New arrivals

Jan and johnnyangel, I also agree. I was very skeptical of the site until the recent improvements were made, and I feel now that the site is at least useable. Like Jan, I also like the new picture posting format, and the superb, enlarged images that we can now have and use. Many of us take pretty high quality images, and the toys look amazing when viewed now. As noted, much needs to be done to improve the site, and given the devotion displayed lately, I am now confident that it will come.... Maybe not soon enough for some of us, but some patience needs to be shown by all of us. My biggest complaint is still a somewhat lack of progress reports about what is being worked on: this would only take a few minutes to post each week, but would go a long ways towards keeping our confidence up that things are happening. We need to get our regulars back using the site.....that is the only way we can improve, and I think Al and Dave are sensitive to our needs and wants. The site certainly does work now, so no reason to keep running it down. There is no other Dinky alternative, so we need to make this work; I for one am not ready to go 'dark'! Regards, Terry

I have very little experience designing web sites and forums but as a user I have a pretty good idea of what those sites should be : S I M P L E.So here are my comments about what should be done to the DTCA web site so that members do not run away from it which is the case to day.FORUM PAGE There is only one forum so delete the word ForumS Delete the four menus View topics - Active Topics - Unanswered topics and New & updated topics Delete '1 British Dinky Toys' In the grey strip replace 'Forum' by 'British Dinky Toys' In the list delete the words 'British' and 'French' they are useless. Delete '2 French Dinky Toys' In the grey strip replace 'Forum' by 'French Dinky Toys' The same for 'Printed materials' and 'Other topics' Change 'Other Toys' to 'Other diecast models'. Add Chinese Dinky (Atlas). Delete the 'User menu', 'My account' and 'Log out' are already in the black menu bar. Change 'Trade boxes' into just 'Boxes'FORUM ---> BRITISH MILITARY and all similar model pages. I have taken this page as an example. This page is very difficult to read, it contains so much useless information. The posts are sorted at random, they should be in numerical order and always remain so. The - or _ are useless so delete. The name of the first and last posters, date and time are not necessary so delete. The list should be on one page only even if there are 300 lines. Delete the 'Order by' menu. Delete 'New posts' 'No new posts' etc... An email must be sent to the members for each new post but not when a post has been edited. It must not be possible to add a new thread. Only the moderator can do this if there is a good reason for that. When a model has been re-numbered it should be listed under each of the two or three reference numbers and the links must lead to a single thread. 'Dinky Toys Technical Discussions' is a mess, most of these discussions should be transfered to the models threads. For example the six threads for the 898 Berliet should be in only one thread in French Dinky Toys --> Commercial vehicles where there are already two threads for this model. Those two threads must be merged. POSTING PAGE. Make the default text size 14 instead of 12 Is 'Switch to plain text editor' any use ? if not, delete. When a picture is uploaded, it's definition should show in the message box. Pictures must be uploaded to the server on clicking 'upload' and not on 'save' this is why the definition does not show in the message box and this makes long posts with several pictures impossible to write. What are 'Row weights' ? is that necessary ? if not delete. MAKE THINGS SIMPLE, no useless garbage, we are not IT guys. Where is the 'preview' button on the File information window. It is miles down the page and it does not work. The 'edit reply' link does not work. It is the same as the save button. In fact these are two links : 'edit' and 'reply'. Make them two buttons. Again and again, there is no reason to crop the pictures to 500 pix. To day the screens are wide enough to have pictures at least 1 000 pix. wide. The next page with the large picture can be deleted, it is completely useless, it makes things too complicated and is a pain in the ............ When a thread has more than one page which is very often the case, only the last page should have the 'Add new comment' window. This can be 'Add comment' the word new is useless. When a thread has more than one page the pages should be sorted last page first. If I want to type three line returns the software should show them and not delete two of them. The software must show EXACTLY what I have typed. Only the selected text must be affected by left, center or right. This is not the case at the moment. MANAGE CONTENT What is this ? What is a Dinky set ? For me it is a box with half a dozen models from the same series. 'Create Dinky collection should be in 'Profile' What does 'Market' mean ? Mini Coopers and SUVs are not Dinky Toy types. Were Dinky Toys marketed in Tanganyika and in Universal/International which is a new country to me ? 'Create forum topic' should be extremely limited to 'Other General subjects' and 'Any thing else for which there is no specific thread' but certainly not on the models pages. Transfer all the posts from 'Create single entry submission' to the models pages and delete this topic.PROFILESAt the moment the profile page is useless.It is often interesting to know a bit more about other members such as their location, what they collect etc .... This should be filled by every member before been allowed to use the site. This is the place for the 'Collection' thread.Create the following topics : Dinky Toys Clubs. Meccano Magazines : English - French - German. Dinky Sales and auctions. Restorer's corner. Dinky spare parts. Other General subjects and delete the topic 'New arrivals' , these posts should be with each model topic. There are certainly many more improvements to be made, they will come up in time but if the above changes were made, some of them are very easy to do, I think that it would be a great improvement and more DTCA members would be willing to join us here.

Thanks for the feedback Jacques. Let me take away the list to confer with David K to see what we can come up with. The technical aspects, which would be my focus (David to adjudicate on the rest), seem to have feasible solutions from what I can see. To clarify the Forum vs ForumS question: There are 36 forums on this website falling inside 4 main sections; to whit; 1 British Dinky Toys, 2 French Dinky Toys, 3 Dinky Toys Printed Materials, 4 Other Topics. The plural taxonomy of ForumS is therefore correct. I think these grey bars tend to give the impression that they have greater precedence than the Section Titles - which they don't - but better formatting should make the overall structure clearer.

Hello Jacques, I will try to enlarge upon what Al has stated above. If you go into the sub-forum British Cars and click on the 'Start/starter topic' in the dark gray bar it will sort the topics in correct order. If I were to remove the dash or dashes from the topic it would not sort to the order we are used to. This is a function of of the fact that we are dealing with a text field rather than a numeric field. If there were no dashes you would get all the 1's first, ie. 14, 140, 1002, etc. then the 2's and so on. I have asked Al to see if he can default the order to Start/starter topic. It is currently set to the software default of sort by Last Post. This explanation should answer several of your concerns. I created the sub-forum Dinky Toys Technical Discussions as a place to put posts from the old website that had been migrated that had discussions that spanned more than one Dinky Toy. I am open to suggestions on where these could go. Comments like this whole thread is a mess doesn't give me a clear idea of what to do with these posts. I also said in my update email that I would appreciate members reviewing where I had moved the posts from the old Forum and if placed incorrectly to please identify the specific post, where it is, and where it should be placed. The 'User menu' has the item 'Manage content.' In discussing this with Al it appears this is intended for members to quickly access content that they have authored. We have tried removing the user menu but doing so creates technical problems. We are now looking into removing 'My account' and Log out' from the top bar. I agree that there are a number of duplicate names threads. I have not yet figured out how to merge threads but when I do I will see to it that there are no duplicates. Please be patient on this one. The 'Row weights' are for sequencing your images. Al is looking into renaming it something like 'Reorder Images.' Hopefully this will make more sense than Row weights which is the software default. The Dinky Set is exactly as you describe it. It is NOT a part of the Forum but of the website as a whole. The Dinky Collection is an area in the general website where members can put pictures and verbiage about their own personal collections. Jan Werner has already added a bunch of photos and verbiage about his collection and I invite other members to do the same. I have created a simple set of instructions for members to do this. Rest assured both Al and I are working on all issues raised regarding the website.

Hi everybody. This Taxi came to pick me up this morning

Richard--Very nice Taxi.......I always liked the color scheme on this one....looks great in black with the red roof. It is odd that Dinky showed the box illustration with the colors reversed, and never bothered to correct it. An interesting side story about mine: Along with a friend, we wrote the French factory in 1959 about buying a few Dinky's direct from them, knowing many were not even sold in the US. So I bought the Simca Taxi for it's original price of around $1.00, and 56 years later I still have it and the box......and still like new. Congrats!! Regards, Terry

Thank you Terry. As you can see, it's the second version, with concave hubs and the roof in a red, orange colored. Friendly yours Richard

Richard--After seeing yours, thought you might like to see mine, which is apparently an earlier version with the convex wheels. I should also check the box to see if it differs from yours. A very nice model of the taxi................this was purchased new in 1959, directly from France. After looking closely, I also see that over time they deleted the silver trim, painted on the front of the hood or bonnet and also on the rear of the boot or trunk. Regards, Terry

Yes Terry, it's the earlier version. I will try to open a new thread with both versions together, to compare the roof color. Regards Richard

I have opened a new topic on the Simca Ariane Taxi but I don't know where it is !!!!??? Can somebody find it ? Regards Richard

Hi everybody. Here is a new arrival. It came this morning and surprise ..... ! with the french cousin box ! it was not mentioned on the advertisement ! See details on the Dyane thread that I will open soon. Friendly yours. Richard

[img]/images/sites/default/files/forum-images/Citroën Dyane (6a).jpg[/img]
[img]/images/sites/default/files/forum-images/Citroën Dyane (7a).jpg[/img]

/forum-topic/24zt-and-542-simca-ariane-taxi-1959-1962]/forum-topic/24zt-and-542-simca-ariane-taxi-1959-1962 Is this it? You can use the search box to find content about particular things - try typing simca ariane taxi into the search feature.