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What are the advantages of an account if I'm just browsing?
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You can browse and vote on CoolMiniOrNot anonymously, but your experience will be greatly improved if you
sign up. Why not, it's free!
Member only features:
- Vote tracking
The site will remember the minis you've voted on and will not show them to you again unless you specifically request them. With thousands of images in our database, this prevents tiresome repetition.
- Comments/Forums
Leave your comments on a mini or in the forums, make your thoughts and opinions known to everyone!
- Private Messages
Send and receive private messages without giving out your email address unless you choose to. Want to ask a specific painter a private question? This is the way to do it.
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I'd like to subscribe to CoolMiniOrNot. How much does it cost and what does it do?
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If you came here by clicking on a star icon  , the person with the star is a financial supporter of CoolMiniOrNot! If you enjoy CoolMiniOrNot, why not subscribe?
For only $1 a month, you can help support this site!
You will also have access to your own personal Favourites list where you can store links of all your favourite CoolMiniOrNot images for future reference, a very useful tool for navigating CoolMiniOrNot's huge collection! Check out a sample Favourites list here.
Turn off all external advertising, expose scores given by registered voters and many new features added regularly, and keep up to 1000 PMs!
The process is completely automated by PayPal. To subscribe, simply go here.
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What kind of picture is accepted here?
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Any picture of any painted or converted miniature is accepted. You must own the rights to the picture to post it.
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What is the Image URL?
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Your Image URL is the location on the internet where your picture is stored. This is only really relevant if you already have a website. We recommend that you upload your picture here so that it loads quickly, as free hosts are notoriously slow.
In addition, most free webhosts (eg. Geocities, Angelfire) do not allow images stored on their servers to be used on other sites and block it.
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What image file types are supported?
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JPEG, GIF, PNG and TIF images are supported. We do however recommend the JPEG format because it makes smaller files while having more colour information.
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What is the maximum file size of each image?
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100kb is the maximum file size. Please make sure your images are smaller than this or they will automatically be rejected.
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What is the maximum width of each image?
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The maximum width is 600 pixels. If your picture exceeds the maximum width it will be automatically resized, which can be ugly. It's a better idea to resize your picture before uploading it.
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My picture is under the maximum file size and maximum width. Why has it been compressed further?
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Even if a picture submission is under 100k in file size and under 600 pixels in width, it may still be compressed further either in file size or width.
1. File size
This happens automatically when the ratio of the file size (in bytes) divided by the image area (height x width) exceeds 0.34.
This usually means that the image has not been optimally compressed and as such is compressed automatically to save space, bandwidth and to reduce viewer frustration of waiting a long time to load a relatively small image.
2. Image width
Images are reduced in width if they are overly large due and out of focus, which usually happens when the hardware used to take the pictures artifically "blows up" the image (a process known as interpolation). It's a consumer trick used to give equipment a much higher resolution rating than it is actually capable of producing, and unfortunately pictures don't look any sharper.
When we get images like these, we manually resize them; we notice that large, out of focus pictures get much poorer scores, probably due to voter irritation.
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How are the rankings on the Top 50 Artist list calculated?
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1. From each artist, we take the Top 5 pictures (with more than 50 votes each)
2. We average the top 5, giving the artist an average score.
3. We then rank all the artists on the site against each other using this score, producing the rankings.
You may have realised that this means that there is no advantage to removing lower scoring pictures from the site, since only your top 5 pictures are used to calculate your rank.
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How do I change a picture I've already submitted? I've got a better one now.
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The short answer is, you can't, not without our intervention. The reason is there's no way for our server to tell if the image replacing the old one is a picture of the same mini, this has to be judged by the human eye.
If it's really important to you to update a picture, you should upload it as a new image, then contact us with the new image ID and old image ID. After we check it, we'll update the image to the new one.
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What do I do if I see a picture that is inappropriate or stolen?
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If you notice a photo that you know to be posted without permission of the copyright owner or should not be on here for some other reason, please contact us
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How do I contact an artist on the site?
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You can click the "Send me a message" link underneath any picture you see to send a message to the person. They will be able to view your message next time they log into this site. Under no circumstances will we give out the e-mail address or contact information of anyone listed on this site.
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How do I find a specific picture?
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That depends. If you know the id number of the picture, you can jump straight to it by typing this in your browser's Address bar:
http://coolminiornot.com/XXX, where XXX is the id number of the picture.
Alternatively you can use the Jump to button on the main page by keying in the id of the picture and clicking the button.
If you don't know the id number, then things get a little tricky. You could try a Search from either the main or the Browse page, or by the submitter's name on the Browse page.
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What is Vote Tracking?
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If you are logged in, CoolMiniOrNot will remember which pictures you have voted on and the score you gave them. This was a much requested feature and has two main advantages.
First, the random image on the main page will be one you have not voted on, unless you specifically jump to it. This is very useful since there are tens of thousands of images in the database but you don't want to keep seeing the same ones.
Second, you can review the scores you have given a picture. This score is displayed in red on both the main and Browse pages.
There are also minor advantages, like a small report on the top left of the main page telling you how many pictures out of the total database you've voted on.
If you'd rather not have your votes tracked, all you have to do is stay logged out. We can't really think of any sinister reason not to use Vote Tracking but the choice is yours.
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Who owns the copyright on an image?
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This is a tough question. The following does not constitute legal advice. If in doubt, consult your attorney/lawyer.
As a rule of thumb in most countries, unless she's sold the rights, the person who took the photograph owns the copyright of the image.
This should not be confused with trademark or passing off issues, where a distinctive design is "copied" and used to advertise something else.
eg. It's fine for you to take a picture of a GW miniature (you'll own the copyright to the picture), but it is not ok for you to use the picture on a website claiming you sculpted it (you'll still own the copyright, but will probably get hit by a trademark/passing off action which will restrict your use of it).
The painter of the figure generally does not get any rights in the picture unless, of course, he took the picture. However, we endeavour to make sure all work is properly creditted and will act if someone is passing off another person's work as their own.
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What are themes and how do I use them?
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Themes allow you to control the way CoolMiniOrNot appears. In order to use themes you must have an account.
The Main area and Forums have two different theme management systems.
To access themes in the Main area, select Your Account from the main page.
To access themes from the Forums, select User Control Panel from the Forums page.
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About Us
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CoolMiniOrNot was inspired by HotOrNot.com and similiar sites, and was the brainchild of David Doust (borg). The site started out in 2001 with a simple image voting script. People liked the idea, word spread and CMON soon passed the 400 submission mark.
Whilst the site was gaining in popularity, there were problems with people submitting others pictures without permission, the general anonymity of submitters and the lack of browsing features.
At about that time, Ng Chern Ann started a revised script on littlebrush.com with much needed features that would benefit CoolMiniOrNot. David contacted Chern Ann, the two struck a deal to share the site and within weeks CoolMiniOrNot got a total overhaul:
- Pictures had to go through an approval process to avoid the submission of pictures that was not their own
- A browse page with detailed searching
- Vote tracking
- a better forum
Ever since then new features have been added, often on a daily basis!
Today CoolMiniOrNot is the largest painted miniature archive on the Internet, and is constantly growing.
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I've lost my password. Help?
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Hit this link to recover your password.
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Dynamically add thumbnails of the images here to my site?
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You can add thumbnails to your site now like this:
code:
By default, this will pull the last 5 images uploaded to CoolMiniOrNot so that it can be displayed on your page in vertical format.
You can also play set which images are displayed, much like the Browse page. For example
code:
Will pull the top 5 images from Chern Ann and order them in Descending order.
You can easily substitute your own name in to show your top five scoring minis. You can chain tags after partnerbar.php by using ? for the first tag and & for the subsequent ones.
Valid tags are:
| Tag |
Value |
| submitter |
(name of submitter) |
| orderby |
Ascending (sort scores bottom up) |
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Descending (top down) |
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Week (top 3 miniatures submitted within last 7 days) |
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AuctionPrice (auction price if any) |
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AuctionEnd (auction end if any) |
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AuctionBids (auction bids if any) |
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AuctionPlaced (auction start date if any) |
| limit |
(1 to 10, default 5) |
| whatcat |
(name of category, eg Fantasy, SF, Historical or Misc) |
| whatmanufacturer |
(name of manufacturer) |
| format |
Horizontal (changes output to a horizontal table, not too
pretty but there if you want to use it) |
| logo |
top (shifts CoolMiniOrNot logo to the top) |
| auctionactive |
activeonly (only active auctions) |
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closedonly(only closed auctions) |
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allauctions (all auctions) |
The partnerbar is very flexible, and tags can be mixed and matched.
code:
The top 3 minis this week
or
code:
The top 10 auction prices from user haley, sorted by price.
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Dynamically add comments on my own site
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Just cut and paste this into your website. Just substituting the "XXXXX" with the id of your
image.
code:
There are three additional tags you can specify:
- bgcolor1
- bgcolor2
- fontcolor
These are background colours for the cell's tables and the fontcolor of the text.
For example,
code:
would produce white text on black and grey backgrounds for entry 6247. Note that if you use cascading stylesheets, your color selections for this script may be changed.
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FAQ
