Writing Reviews for Brickset This article is a set of instruction on using the Brickset set review pane. The aim is to help guide members write reviews by showing all the features available in the Brickset review pane. There is a particular section on editing photos, uploading them to an image sharing website and adding the image URL to the Brickset review. Accessing the Review Pane The Review pane can be accessed by two methods: 1. Review this set link on the Set Details pane. 2. Writing a review link above the first or most recent review of the set in question. You do not need to own the set before writing a review. Review Pane At the top of the Review pane is the Set Title and Set Details taken from the Brickset database. The reviewer is asked to use sliders to rate the set from 1 (poor) to 5 (good) on the following five criteria: • Overall rating
Transcript
Writing Reviews for Brickset
This article is a set of instruction on using the Brickset set review pane. The aim is to help guide members write reviews by showing all the features available in the Brickset review pane.
There is a particular section on editing photos, uploading them to an image sharing website and adding the image URL to the Brickset review.
Accessing the Review Pane
The Review pane can be accessed by two methods:
1. Review this set link on the Set Details pane.
2. Writing a review link above the first or most recent review of the set in
question. You do not need to own the set before writing a review.
Review Pane
At the top of the Review pane is the Set Title and Set Details taken from the Brickset database.
The reviewer is asked to use sliders to rate the set from 1 (poor) to 5 (good) on the following five criteria:
• Overall rating
• Building experience
• Parts
• Playability
• Value For Money
All the sliders are pre-set at a median value of 3 at the beginning of the review.
Brickset will calculate the average Overall rating from all reviews of that set and post that score in the Set Details pane.
The second part of the Review pane is where members can start writing Your review.
The first thing members are asked is to tell Brickset what sort of LEGO fan you are.
You are asked whether you are a:
• KFOL (Kid Follower of LEGO)
• TFOL (Teenage Follower of LEGO)
• AFOL (Adult Follower of LEGO)
• Parent
• Educator
The member is asked to add a Review title, please enter a title that summarise your thoughts about the set.
Brickset then merges this data and places it at the top of the review:
Review Title Written by {Member Name} ({Type of FOL category}, {reviewer status}) in {Country}, {Date}
Brickset has three levels of reviewer status; Gold, Silver and Bronze
Gold reviewers have 20 or more helpful reviews, Silver reviewers have between 10 and 19 helpful reviews while Bronze reviewers have at least five helpful reviews.
The reviewer status field is left blank if a member has not yet reached Bronze reviewer status.
A review is considered helpful if it has been rated by four or more people and 75% or more of the ratings are 'helpful'.
A member’s reviewer status can be checked at the Top reviewers page.
Review Page
The Review page is the area where you can write your review. Headings have been provided to help you structure your review. Feel free to remove them if you want to start from scratch.
At the top of the Review page is the menu.
BlockStyles
On the Paragraph menu reviewers can select one of three pre-set BlockStyles:
Heading 2 – Rockwell 18 Font Used in the Review Title
Heading 3 – Rockwell 15 Font Used for headings in the Review
Paragraph – Helvetica 10.5 Font Used for the body of the review
There are two other BlockStyles not included this list:
Hyperlink – Rockwell 11.5 Font Used for hyperlinks
>>Bullets – Helvetica 10.5 Font Used for bulleted lists
Brickset automatically renders hyperlinks in the hyperlink BlockStyle (without underlining) for any hyperlinks placed in the review.
Brickset automatically renders the bullets with a distinctive double chevrons BlockStyle for any bulleted list in the review.
With all the styles above, Brickset automatically adds space above and below each paragraph so there is no need to use redundant returns to add space between text.
Shortcut Keys
Several common shortcut keys can be used when writing in the Review page:
Ctrl/Cmd + B Bold
Ctrl/Cmd + I Italic
Ctrl/Cmd + U Underline
Ctrl/Cmd + A Select all
Ctrl/Cmd + X Cut
Ctrl/Cmd + C Copy
Ctrl/Cmd + V Paste
Hyperlinks
Reviewers can insert hyperlinks in their review to pages within Brickset or
external websites.
Select the Menu select Hyperlinks. This will display the Links dialogue box.
Paste the URL into the URL field.
It is possible to customise some features of how the link operates by features in
the Target and Advanced tabs but most reviewers will not need to touch these
options.
Screen Tips
Brickset has two default types of hyperlinks:
• Hyperlinks to URLs in Brickset open in the current tab.
• Hyperlinks to external URLs open in a new tab and display a links to
external website, opens in a new tab screen tip
Editing Images
Any picture editing software can be used provided that it is capable of cropping and resizing the images. This review will look at using the free Microsoft Office Picture Manager.
Open the image in your preferred picture manager software.
On the Picture menu select the Crop option.
Use the Crop Handles to select the area of the image which you are focussing
on.
Select OK when completed.
To complete the image editing, resize the image. Ideally images will only be a
maximum of 800px wide or high. This reviewer resizes all images to be 500px
wide.
On the Picture menu select the Resize option.
Resize the image as required.
Select OK when completed.
Save the image into your Pictures library on your device. Any image format is
acceptable although JPEG and PNG formats are most common.
Uploading Images
Upload your images onto an image sharing website. There are several free
image sharing websites - this reviewer uses Flickr®.
Ensure that the images are visible to everyone.
Inserting Images into your Brickset Review
On the review Menu select the Insert Image button.
This will open the Image Properties dialogue box. Brickset requires the URL of
the image from the file sharing website to be copied into the URL field.
On your image sharing website, select the image to be inserted. On Flickr® this is
the stylised arrow on the bottom right of the Share Photo page.
There may be several image sizes available. Select the Original size.
Once the correct size and HTML options are selected, right click and Copy the
URL or Ctrl/Cmd C.
The full URL contains some unnecessary HTML coding that must be removed.
Below is an example of the full HTML that would be copied when inserting the
URL into the Brickset Image Properties dialogue box.
The {UserName} is the user name from the image sharing website.
