OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I'm new here, so you can take my suggestion with a grain of salt, but...

What about a drop-down menu in the user control panel, allowing members to choose their equipment? If that information was available in that form, it could provide all kinds of interesting lists/charts showing the most-used equipment. Imagine a world where we can find the most popular equipment by un-sponsored players! Initial set-up could be time-consuming, seeing as there are so many manufacturers and products out there, but maintenance wouldn't be too bad afterwards.

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Blade: Stiga Allround Classic NCT FH: Donic Baracuda 2.0 BH: Yazaka Razka 7 2.0

I think it's a great idea rdj735!

The forum software does allow for custom fields in people's profile, which includes pull-down menus allowing people to select options. However as you mentioned already, the list of equipment is huge! The rubber list may not be so bad, as it can be derived from the ITTF approved list, but there is no blade list out there, and a fair few people probably use blades that are no longer made.

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OOAK Table Tennis Shop | Re-Impact Blades | Butterfly Table Tennis bats
Setup1: Re-Impact Smart, Viper OX, Victas VS 401 Setup2: Re-Impact Barath, Dtecs OX, TSP Triple Spin Chop 1.0mm Setup3: Re-Impact Dark Knight, Hellfire OX, 999 Turbo
Recent Articles: Butterfly Tenergy Alternatives | Tenergy Rubbers Compared | Re-Impact User Guide

You're absolutely right. I've only tinkered with web design a little, but I think a "custom" input could be inserted into the form, so a member could type in his/her item, even though it wasn't in the menu. This would allow anything to be added... and it would also "remind" the designer of any big items that may have been forgotten (ie. if "Tenergy" were listed at the bottom of the list 50 times!)

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Blade: Stiga Allround Classic NCT FH: Donic Baracuda 2.0 BH: Yazaka Razka 7 2.0

The greatest problem with this is that you would possibly end up with repeats of the same item spelt differently over and over again. I think its a good idea too, but a lot of work to implement, and if you allow free entry, the maintenance would become a nightmare. As it stands now, while you can't produce charts or anything, you do get a fair idea of what equipment is used by people just by reading threads and sigs. The longer you're here, the more you read, the better the feel I would say.

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I'm always in the dark, but the Dark sheds lights upon everything!! Beauty is only pimple deep! Beauty is in the eye of the pipholder!
S/U 1: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Andro Rasant 2.1 . BH Red Tibhar Grass Dtecs
S/U 2: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Hexer+ 2.1 . BH Red GD Talon
S/U 3: Blade: Bty Gergely . No rubbers...thinking of adding Red Dtecs and Black Rasant
Aussie Table Tennis Shop / Aussie Table Tennis Facebook Page / Equipment Review Index / Read my Reb Report Blog: click here.

The main benefit of having the information in a custom field, would be that we could create some software that created charts and stuff, which would be very interesting for discussion. But without some sort of software, they would reveal nothing more than the info in most people's signature.

Mind you, having so many options in a chart would make it hard to display as well, but if would could display the number of people that use certain brands perhaps, or those that use pimples or anti vs inverted, it would be quite interesting.

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OOAK Table Tennis Shop | Re-Impact Blades | Butterfly Table Tennis bats
Setup1: Re-Impact Smart, Viper OX, Victas VS 401 Setup2: Re-Impact Barath, Dtecs OX, TSP Triple Spin Chop 1.0mm Setup3: Re-Impact Dark Knight, Hellfire OX, 999 Turbo
Recent Articles: Butterfly Tenergy Alternatives | Tenergy Rubbers Compared | Re-Impact User Guide

I bet vbulletin could do it

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Chasse Patate

I really like the idea too. I think the results would be fascinating. The only thing I'd add would be that you can also include your style - from a pre determined (defined) list. Then I could say filter "counter hitter" and look at the type of equipment people use who play a similar style to me. Sponge thickness used would be nice too. And so it grows!

But will people use it? Quite often signatures are not up dated or someone might err, put down a bogus setup

For it to work though, I think you need to use pre set filters other wise collated dated will be corrupted by spelling errors or even differences in the use of captialisation.

I'd give a hand populating any lists needed in the options

Some good thoughts there Debater!

The only problem is that I don't think there is an inbuilt way of searching people's profiles, but it's possible there's a MOD out there that can do this.

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OOAK Table Tennis Shop | Re-Impact Blades | Butterfly Table Tennis bats
Setup1: Re-Impact Smart, Viper OX, Victas VS 401 Setup2: Re-Impact Barath, Dtecs OX, TSP Triple Spin Chop 1.0mm Setup3: Re-Impact Dark Knight, Hellfire OX, 999 Turbo
Recent Articles: Butterfly Tenergy Alternatives | Tenergy Rubbers Compared | Re-Impact User Guide

how about a similar code to that of tabletennisdb???

with the comboboxes populated with equipment so that there are no repeats due to spelling mistakes.

also listing multiple setups

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my youtube channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/decoyla?feature=mhum

Main: / secondary / LP
Blade: DHS Hurricane hao/ Blade- Hurricane Hao 2
FH: Skyline 3(Blue Sponge)/ FH- Nittaku H3 pro
BH: Omega Asia/ BH- Calibra Tour H

Yes that would be great... except that I don't have the skills to impliment this.

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OOAK Table Tennis Shop | Re-Impact Blades | Butterfly Table Tennis bats
Setup1: Re-Impact Smart, Viper OX, Victas VS 401 Setup2: Re-Impact Barath, Dtecs OX, TSP Triple Spin Chop 1.0mm Setup3: Re-Impact Dark Knight, Hellfire OX, 999 Turbo
Recent Articles: Butterfly Tenergy Alternatives | Tenergy Rubbers Compared | Re-Impact User Guide

It could potentially be done with Excel even I think, although I'm not sure what features are available in web excel.

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I'm always in the dark, but the Dark sheds lights upon everything!! Beauty is only pimple deep! Beauty is in the eye of the pipholder!
S/U 1: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Andro Rasant 2.1 . BH Red Tibhar Grass Dtecs
S/U 2: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Hexer+ 2.1 . BH Red GD Talon
S/U 3: Blade: Bty Gergely . No rubbers...thinking of adding Red Dtecs and Black Rasant
Aussie Table Tennis Shop / Aussie Table Tennis Facebook Page / Equipment Review Index / Read my Reb Report Blog: click here.

Extracting the information from the forum profiles is the hard part... it needs to be done via the software somehow. Once we've got it, I agree that something like excel can graphs it quite easily.

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OOAK Table Tennis Shop | Re-Impact Blades | Butterfly Table Tennis bats
Setup1: Re-Impact Smart, Viper OX, Victas VS 401 Setup2: Re-Impact Barath, Dtecs OX, TSP Triple Spin Chop 1.0mm Setup3: Re-Impact Dark Knight, Hellfire OX, 999 Turbo
Recent Articles: Butterfly Tenergy Alternatives | Tenergy Rubbers Compared | Re-Impact User Guide

Ah yeah of course. Sig info will be held in some kind of database free-text/memo field. Extracting it wouldn't be too hard (for someone with dba skills) I'd imagine, but extracting it with any logic would be. Otherwise the excel work to "tidy" it up would be massive.

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I'm always in the dark, but the Dark sheds lights upon everything!! Beauty is only pimple deep! Beauty is in the eye of the pipholder!
S/U 1: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Andro Rasant 2.1 . BH Red Tibhar Grass Dtecs
S/U 2: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Hexer+ 2.1 . BH Red GD Talon
S/U 3: Blade: Bty Gergely . No rubbers...thinking of adding Red Dtecs and Black Rasant
Aussie Table Tennis Shop / Aussie Table Tennis Facebook Page / Equipment Review Index / Read my Reb Report Blog: click here.

instead of extracting, let people input their own equipment in it would save you time and effort. also some people dont update their gear or forget to..

also i should be able to create a code that allows you to pick from a list of what they have and then send it to the mass pool and then do what ever with it( creating charts and so on or percentages at least) this would be done with visual basic( excel) from then on i would have a clue of how to wire that up with the boards.. writing the code is as much as i would be able to do

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my youtube channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/decoyla?feature=mhum

Main: / secondary / LP
Blade: DHS Hurricane hao/ Blade- Hurricane Hao 2
FH: Skyline 3(Blue Sponge)/ FH- Nittaku H3 pro
BH: Omega Asia/ BH- Calibra Tour H

I'm not quite sure what you're suggesting here... My proposal was to add extra fields to a member's profile, which they can fill in themselves. having these as drop-down menus would make it a lot easier and there would be no issues with spelling mistakes, etc.
However we would need software that looks at all the profiles, and compiles the data, that the tricky bit to do.

_________________
OOAK Table Tennis Shop | Re-Impact Blades | Butterfly Table Tennis bats
Setup1: Re-Impact Smart, Viper OX, Victas VS 401 Setup2: Re-Impact Barath, Dtecs OX, TSP Triple Spin Chop 1.0mm Setup3: Re-Impact Dark Knight, Hellfire OX, 999 Turbo
Recent Articles: Butterfly Tenergy Alternatives | Tenergy Rubbers Compared | Re-Impact User Guide