its at $15.51. I’m declaring it the most Easter themed CSP. Do you know of any CSP that screams Easter more than the above nice fluffy bunny?

I was able to make some progress with the database and code today. The main page now features the latest blog posts and displays a random patch from the database. I have to get better scans up for Glacier’s Edge Council. There are still some problems in displaying the Council name and other weird quirks that I have to work out. My programming skills are coming coming back slowly but surely as I work on this stuff.

Classification System
I still need to come up with a solution for what I am going to use for the issue numbers. The majority of folks that I have talked to want me to use the “industry standard.” I have two concerns about using the classification scheme that is used in “An Aid to Collecting Selected Council Shoulder Patches, with Valuation Guide.” The first being, possible copyright issues. While I am not going to use the guide to populate my database, I’m sure by using the same classification system I am opening the doors to potential legal issues. The second being, I have never liked the fact that they don’t include all shoulder patches (ie. JSP, RWS, etc.)

At the same time I understand having two classification systems will cause confusion. I also can’t get a group to agree on a potential scheme. Everytime I think I have something that would work, I find a show stopping problem or someone else finds a problem. Its a lot harder than I would have imagined.

Backend (Database Technical Stuff)
Once I get the front end somewhat functionable I have to target the back end to make adding issues to the database easier. Right now I enter every piece of data by hand to the database, which isn’t very friendly. I also have to finalize the structure of the membership system to allow for the “council experts” to be able to edit and approve submissions. I think this is the real key to making this project feasible and scalable.

Price Guide
I’ve started to look at possible solutions to collecting price information. I’ve looked at the program that I believe OAImages.com uses, but I didn’t find it very user friendly. I want to discuss this with John, if he is willing, but with his technical issues I decided I would wait a little bit. I also need to decide how I wish to handle user submitted price data, I want to include private sales but at the same time I don’t want them artificially inflating the “values”.

Marketplace
I’ve done nothing with the market place. This is a feature that I will probably remove until I build up a user base and have the database populated.

I think I would have got more accomplished today, but my power went out. Not too fun when its 6 degrees outside…

The goal of CSP Corner is to become THE CSP RESOURCE on the internet. While other sites have tried to fill the void the founders of CSP Corner have not been happy with the results. We wanted a resource that provided the visitor the level or information that John Pannell provides on his site, The Internet Guide to OA Insignia.

Features we are exploring:

• CSP Image Directory, featuring every issue from every council.
• Detailed information about each issue including design information and issue information.
• A Price Guide pulling data from online sales, user submitted information, and dealer partnerships.
• A Marketplace where users can post classified ads to help you with your patch collection.
• Council “Experts” to make sure new issues don’t get missed.

It won’t be a fast process and we will be looking for help along the way. If you think you have something to provide to the project please keep checking back or let us know.