Suggestion for Pinside home page: &quot;Fun Facts&quot;

I explained this in another post, but opened this one up so it doesn't get lost.

The marketting slogan thing is fun to read, but I feel there needs to be something more so I can make Pinside my permanent homepage.

VP forums is my home page. Recently this year, they added a fun facts ("did you know?") info pane on the welcome page. Lots of fun little pinball trivia that pinheads like myself absolutely love to check out.

If your lucky, you'll find a pinball machine's wikipedia or fan page for stuff like this, but I would rather have it all there on my home page.

Stuff like (but not limited to):

1 ) The cows appearing in alot of pinball games for example.

2 ) Voice-over celebrity facts. Well-known examples are Tina Fey as the voice for the damsel in Medieval Madness, Steve Ritchie as the voice of the Black Knight, Ed Boon as Funhouse's Rudy, Doug Watson as the martian in Attack from Mars, Stephanie Rogers as the voice of the Bride of Pinbot, and Carlene Carter as the voice of Red in Roadshow.

3 ) Designer's first game trivia. Atari's Airborne Avenger - Steve Ritchie. William's Banzai Run - Pat Lawlor. Bally's Corvette - George Gomez. All examples.

4 ) Technical achievments & accomplishments. T2 having the first video mode, or The Addams Family being the best-selling machine of all time, are examples.

5 ) Publisized pinball scandals. The legal battle that went on over the art in Bally's Space Invaders, or "Black Friday" at Williams' Pinball-Division are examples.

6 ) Pinball art backstories. The batteries for example on Elvira's bed for Bally's Scared Stiff backglass, has a sexual story behind it; flashlight was placed next to it to avoid concerns. Another one is Python's heartfelt homage to American Vietnam-War veterans with the driver on the backglass to William's Taxi.

7 ) Pinball movie-license game snafu stories. William's Bram Stoker's Dracula game was originally meant to be a pinball for Alien 3, is an example.

8 ) Pinball-sightings in popular media (movies and TV). The Gottlieb Rocky machine appearing in the Rocky III film, is a good example.

9 ) Little less-known stories like how pinball designer John Trudeau, gained the monicker of "Dr. Flash".

I'm sure people on the forums can come up with more, and add to the trivia items. Knowledge is fun, and even more fun if it's about pinball, which we adore.

#2 14 years ago

RVM

robin

Thanks for this great idea! Couldn't we easily implement this by showing a random line from a trivia from a random machine? For example, Twilight zone (http://pinside.com/pinball/archive/twilight-zone/details) detail page shows some trivia.

Basically, I could pick one trivia from a random machine and show it on the homepage, just like it is done with the slogans. This way we already have the system in place where every user can insert their trivia. Not too much work to build, I guess.

The only downside to this approach is that all trivia need to be attached to a single game.

#3 14 years ago

JMG

drbond

Inactive member

Random trivia would be great!

The fun facts are for the most part, already implemented in the "Details" tab for Pinside, but its sort of a pain to get there in the first place (you have to manually look up a specific machine). I imagine some pinheads browsing the site quickly, don't even know about it to be honest.

Would have to add to the "Details" sections for individual machines if more trivia is to be updated/added. Kinda of a pain, but would be fun to see that stuff randomly show up on the home page.

I'm pretty sure VP forums just has a randomizer choose stuff out of a data pool somewhere, because it'll show new stuff/facts on a page refresh.

#4 14 years ago

???

Brokedad

Retired Pinside hero

14y 3,138

I did a trivia contest for awhile but it was difficult that way. It was very hard to continually come up with new questions and almost all of them could be found using a search engine. So it wasn't what people knew but what person searched first when it was posted. Some kind of trivia as a informational theme might be a nice thing.

#5 14 years ago

JMG

drbond

Inactive member

Just posted my fun-facts on those individual machine "Details: The numbers" pages Robin.

It looks like some game's fun-fact text bodies don't include the name of the pinball machine. Probably be cool on a welcome page info window to have a thumbnail of the pinball machine next to the informational fun-fact (else you won't have any idea of what game I would be talking about).

#6 14 years ago

RVM

robin

Great stuff! I was just wondering how I was going to solve that problem, many trivia indeed don't have the game name included. Putting the thumbnail of the game backglass right next to it is an excellent idea

#7 14 years ago

RVM

robin

I have implemented the "Fun Facts" feature on the home page in a box called "Did you know?" (Any other title suggestion is welcome!)

After implementing the feature, I found out that a lot of the fun facts (trivia) in our database are just not THAT fun to be on our homepage

So I figured we should "tag" the best trivia in the database. This requires some manual labour but this way we'll only be showing those facts that are really interesting for a wider audience.

I have now set the box on the homepage to only display trivia that contain the word [feat]. I already added the [feat] tag in three trivia texts, one for The Addams Family and two about Twilight Zone. Take a look at their respective 'edit machine details' forms to see how I added this tag. Then feel free to add your own [feat] tags to any trivia for any game that you find interesting to be put on the homepage.

By the way, a game can have multiple trivia. They are separated by an line feed (<enter>. The [feat] tag should be part of the line, in front of the text you want to make appear in the trivia box.

Hope my explanation makes sense. Now I would suggest that anyone who reads this picks 5 games (or more!) and check out their trivia in the details screen. If there's one that you feel should be in the homepage Trivia box, just put the word [feat] in front of it!

Enjoy! Any suggestions are welcome...

#8 14 years ago

JMG

drbond

Inactive member

Aaahhhh...

Well, I've now made Pinside my homepage. Goodbye VP Forums!

Thanks for putting it up Robin.

Now, we just need to clean up that info on the game detail pages, and its going to look sweet.

#9 14 years ago

JMG

drbond

Inactive member

http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?gid=393

I'll keep going through "Details: The Numbers" tabs this week, and clean some up.

I'll be adding some stuff in those tabs, as I go through the list...filling in using what I remember in my head to detail some fun little facts people may not know of their favorite pinball machine(s).

Some machines should be showing up correctly now on the home page under "Did you know?".

Not limited to these machines:

HS, TAF Gold, TAF, MM, MB, Taxi, BK, BK2K, CFTBL, TZ, T2, SS, FH, DM, Corvette, FP, LOTR, BR, BoP, The Shadow, BSD, Hollywood Heat, and Airborne Avenger.

======================================================
On a side note, I was trying to look for an old 1965 Gotllieb EM pin called "Buckaroo" on pinside and had no luck.

Was trying to flag it for a fun-fact, but no luck. Buckaroo is Python Anghelo's favorite pinball machine; designer/artist behind legendary games for Williams like "Pinbot" & "Taxi".

#10 14 years ago

RVM

robin

Ah, that's good to hear! And even better that you are helping us clean up the database!
As for your question, Pinside only has Solid State pins in the database.

#11 14 years ago

RVM

robin

I have now added the same 'magic' for the trivia box as we have in the slogans box. This will allow people to load a new fun fact without having to refresh the homepage.

The cool thing is that you only get one trivia per machine, when you use this dynamic reload. It keeps a list of all machines it has displayed trivia for. So now you can really click away at those fun facts!

I have moved the box up a bit, above the Pinballnews headlines.

Since I think this is a supercool feature, I have also added it to the archive page: http://pinside.com/pinball/archive

#12 14 years ago

JMG

drbond

Inactive member

Doing some more game details cleanup before I go to bed.

I was getting this error on "Show another fun fact" button (logged in with username, and logged out).

error_on_hitting_Show_another_fun_fact.jpg

#13 14 years ago

ICE

IceHill

Pinside member

Ljubljana

14y 43,150 255 1 40

This trivia stuff is great!

#14 14 years ago

RVM

robin

Thanks for noticing, stupid mistake by me (I forgot to test as a "logged out" user)!

It should work properly now!

Also added a blog post about this: http://pinside.com/pinball/blog/fun-facts

#15 14 years ago

JMG

drbond

Inactive member

Heading to bed.

Looks awesome! I already dumped VP forums as my homepage.

I'm not getting that error Robin, but after spamming the "show another fun fact" button I get an empty thumbnail and text body (like when it gets to the end). I'm guessing its not loading data anymore after so many clicks (?)

keep_clicking_on_show_another_fun_fact.jpg

#16 14 years ago

RVM

robin