ender4449
03/04/24 03:45 AM
98.28.231.255
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I recently started going through my collection of BattleTech miniatures given to me by my father, most are as old if not older than myself. I was wondering how the wiki at large feels if I were to take photos of these mechs (including numerous original Unseen designs) and add them to their respective pages on Sarna. Access to faction paint jobs was not as easy as it is now and most are likely not sporting any cannon colors. An example being four different Unseen MAD-3Rs, one each in flat pale blue, grey/black woodland camo, dark blue w/white accent stripe, and one in burnt red.
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Frabby
03/13/24 07:41 AM
79.212.148.30
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There's no easy answer.
On one hand, your gut feeling is correct: Sarna wants pictures of products, and especially of rare items for which we have no photos yet.
On the other hand, as our Policy:Images likes to put it, Sarna is not an image repository. We do not seek to have photos for the sake of having photos. Their (only) role on Sarna is to showcase a BattleTech item/product for which we have an article. By contrast, we positively do not want to showcase paint jobs (the exception being the official products from CamoSpecs because these have official sanction and thus a special place), nor what some call vanity galleries.
So unpainted minis would be preferrable, because that's the product out of the box.
There's a third aspect, namely that miniatures are something of a stepchild of Sarna. We simply don't have enough knowledgeable contributors to have a solid coverage of miniatures even though they are a pillar of BattleTech to a degree. That makes it extra hard to detemine what miniature photos we need - the articles simply don't exist yet in some places.
I hope this doesn't sound discouraging. In fact, look at it from a different angle and check out if you want to work on miniatures coverage for Sarna because it's an area where we could really use some help! 
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ender4449
03/14/24 01:35 AM
98.28.231.255
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I'm not discouraged actually, and the point of asking was to prevent from unintentionally "kicking the Dragon's Locust" so to speak. Having realized how distinct of an opportunity I have of contributing to this franchise and cataloging pieces of its history is something I wouldn't want to mess up. As Sarna is a wiki and easily editable the threshold from massive mistakes is low, but I value other people's time more than my own. If I took a day to add relevant photos to specific pages it could take just as long to undo all of that if some or all of it was deemed inappropriate for that particular application.
As it stands with your description of things I feel that pieces I have that would be the best contributions would be the two unopened 'Mechs I have. 20-843 MAD-3R Marauder and 20-802 FLC-4N Falcon. But even still I'm unsure if those would be appropriate for the main articles for both 'Mechs.
As for doing miniatures coverage for Sarna how and where would I start such a venture?
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Frabby
03/14/24 11:43 AM
79.212.148.30
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Where would you start such a venture? Good question.
We do have an article "Miniatures", I would suggest starting from there. Really, part of the venture is to come up with a structure in the first place.
Do you use Discord? I would encourage you to go to the Sarna Discord to discuss this and include all the Sarna admins. I suspect some of them have better ideas than I have...
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