Collectible phone cards database passed 90,000 listed cards today

A few months ago, I've decided that it's too hard for one person to gather all the requested information about collectibles that needs to be out there for the collectors to use. Even worse, I'm not a collector myself thus can easily do some embarrassing mistakes.

So the decision was made to let the collectors on the site help with what's most important for them on the site - information about their collectibles.

At the time, Islands Phonecards Database (later renamed colnect.com) had ~30,000 listed collectible phone cards. The amount of listed phone cards have been growing quite rapidly and as of today over 90,000 cards (from 172 countries) are listed! Collectors managing their personal collection on the site have ~2.5 million physical collectible phone cards!

Who deserves kudos for this achievement? Not me, I was just providing the technology that allowed the collectors to place the content they wanted. Many collectors have become contributors and editors and I'd like to thank them all.

Most importantly, Vadym Sulimenko has been coordinating the contributions and supporting collectors who wanted to help but needed guidance.
These are the collectors who have recieved 3 contribution stars on our site which mean they were working long and hard on making the site as good as it is: Brocky Godzilla harmesse Hugo2 iflvico mozistv nzexchange Paolo73 thorsten.

My inspiration for the catalog building process is taken from WikiPedia though I prefer to give editing rights slowly. Random visitors cannot update any information. Registered collectors can comment and upload photos on the site or contribute new card information which will be reviewed by more experienced contributors.

Internationalizing the site

colnect.com is available in 25 languages:
English | العربية | Български | 汉字 | Hrvatski | Česky | Nederlands | Suomi | Français | Deutsch | Ελληνικά | עברית | Magyar | Italiano | 우리말 | Polski | Português BR | Português PT | Română | Русский | Slovenščina | Español | Svenska | ภาษาไทย | Türkçe |

Personally, I can communicate well in only 3 languages, fake some conversation in a few more and use some phrases to amuse an audience in a party. That still doesn't amount to 25 languages with their different scripts.

How was this done? The answer is simple: when your users love your project and enjoy its services, the nicer ones are keen to help when asked nicely.

The technology behind translations is quite straight-forward although different approaches exist. The important thing is to provide the translators with an easy interface they can understand. Handing out a text file full of expressions needing translations is a bad call for two reasons: it's boring for the translators and the translations may be out of context.

On the side of this post you can see the way translators (collectors) on colnect.com - Islands Phonecards Database are helping out. As they use the site, small "translate" icons appear next to expressions that haven't been translated yet. Clicking one such icon pops out a window that allows submitting the translation. When translated, the "translate" icon is gone. It can later be restored to correct the translation - that's why you see so many of them in the picture attached.

There are most issues about creating a multi-lingual collectors website but I prefer to keep my posts short.

The Islands Phonecards Database story

To learn a bit about colnect.com and its history you're welcomed to read this post made by a collector.