RE: New PrusaPrinters - The best 3D model database and community!
Assuming Prusa staff is still monitoring this thread, as there's no other place I know of to post ideas for further improvements:
I would love to see some indication of "Updates" to models. There are a few models posted on Prusaprinters that I print repeatedly, and it would be great to have some way of seeing if there are newer (and hopefully improved) versions available. Could be a visual flag on the thumbnail, for example, plus the "date of last change" on the details page. One way to implement it is to add a flag to the edit screen that an author can select to indicate the edit is not just trivial stuff such as typo corrections.
This is a fine idea, perhaps a button to 'follow' a specific print so you can be notified of updates or even remixes.
RE: New PrusaPrinters - The best 3D model database and community!
Assuming Prusa staff is still monitoring this thread, as there's no other place I know of to post ideas for further improvements:
I would love to see some indication of "Updates" to models. There are a few models posted on Prusaprinters that I print repeatedly, and it would be great to have some way of seeing if there are newer (and hopefully improved) versions available. Could be a visual flag on the thumbnail, for example, plus the "date of last change" on the details page. One way to implement it is to add a flag to the edit screen that an author can select to indicate the edit is not just trivial stuff such as typo corrections.
Agree.
I often updates my models and adds new versions and changes - I really miss a standard way of listing changes and updates that has been done and when they have been done.
I think it is better to keep versions together in one posting than to make a new upload just to indicate a new version or a design update.
Like @fuchsr says, we are missing a way to find updates (search) or just list models that has been updated.
Have a look at my models on Printables.com 😉
RE: New PrusaPrinters - The best 3D model database and community!
I concur - this would be a very useful addition. I try to add a note to old models when I make an improvement, but that gets tedious.
RE: New PrusaPrinters - The best 3D model database and community!
Can a 'wide display option' be added to prusaprinter's site so folks can take advantage of their wide displays?
MK3s / My IKEA Lack enclosure
RE: New PrusaPrinters - The best 3D model database and community!
Really there is a possibility to upload .gcode without .3mf/.stl ?
This should be disabled and users should be encouraged to upload primarily 3mf files (as the may contain printer settings if needed by beginners) or stl files.
.gcode is useless, unless you use exact same printer and same material as author of the print.
Please take this into consideration, as without it the whole system might get useless for many people - you are happy you have found a model you need... 10 seconds later... .gcode only for PLA... while I want it to be PETG to be used in my car...
RE: New PrusaPrinters - The best 3D model database and community!
Yes, model updating and versioning is even worse since the addition of badges as everyone is pushed towards making new models instead of updating and thus making the whole database more messy and less useful. On top of that it pushes some folks to only repost things over and over.
So it would be good if next update was for us, long term makers having one model growing steadily thru months or years instead of posting every tiny bit a as new standalone model. I can have over 200 models instantly and flood the database while that would happen, but it seems as lost time for me and messed database for Prusa, it would be a loss-loss approach. But Prusa seem to dont care, otherwise they would not even come with such a badge system.
My opinion may not be right, but regret having so bad and right one too often.My models are things you can't see on any shelve. I create things that don't exist and that should be the…
RE:
I'm sorry Dejf, but how did you come to that conclusion?!
The reward system doesn't work at all how you describe it, neither by design nor by our experience with it from the past few months. Spamming model uploads rewards you very little. On the other hand, having one high-quality model (which you update) is rewarded very much, it can make you one entire free spool of Prusament each month. We are really going for quality rather than quantity.
Of course, the badge system motivates people to also upload new stuff. But that is absolutely necessary if the platform is ever going to take over Thingiverse.
And to your last point. I can assure you we care very much, so it makes me very sad to read your post. This is our passion project. I and my colleagues watch every feedback online - forum, twitter, reddit, facebook groups, dms... Every opinion is taken into account and we shift priorities based on what the community requests the most.
If you have a specific suggestion for the site, I am happy to hear it.
RE: New PrusaPrinters - The best 3D model database and community!
I see no reason to believe that Prusa does not care about negative effects of the badge system; for one thing, that would not be in their own best interest. However, it is obvious that Prusa has impacted the motivations for posting with the implementation of the badge system, and that there are in fact some negative effects. Prusa has added a strong "social" aspect to the posting system, and that unfortunately will attract some people who will try to game the system.
Although many of the problems associated with content moderation at scale are well know, it seems that every tech enterprise has to learn them anew. I have no idea what plans or budget Prusa has laid out for managing content with these new changes, but I would not be surprised if they have not underestimated the problems they will encounter. This does not imply a lack of caring, just a recognition that these kinds of issues often seem to catch people off guard.
It also seems to me that Dejf has conflated two separate issues: The impact of the new badge system, and the need for some improvements in the content management system generally. In particular (in agreement with Dejf), I think the current system for managing updates to prints needs improvement. I have on several occasions published updates to some of my existing prints, and I typically do this by posting a new print; I try to edit the previous version(s) to note the existence of an update, but this gets tedious. I don't think removing or replacing the old print is a good solution, because in many cases the previous version is perfectly acceptable, and the new version may only be an improvement for some cases. Simply adding an additional version to an existing print is also not a good solution, because there re not good tools for managing multiple versions within one published print. What I would like to see is "linked prints" that do do primary actions: First, alert the view to the fact that there are other older or newer versions of the same print. Second, alert everyone who has previously downloaded a print to the fact that an update has been published.
I think improvements such as I have suggested are part of what will make PrusaPrints a real competitor to Thingiverse - not just more and better printers, but also more effective publication and management of those prints.
Some other suggested improvements :
Templates : When I publish a print, I typically use a standard format which works for me; I would love to be able to save this as a template to make it easier to publish new prints.
Improved search : This is a very tough problem. Finding existing prints in PrusaPrints is a bit hit and miss. Often I find it easier to just use my search engine to search the Internet and look at images. One option for PrusaPrints might be to create an "image result" for a search which just shows a dense grid of images, which can then be manually "searched". On top of that, a much more sophisticated search engine is needed.
Having said all that, I want to acknowledge that the Prusa technical staff have so far done a very good job of establishing a respectable and usable print database, with many good features. I am well aware that the kinds of issues discussed here require a lot of hard work and testing to resolve, and I congratulate the Prusa organization for taking the imitative, and having the skill, to create a creditable competitor to Thingiverse.
RE: New PrusaPrinters - The best 3D model database and community!
Thank you for taking the time to write this exhaustive feedback.
If we're talking about people trying to cheat the system, we did encounter a few. Depending on how blatant they are we either ban the entire account, which leads to removing all the posted models, makes, likes... A quick way to clean the database from extremely low-quality content. We also have a few less nuclear options in our arsenal. Such as deleting the bad content, penalizing the user with -1000 Prusameters and letting the account be.
When it comes to individual models and makes, the report function is very effective. I do not want to reveal exactly what we do behind the scenes, but let's just say it is more intelligent than simply sending us a submission to review. We're continuously improving it, the fight against spammers is tough, but I think we have the upper hand for the time being.
Regarding the model update issue. We implemented folders - I think you could use them for versions. Simply create a folder with each major version. And file notes - you can add a note for the individual files to comment on the changes. Though there is definitely something to be said about improving versioning. I'll add it to our list of things to consider in the future.
Linking models - I'd say that's what remixes do. A modified version of a model, where you can see all the other versions on a separate tab.
Alerting users about a new version of a model - my inner alarm bell immediately rings reading this. That seems like a very exploitable feature. Constantly spamming everyone who downloaded some of your models with notifications about a new version - which is not actually a new version but something else. But maybe it could be opt-in. E.g. a button "Alert me about new versions of this model".
Search - one of the things our developers are working on at the moment. Definitely not an easy thing to master! We're trying to balance relevant results vs. giving weight to popular models. Matching all words from the search vs. not discarding synonyms. I think compared to other model sites, our search is already pretty decent. It won't be perfect after the update but improved nicely, in my opinion.
Template - we actually used to have a default template in a very early version of PrusaPrinters. Maybe this is something we can re-visit.
Right now we're working on behind-the-scenes stuff to prepare for rebranding the page. It will address the frequent "Isn't it just for Prusa printer owners? The domain is literally called PrusaPrinters..." problem. As well as expanding on the social interaction side.
RE: New PrusaPrinters - The best 3D model database and community!
By the way one example of how we listen to community feedback.
As @jurassic73 suggested, we have expanded the market view to better use the space on bigger screens. 😉
The change is live in our test server and will be deployed on the production server in the near future.
RE: New PrusaPrinters - The best 3D model database and community!
But maybe it could be opt-in. E.g. a button "Alert me about new versions of this model".
Exactly, follow the model for updates. a Simple and effective change, *maybe* it could also notify you of remixes.
RE: New PrusaPrinters - The best 3D model database and community!
But maybe it could be opt-in. E.g. a button "Alert me about new versions of this model".
Opt in is definitely the way to go and also, like with those gaming the system, heavily penalise anyone uploading models that don't relate to the one the user opted for updates on.
My main bug bear with Prusaprinters.org is the dodgy cookies and being logged out, but recycling the page shows I am logged in. The forum is especially bad for this.
RE: New PrusaPrinters - The best 3D model database and community!
Perhaps it is an idea to display remixes from the same author before everyone else's? Because I feel that if the author itself did a remix, something important has been changed? But then it might just be a different variant?
RE: New PrusaPrinters - The best 3D model database and community!
Alerting users about a new version of a model - my inner alarm bell immediately rings reading this. That seems like a very exploitable feature. Constantly spamming everyone who downloaded some of your models with notifications about a new version - which is not actually a new version but something else. But maybe it could be opt-in. E.g. a button "Alert me about new versions of this model".
That's obviously an important issue. What constitutes an update? A new STL? Probably. Correcting a typo in the description? Probably not. Still, same way of indicating that a change has happened would be great.
An idea that just occurred to me. Today, I can follow creators. What if I could "follow" a model? That's not the same as a "Like". I may like a model because, well, I like it, but I don't care enough to follow it for updates. So if I could go to a page that shows me my "followed" models, and I could sort it by date, that would take me a long way toward staying abreast of new versions of models I truly care about. Just one recent example. @Livius published an update to his Dragon adaptor for the Mk3S+. The only reason I even became aware of it was circuitous. Someone else actually contacted me for a copy of the model because livius had taken his old model offline for a bit, to prepare for the update. So I discovered he'd put up a new version. If I could simply "follow" a model and every now and then check for updates to the 5 or 6 models I truly care about, that would make it much easier to detect changes.
Regarding posting new models vs updating existing posts. I come down on the side of updating existing posts. I find little more aggravating than finding version 1, version 2, version 3 etc of a model. The other day I had to check out 5 posts of a model with trivial changes before finding what is (I think) the latest version. For my own designs, I much prefer to use Folders, as suggested by Miklas. Also, if you post somewhere a link to your design, using the same post for updates keeps all those links relevant even after time passes.
The great thing about this site is that the owners clearly *care*. I may not always agree with all the design decisions but their desire to continuously improve it is super obvious.
Formerly known on this forum as @fuchsr -- until all hell broke loose with the forum software...
RE: New PrusaPrinters - The best 3D model database and community!
Sorry to hurt your feelings, but having a succesful model is way more about what the model is good for (how many folks can actually use it) and something I cant imagine - there are developers with mid quality models and heavy likes and downloads while very similar or even better models from other makers have just a few likes and downloads. It may be about other channels like facebook propagation or something else, but definitely amount of likes and downloads is not a quality measure at all, its a reach measure.
Many folks post separate parts of multipart models as separate models spamming the database with pages of something that should have been packed into just a few models (in my view). Yeah, they get a spool 4 times a year for that, so why shouldnt they? I see the database verz often, sometimes I reload it a few times a day so I see whats there.
To beat Thingiverse, there is a completely different way than badges I think. Thingiverse has one single big trouble and that is the software stability, ability of user to upload, search, download, comment, see some reasonable stats...thats broken there. Prusaprinters on the other hand give "we are implementing new features" at least ten times a day which does make it very similar to thingiverse. And Prusaprinters is way way way slower that thingiverse. Its neat, dynamic, cool and thus unreasonably resource hungry. When I roll the page to see next 6 pictures I have to wait a few seconds to even see the names! Why? It should be around 100k data to travel and a few milions instructions on the cpu to display it with all the pictures...
I understand that today web developer cant make a site that load under a second, but its not what I see as a good approach. When I first visited the internet in 1994 or 95, it was somewhat slow, but worked well for text data. Today's internet is way slower for that not because the lines got slower or computers weaker, but because developers eat more than what new hardware gives every year. Every single developer creates his tiny 1% performance impact and because there are hundreds of them behind every button, we are doomed to wait. I would be happy with 90's software on today's hardware, it would be fiendishly fast and give me the very same: texts to read and pictures to see. Sadly, its impossible because of all the new versions of html used in such wasteful ways with zero backwards compatibility for older browsers.
My opinion may not be right, but regret having so bad and right one too often.My models are things you can't see on any shelve. I create things that don't exist and that should be the…
RE: New PrusaPrinters - The best 3D model database and community!
On the topic of potentially implementing a way to tell makers that a model has changed, Cults has implemented an option to the modeler to send out an email to inform anyone who previously download the model that a change was made. The key for me is to define 'change'. A model can be updated to fix a file (for any variety of reasons), so that a particular stl in a multi file upload was updated. Or extra stl's added to an already updated model. These are two separate instances of a model being updated.
So, if there was a feature to 'replace' an existing stl, with the ability of informing people who have downloaded the whole model, I think that may be useful.
On another note, I'm not sure if there is already a handy set of guidelines for uploading/modifying models. Something as simple as informing makers of how to size/format the pictures along with any other tips for reporting models, updating models etc. I know that the three dots have some power but all too often someone will ask where something is or how to edit a model or something else that seems trivial once you know what you are doing.
Lastly, I agree with the above comments about site speed. I was a programmer for over 40 years and have definitely seen software these days go in the direction of ease of updating and implementing new features, with little regard to the overall site impact. Thingiverse is dying due to bugs and speed and not due to lack of features. I have no answers, just observations.
Teamwork,
Steve
RE: New PrusaPrinters - The best 3D model database and community!
FWIW - I can not confirm speed issues with the PrusaPrinters site. For me the site loads fast and even scrolling stops for less than a second while the next batch of prints is being loaded.
Thingiverse on the other hand is slow as fork, has an awful user interface and experience.
As for the quality of models, how is the site to determine "how many folks can actually use it" if not by downloads and likes? Who is supposed to decide on that? Is an Open Source Emergency Ventilator of bad quality, because not many folks can use it? As for Downloads and Likes you mentioned possible reasons. Besides using social media more effectively it might just be better descriptions or tags that are easier found. It can also simply be an earlier upload date.
Why do you bother that people split models into different "prints"? You don't know their reasons to do so. And if they simply do it to get a few PrusaMeters, so what?
I had more issues with people uploading another "Benchy" as basic gcode, because a lot of new users understand "prints" as their version of a print, not the object itself. But then - just let them. As long as I can find the original Benchy, it's fine - and it's my job to keep it that way, by liking, downloading, posting a make and adding it to a collection, so the algorithm can decide based on those.
RE: New PrusaPrinters - The best 3D model database and community!
Yeah, I don't see any speed issues with Prusaprinters.org. I use it, typically on three devices and it's stable, loads quickly (including page changes) and results from search are nearly immediate.
Thingiverse...that's slow, actually painful to use. But then, Makerbot abandoned it years ago, so to be expected. Also, let's not forget the huge data leak thingiverse had only a few months ago, which Makerbot tried to deny and cover up!
RE: New PrusaPrinters - The best 3D model database and community!
Its easy. If you design a component for an ancient machine that is remaining in 10 exemplars around the world with 50 enhusiasts taking care of them, then there is at most 50 likes and 10 reasonable downloads for any relevant object no matter it's precision and/or value. If you put a StarWars logo on it, you have over billion likes potentially available. Thus number of likes and downloads is only a reach measure, not quality. Maybe some kind of Likes/Downloads ratio could be somewhat helpful, but absolute numbers aren't.
Let me show you an example of "quality" on this site, nothing against Michal, he just won for being big guy in my area of expertise, if one can call it so. Many of his designs and ideas are surely cool and I have nothing personal against him, never met him. Lets meet Michal Fanta, active designer having over hundred uploaded models (half of them just single pieces from his also published collection of wooden railway tracks, mentioned free prusameters here or just a reach building?), over 18k downloads, 250 followers and he is Prusa "Approved Designer", one would expect high quality a usability models there. Yet, most of his published models are wooden tracks incompatible with about 80% of tracks available on the market because he was too lazy to measure the hole side more and more and more - it took me over a week of fiddling to be satisfied with my connection parts on such tracks - and my current pieces fit with every single track we have at home, not Michal's. His most favored tracks have 4.7 stars, 547 likes and 873 downloads, yet from my point of view, their quality is heavily botched. Making a special reduction piece that he mentions in the collection comments is just a waste of filament and pain for the builders, not professional approach - "cut 0.7mm on female side in slicer" advice would be far more useful, yet also not very cool and proly not fixing all vendors. See my print photo and comment here https://www.prusaprinters.org/cs/prints/115728-bridge-track-w9/comments
So no, likes and downloads are not a quality measure - have them, use them, celebrate them as a social game liked by so many people, just don't call them something they are not. Did I make my point or do I have to find other guys like Michal?
My opinion may not be right, but regret having so bad and right one too often.My models are things you can't see on any shelve. I create things that don't exist and that should be the…
RE: New PrusaPrinters - The best 3D model database and community!
@dejf PrusaPrinters offers various metrics for a reason.
Most likes will often show up models who people just stumble upon and consider cool on the picture. Good for inspiration of what to print.
Most downloads will yield different results, it's a more involved decision to download the model for printing.
Most makes - one of my favorites - once again shows somewhat different results. Many models with lots of likes might not actually be printed much. But models with many makes and users posting comments about how happy they are with the print, that's extremely useful when you browse the market. With the new reward systems, we are seeing 20-30x more makes uploaded. I consider this a huge win for everyone using the site.
Then you also have Most views and Top-rated.
Each of these metrics can be very useful, depending on what you're looking for. If you have an idea for additional metrics, we are open to suggestions. Recently, we added a "random" sort based on a user suggestion.