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Poll

Do you approve the website "Ancient Roman Coin" for the Standard Award for Numismatic Excellence?

Yes!
10 (58.8%)
No!
7 (41.2%)

Total Members Voted: 15

Voting closed: April 28, 2014, 09:12:10 am

Author Topic: "Ancient Roman Coin" Website Award Poll  (Read 6390 times)

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Offline Molinari

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"Ancient Roman Coin" Website Award Poll
« on: April 14, 2014, 09:12:10 am »
Here for your review is the website, "Ancient Roman Coin":

http://www.ancient-roman-coin.com/

Poll open for 14 days, please vote!




Offline OldMoney

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Re: "Ancient Roman Coin" Website Award Poll
« Reply #1 on: April 14, 2014, 11:22:53 am »
It does somewhat disturb me that the only information in
the "About Us" link is more advertising about the site itself,
and nothing about anyone behind the screen.

Does anyone know who this is? Or even if this a genuine
and legitimate site (note that I do not suggest otherwise)?

In all fairness, this site does claim to allow one to "Identify
your roman coins
" - but then offers nothing to that end,
except a listing of coins by emperor.

That means that one has to already know which ruler is to
be sought out, in which case this site does NOT identify
your roman coins at all! It is a misleading claim.

It just points you toward a list of coins from a particular ruler,
and requires you to seek out something similar to whatever it
is that you may have.

There is no legend search facility, no type search facilty, no
way to look up anything that would lead one to subsequently
identify a roman coin.

The listing side of things is admirable, but there is no search
facility, and no identification guide or other like information,
whether for beginners or otherwise.

It is clearly a lot of work, but there are errors (from just a
cursory glance, check the coins of Gordian III, Antioch mint
coins are misidentified as being from Rome, etc.). There are
large numbers of coins from certain rulers, and none from
many others. It is clearly a work in progress, and when it
is finished it appears as though it will be excellent and quite
worthy of recognition - but for now, it unfortunately fails to
attract my support or my vote.

Walter Holt
Coins of Ephesus
https://groups.yahoo.com/group/ephesuscoins
Walter Holt's Old Money - Ancient Coins
https://www.oldmoney.com.au
Sydney, Australia

Offline snapapuss

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Re: "Ancient Roman Coin" Website Award Poll
« Reply #2 on: April 14, 2014, 02:17:36 pm »
As a Junior collector , I think it is pretty useful
It's not going to help me attribute necessarily
Awesome coin pictures and different images from other sites
Any free pics of coins in my opinion adds to other websites/ sources

steve

Offline Andrew McCabe

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Re: "Ancient Roman Coin" Website Award Poll
« Reply #3 on: April 14, 2014, 10:32:32 pm »
It does somewhat disturb me that the only information in the "About Us" link is more advertising about the site itself,
and nothing about anyone behind the screen. Does anyone know who this is? Or even if this a genuine and legitimate site (note that I do not suggest otherwise)?

Yes, we know. It is Arnaud Tisin who also runs a French language website called http://www.piece-gauloise.com that received a Forum award about 8 years ago. This is what the website owner wrote to us:

8 years after my award for my Celtic coins website, my new website on Roman coins, and I think this the first one in coins, is in responsive format (automatically adapts content to mobile and tablets). Don't hesitate to test it on your mobile or tablet going from landscape to vertical to see the responsive in action or by resizing the window of your browser. At the moment there are 5 700 coins that represents about 4 years of work. About 40 new coins are added per day, verify with the original RIC pdf to avoid legends errors we can see on other sites.

Most websites not designed by professionals are inevitably imperfect. In an era where more and more content is facebooked, temporary in nature, with fewer standalone websites, the committee wants to encourage amateur sites being built for the future, as Arnaud's comments on both content and media clearly indicate. Times are moving, and frankly if someone points out a great blog (such as last weeks winner, Liv Yarrow's Brooklyn Sabbatical), facebook, flickr, tumblr, instagram or other social media site that is open to the public and contains good and permanent numismatic text content beyond just pictures, we'd love to get it reviewed. We want to find decent if imperfect sites, so long as we can find out who the site owners are, there's significant numismatic content that outweighs any commercial, and there's an intent at basic integrity: image credits, copyrights etc. If a site reaches a vote, then you can assume it has already been vetted, but it may not be perfect and we may not all have liked it: in this case image credits are given in some cases, but not in many others. But, memo to selves, since the same comment came up twice, let's make sure to give the name of the site owner or organisation each time we present a site for a vote, and to feedback to site owners any comments such as improving credits, colophon etc.

It is clearly a work in progress, and when it is finished it appears as though it will be excellent and quite worthy of recognition - but for now, it unfortunately fails to attract my support or my vote.

It's ok to vote no!

Frankly our main struggle is to find half-way reasonable new websites at all. All the easy topics were cornered a decade ago. The nature of the internet is such that older and better sites corner all the audiences: if interested in Parthian coins then Chris Hopkin's site is top of everyone's list, my site on Roman Republic, Forum for collector galleries, etc. There are lots of uncovered niches but it takes a brave collector to try fill one in. There are more uncovered media than collecting areas, so I'm predicting that the next massively popular site might be .. for example a twitter feed from some very interesting numismatist.

Offline OldMoney

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Re: "Ancient Roman Coin" Website Award Poll
« Reply #4 on: April 15, 2014, 12:35:19 am »
Thanks Andrew, for some informative and interesting comments.

I guess my concern was that the information you provided was not,
or at least was not readily, accessible on the nominee's website.
That may of course be a failing of my own - not being able to find it!

Where on the site did you find that quote, and the owners info?

As I think I indicated, the site is very good, but it does not appear
to do what it claims it sets out to do - "Identify your roman coins".
This is a site where you take your already identified coin, and then
see pretty pictures of what excellent examples look like; and also
perhaps to compare dies, style, etc.

As a general and informative site, with lots of excellent images and
notes, essentially aiming to be an illustrated online RIC - great! It
has clearly taken a LOT of work, and for that Monsieur Tisin should
be properly congratulated. His has been an unenviable task, and as
you indicate, it continues to be so. But it is not as it claims - not yet.

Another way of looking at this: is this to be an award for effort, or an
award for achievement of the site's overtly stated claim? Yes on the
former, no on the latter (not yet anyway). Just one man's opinion! :)

Walter Holt
Coins of Ephesus
https://groups.yahoo.com/group/ephesuscoins
Walter Holt's Old Money - Ancient Coins
https://www.oldmoney.com.au
Sydney, Australia

Offline Andrew McCabe

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Re: "Ancient Roman Coin" Website Award Poll
« Reply #5 on: April 15, 2014, 04:50:07 am »
The end of year annual polls are the ones for outstanding achievement in website design. Yes, the 'standard' award is as much to recognise good effort as anything, many less strong sites have gained it in years past, it puts a site in the sunshine for a week or two, and gets it wearing a forum logo. It all gets weeded out in the December poll.

On your other comments I don't have any more to add except to repeat that people can vote "no" if they think it shouldn't bear a forum logo.

An anecdote about my own site: in its early years I contacted another website that maintained a list of links and asked him if he would like to add my site. He ran some google pagerank metrics and came back to say "no", that at my current sites ranking it wouldn't enhance his page rank and therefore commercial success, but if I gained many more visitors I could ask him again, and he would reconsider but only in return for swapping links ie I had to link to him too, but only once my site was more popular than his! So I had a look through his site and concluded it was, at that time, pretty weak, aside from the list of useful links which I was offering to add to. It had some boilerplate info on the roman empire and roman coins and such like. Hence I wasn't interested in link swapping, not then, and certainly not later when my site overtook his. I found it perplexing that he dissed my new website based on google pagerank rather than considering its original content, and the needs of potential visitors. There is a moral to this story but I'm not sure what.

Offline Robert_Brenchley

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Re: "Ancient Roman Coin" Website Award Poll
« Reply #6 on: April 15, 2014, 02:33:19 pm »
He took the lazy, short-term route, looking for instant gain rather than content or quality.
Robert Brenchley

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Offline Joe Sermarini

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Re: "Ancient Roman Coin" Website Award Poll
« Reply #7 on: April 16, 2014, 11:15:07 am »
One of the reasons we have a committee for the awards is that we want nearly all nominated sites to get a thumbs up vote. Ideally all or most of any negative discussion should take place out of the public eye among members of the committee first, ensuring that almost all sites that are nominated get a positive vote and positive discussion. The process is intended help us better follow the #1 rule of the board - BE NICE. Of course the system is not going to be perfect and some nominated sites will not get the award. 

I voted yes, but Walter Holt's comments are definitely valid. Maybe the committee can talk him into joining next time around. :)
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Offline Andrew McCabe

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Re: "Ancient Roman Coin" Website Award Poll
« Reply #8 on: April 16, 2014, 12:25:03 pm »
One of the reasons we have a committee for the awards is that we want nearly all nominated sites to get a thumbs up vote. Ideally all or most of any negative discussion should take place out of the public eye among members of the committee first, ensuring that almost all sites that are nominated get a positive vote and positive discussion. The process is intended help us better follow the #1 rule of the board - BE NICE. Of course the system is not going to be perfect and some nominated sites will not get the award.  

I voted yes, but Walter Holt's comments are definitely valid. Maybe the committee can talk him into joining next time around. :)

In the last few days we've rejected two websites in committee, so the process is working as intended. One had nice content but unacceptable advertising (pop-ups and pop-unders all over the place), no findable owner, and no credits. The other was quite a nice site but we couldn't find an owner and believe it may not have been updated in a very long time. Walter would be very welcome on the committee, though he might then find, as we've done, that virtually no reasonably fresh sites (which are very tough to locate in the first place) meets the letter of all the screening rules. So we add our judgement on top, and are taking a fairly relaxed view on unintentional and easily fixed errors: if we insisted on the utmost professionalism and completeness then almost no amateur sites would pass. Anything presented for a vote has passed basic screening, but Forum voters then get to say whether they like it or not.

The real dilemma is finding sites to review in the first place. By their nature, new sites, or good old sites that have been overlooked, hardly appear in google searches. If they feature high up in a google search, or are on a links list, chances are that Forum has found them long ago. Site owners rarely propose their own sites, and casual users don't think to propose sites they like and use. So if you know a site that you like, that's not previously been awarded, please please tell us.

Offline Joe Sermarini

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Re: "Ancient Roman Coin" Website Award Poll
« Reply #9 on: April 16, 2014, 02:15:19 pm »
It is definitely more difficult now than ever to find worthy site that don't already have the award.
Joseph Sermarini
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