gundam modeling database | stash manager

Frequently asked questions

Gundammates functionality

What do you provide?

I'm not into social networking/forums, can I still use this site?

Absolutely, if you use the social networking part is completely up to you. You can use the search engine, stash management and product database without ever posting a comment.

How much does it cost?

Using Scalemates and all our rich features are 100% free

Searching

What are my options when searching?

A short video tutorial Youtube Video explains how it works.
 

You have following options when typing a search string in the search field:

What sections can be searched?

Selecting from the dropdown list in front of the searchbox allows changing the scope to:
Large searchbox with dropdown located to the left hand side.

How can I filter results?

When you search we will generate smart filters on the right hand side of the results. This allows you to narrow down your results.

Usage

What are the little icons next to topics?

These icons indicate the usage of a particular topic. Topics can have multiple usages. (eg. A helicopter could be used by Military and Police. A car for racing and civilian use.
Civil
Civilian
Racing
Racing
Law enforcement
Police
Fire and emergency services
Emergency Services
Military
Military

Profile

What are the little icons next to a user their profile?

Activity indicators
Account verified + activity in the last 6 months
Account verified + no activity in the last 6 months
RIP
This mate unfortunately passed away
Account not yet verified + activity in the last 6 months
Account not yet verified + no activity in the last 6 months
Contributor levels
Visitor
Contributor
Trusted Contributor
Star Contributor
Administrator

Stash management

What is a "stash"

Your "stash" is your collection of models, scalemates allows you to keep track of your stash and have a nice overview of your collection.

How do I add items to my stash?

A short video tutorial Youtube Video explains how it works.
 


1. Click Green button | 2. Click Add to ..

How do I add items to my wishlist?

What do I do if a product is missing?

If a product is missing you can add a new product yourself. You can find the "Add new product" link under "actions" on the right hand side. Alternatively you can visit the Contributor page.

Can I export my stash you Excel/PDF?

Yes, at the bottom of your stash you can see multiple export options

Multiple export options are available for offline use

Can I export my wishlist you Excel/PDF?

Yes, at the bottom of your wishlist you can see multiple export options

Can I export my tradelist you Excel/PDF?

Yes, at the bottom of your tradelist you can see multiple export options

What products are shown under related products?

The related products section shows all products which are in the same scale and attached to the same topic.

How to add a related product to a kit?

Which related products are shown is done automatically by the system, it checks for all products in the same scale and having the same topic. In case a product is missing, you add a new product. If this new product is in the same scale and from the same topic it will be shown automatically in the related products.

Project management

What is a "project"

allows you to keep track of your scale modeling projects. A project consists of 1 or more kits, aftermarket sets and decals. Projects have a status: it can be on your workbench, already completed, still in an idea or even on hold. During the construction fase you can add photoalbums. When finished you can link your published gallery articles to the project.

How to create a project?

You can only create a project from a kit which is already on your stash/wishlist/completed. When this is the case, you click the green arrow (1a). Next you click the "Stash" submenu (1b). Now you see a list of 1 (or more kits)

Click the 2 arrows for more options, available next to an item (Step 2)

Here you have the option to add it to a project (Step 3)...

Social networking

Newsfeed

What is the difference between a message posted with visibility: All/Mates only/Private

Can the visibility be changed after posting?

Yes, visibility can be changed after posting by clicking on "Change Privacy". Caution: it is only possible within the first 5mins after your post. You can only decrease visibility.

Can I edit the text of my wallposts?

Yes, you can edit the text of your post by clicking on the "pencil" icon in front of your text. This can be done up to 15mins after your post.

Can I edit the text of my comments?

Yes, you can edit the text of your comments by clicking on the "pencil" icon in front of your text. This can be done up to 15mins after your post.

What are the different filters in the newsfeed for?

All filters take into account the privacy settings
The filters can be divided in "what type" of posts you see combined with "which topic". Topics filter
Filters are your friend to cope with the huge amount of data available on this website.

How do I keep up with the huge amount of info?

Using the filters is important to keep track of what is happening. The "Your news" filter shows ALL posts from YOUR community and what appears there is controlled by yourself. For this it is important that you become mates with the persons you know and/or follow persons. This is how YOU control which info is visible in "Your news".

How can I keep informed about what is new on ?

For this you can visit the wall of user , it contains news, feedback related to scalemates.com If you are really interested you can follow user , this will make the posts visible on the newsfeed (Your news).

How do I add emojis?

Emojis can be inserted using the keyboard on your device, we alternatively support a small subset by typing these shortcuts:

👍 (y)
👎 (n)
😎 8)
😳 :#
🤔 :s
😮 :o
😠 :O
😉 ;)
🙁 :(
😭 ;(
😄 :D
😛 :p
🙂 :)
👀 ::eyes::
❤️️ ::heart::

How do I add a link to another website

Easy, just copy past the URL into your post/comment. The URL will become a clickable link automatically after posting.

How do I post video's from Youtube or Vimeo?

Easy, just copy past the URL into your post/comment. The video will display automatically after posting.

Do you support HTML tags?

NO, HTML is not supported. URL's to websites, products, images, videos, smilies... are automatically detected and will be clickable

Do you support BB tags?

NO, BB tags are not supported. URL's to websites, products, images, videos, smilies... are automatically detected and will be clickable

Connections - Mates & Following

Can you see more when you follow a person/company?

No, following a person does not give you any additional permissions. You thus see the same as an anonymous or registered user.

Can I stop following a person/company

Yes, at any time you can stop following a person/company.

Is it offensive to stop following a person/company

No not at all. You could temporarily follow a person because he is working on your favourite model. When he is finished you can perfectly stop following him.

I accidentally stopped following a person/company, can I undo this?

Yes you can by following him again. You can follow/unfollow a person as many times as you want.

What happens when I follow someone?

Immediately after following someone his "public" messages become visible in your personalised newsfeed. An automated public message is posted on your wall. (this can be deleted if desired)

What happens when I Unfollow someone?

Immediately after unfollowing someone his "public" messages will no longer be visible in your personalised newsfeed. No message is posted on your/his wall.

What happens when I request to become a mate

When you request to become a mate a private message is sent to that person. He will be able to accept or reject.

Until he accepts or in case of rejection nothing changes

As soon as he accepts you will see all his messages marked as "public" and "mates only". Your personalised news feed will now also contain all his messages marked as "public" and "mates only". You will be able to post messages on his wall An automated public message is posted on his wall to tell that you are now mates.

What happens when I remove someone from my mates list?

Immediately after removing someone from your mates list you will no longer be mates and all the extra permissions you/he had are gone. No message is posted on your/his wall.

Does it make sense to follow someone who is also a mate?

No, when someone is your mate you automatically follow him.

What is the difference between following and mates.

Becoming each others mate is a mutual connection. When you are each others mates you can see messages. Following someone does not require agreement from the followed person. This is fine because following someone does not give you any additional rights but merely shows the public messages in your newsfeed.

Privacy

Do we have a privacy policy?

Yes, absolutely! At scalemates.com, the privacy of our visitors is of extreme importance to us. Our privacy policy page outlines the types of personal information is received and collected by scalemates.com and how it is used.

Can my account be deleted?

Yes, it can! On your profile preferences you can start the Account removal wizard. Your account will be erased completely (note, no roll back possible as all data is deleted and made anonymous.

Contributing

Can I become a contributor?

Yes please! Join our enthousiastic team of contributors and help improving our reference database by adding/correcting/completing the data. If a product is missing, just add it. If you see wrong data, just correct it...Try it, it is easy!

How do I become a contributor?

As soon as you are registered you can start contributing. You will have access to a dedicated page.

What can a contributor do?

Add missing products, add brands, correct timelines, complete product data, add reviews and many more

Will you validate my actions?

Changes are made directly to the system. We will however verify your changes and provide feedback if necessary.

Search engine (inner workings)

For users

Why is my favourite website not included in the search engine?

This site recently started and more websites will be added to the search engine.

Main reason:

Other reasons can be:

Why are not all pages of a website included in the search engine?

Not all pages of a website will be added to the search engine. We limit ourselves to gallery articles of a completed model.

Following type of pages are likely to be removed from the search results because of the type of the content

Does this mean they are not good? Absolutely not, they can be well written content and scale modeling related. They just don't fit into our search engine which is "scale model" related (note: scale model vs. scale modeling)

Example: scale-rotors.com
All articles in the official gallery are indexed, all other articles in the forum or other sections of the site are ignored (which does not mean they are not good).

I have plenty of my models on Photobucket, Picasa, ...other photo galleries. How can I add them into the search engine.

We currently do not intend to add Photobucket, Picasa,... and similar websites to our search engine. Please make a nice article and send it to one of the online magazines.

For webmasters

What must I do once my website is indexed?

Nothing! When your website is indexed and is meeting the requirements for automated indexing you do not need to do anything. Our crawler will pick up new articles automatically.

What must I when I want to index my website?

Get in touch with us, we will have a look at your site.

Some articles can not be found in the search engine while they are from a known site and from the

There could have been a technical issue were the indexing failed or no valuable data (title, scale, company, author, thumbnail) could be extracted automatically.

Can the contents of an article be responsible for exclusion of that particular article?

Yes, follow articles are likely to be removed from the search results because of the quality of the visible content

If an article is missing, does it mean it is not good?

No, not at all. Some articles from quality websites could be missing because of technical problems during indexing

Is every website allowed?

No, not every website is considered as a quality website which can be added to our search results. Following factors are considered as blocking.

This is not an exhaustive list, if a website is blocked/unblocked remains the decission of the webmaster. We will recheck the quality guidelines on a regular basis.

Are there technical requirements that need to be met before being added to the search engine?

Yes, we need to be able to extract the "Title", "Scale", "Builder" and "company" in an automated way.

This information must thus be present and identifiable on the page (Visible or within the meta tags: Title and or description tag

As this is done in an automated way the following can cause us problems extracting this in an automated way.

What is the effect when not all technical requirements are met?

Websites with too many articles not meeting the technical requirements can and will not be indexed automatically.

However they could still be indexed manually by any registered member. Websites with too many articles not meeting the blocking requirements can be refused to be indexed manually as well.

Note: We are working on a system where you can add URL's of specific dedicated articles and manually provide info like title/scale/company/...

Will our search engine automatically index new content from a website?

Yes, if a website meets the requirements for automated indexing our search engine will add new articles automatically.

More questions

If you require any more information or have any questions, please feel free to contact us.