Mocdex

[Dakar A]

Last night, I had an idea that I personally think was brilliant. I often go to many different websites with Lego (TBB, EB, The living brick, Micro Bricks, Classic town, Brickshelf), and sometimes all I'm looking for is MOC's. I enjoy speculations and such, but I personally have never seen a website for MOC's only. So I thought: "There are quite a few people in the AFOL community who might be inteested in something like this". Here are some criterion that I thought up:

Comprehensive MOC index

Random page option

All MOC's would be listed, on-site, with external links

Informational blurb about each creation

Easy to browse

Community section

Soft on the eyes background

So I was wondering if anyone had any advice or would like to collaborate on this project. Tell any advice in the comments. For now, I believe the name Mocdex has a nice ring to it.

Dakar

[Nealybealy]

Last night, I had an idea that I personally think was brilliant. I often go to many different websites with Lego (TBB, EB, The living brick, Micro Bricks, Classic town, Brickshelf), and sometimes all I'm looking for is MOC's. I enjoy speculations and such, but I personally have never seen a website for MOC's only. So I thought: "There are quite a few people in the AFOL community who might be inteested in something like this". Here are some criterion that I thought up:

Comprehensive MOC index

Random page option

All MOC's would be listed, on-site, with external links

Informational blurb about each creation

Easy to browse

Community section

Soft on the eyes background

So I was wondering if anyone had any advice or would like to collaborate on this project. Tell any advice in the comments. For now, I believe the name Mocdex has a nice ring to it.

Dakar

Sounds like a cool idea! Sort of like Brickshelf, but another site like this would be nice. I would definitely join the site.

[TheWarden]

I find it odd you aren't satisfied by what I feel are a large amount of pages out there. Generally, MOCPages, CuuSoo, and the newest addition by LEGO themself, ReBrick, are mostly MOCS.

Heck, each forum here has a stickied thread of indexed MOCS.

If you haven't got into Flickr MOC groups (by theme, generally) then you are missing out there too.

Oh well, to each is their own.

Edited January 11, 2012 by TheWarden

[Nebsirob]

Comprehensive MOC index

Easy to browse

These two, would be the most instering things for me.

I just tried the aforementioned sites, and the overview (or, in some cases the results I got via the search-function),

were... well let's say, it's not easy to actually find the kind of MOCs, I was looking for.

Edited January 11, 2012 by Nebsirob

[Dakar A]

I just had an epiphany. The sure could operate similarly to YouTube, with MOC's instead of videos. The homepage could have trending MOC's, with different categories of popular MOC's (town, space, sic-Fi, star wars, etc.). You could also search through all MOCs, or just browse by going to a random MOC. Hope thislends more clarity.

Dakar

[Brickdoctor]

It would be near impossible to index every single MOC yourself, and harder still to get everyone who builds MOCs to submit all their MOCs. Most builders just post on one or two sites. I, for example, use flickr primarily. I gave up on MOCPages and use Brickshelf/Majhost only for other miscellaneous images.

[Flipz]

I just had an epiphany. The sure could operate similarly to YouTube, with MOC's instead of videos. The homepage could have trending MOC's, with different categories of popular MOC's (town, space, sic-Fi, star wars, etc.). You could also search through all MOCs, or just browse by going to a random MOC. Hope thislends more clarity.

Dakar

This sounds an awful lot like ReBrick, only run by some kind of bot that would search through and index the MOCs from the rest of the Internet automatically. The last part would be very hard to do, and honestly I don't think it'd be that useful. As great as MOCs are, unless it's something spectacular there's not a WHOLE lot of reason to dig back more than a year or two or three in your search; odds are, someone's already done something similar to the MOC you're looking for, and has likely improved upon the original design a little, too. The most valuable part about old MOCs--the thought process behind using different techniques and such, especially when the builder had to figure out a custom-built solution to a problem that was solved with the release of a new brick--would tend to be lost in a YouTube/ReBrick-esque format. I love the old MOCs I stumble across here, because often there is dicsussion about technique and design style and process; the forum setup allows for and encourages such discussion, while the format you describe would focus on the "latest and greatest." That's not a bad thing, but it makes the usefulness of cataloguing hundreds of thousands of old MOCs minimal.

[Fallenangel]

I have to agree. I had a similar idea a while back until I realized that it simply wasn't feasible. 'Comprehensive MOC index'? How comprehensive? Builders of all ages, genres, sizes, audiences? I think you underestimate the scope and extent of the tradition. Not to mention the fact that regulation standards on YouTube and MOCpages are absolutely terrible.

[Siegfried]

Interestingly I've wanted to do this for years. The first time it occurred to me was when BrickShelf started going dodgy. I though... "Darn! All these MOCs that are in one seachable place! How can we replace this?". Around that time I was a bit doubtful of the future of free hosting due to several sites dying on me so to me the solution was for people to self-host and then all we'd need was an index... People could then post MOCs on this magical index, including where they posted it on sites like Flickr and Brickshelf so there was a degree of reliability and then people could vote on MOCs... blah, blah, blah.

But I've never got around to actually doing it (SiegDex is supposed to eventually cover that for EB at least... supposedly ) due to other EB commitments and that darn real-life thing. I don't rule out it happening, but with the way my life has been going in the last few years it's probably not going to happen.

But as Flipz said ReBrick is very similar in concept. I'm still not sure if I like it or not, but for the short term at least it's the closest there is to what you want!

[Dakar A]

Interestingly I've wanted to do this for years. The first time it occurred to me was when BrickShelf started going dodgy. I though... "Darn! All these MOCs that are in one seachable place! How can we replace this?". Around that time I was a bit doubtful of the future of free hosting due to several sites dying on me so to me the solution was for people to self-host and then all we'd need was an index... People could then post MOCs on this magical index, including where they posted it on sites like Flickr and Brickshelf so there was a degree of reliability and then people could vote on MOCs... blah, blah, blah.

But I've never got around to actually doing it (SiegDex is supposed to eventually cover that for EB at least... supposedly ) due to other EB commitments and that darn real-life thing. I don't rule out it happening, but with the way my life has been going in the last few years it's probably not going to happen.

But as Flipz said ReBrick is very similar in concept. I'm still not sure if I like it or not, but for the short term at least it's the closest there is to what you want!

Hmm... Sounds like you're right Siegfried. Untill a group of computer savy, motivated AFOL's come together, this seems to be closer to a dream than reality. But, you never know. Mabye with a bit of collaboration between users on here, we could churn out some simple guidelines, or at least an organizational system that could be used in the future, wether here on EB or on a MOC index. So let's get some ideas out there!

(P.S.- thanks for all the feedback!)

Dakar