The Filters when browsing the site are the core of TARDIS Guide, they let you filter Stories, Collectables, Quotes, and Members.
I’ve been a bit restricted as to how they can work in the past, but I’ve been working on a complete rewrite of it which is almost ready!
Here is what is coming:
Faster loading of all filters and search results all around
The ability to select “None” for all filters. For example, easily find stories with NO companions, or NO Villains, useful for searches and also for fixing stories
Location filter is coming back! With an easier way to drill-down
Customise filters directly on the page - add/remove filters on the fly without having to go to My Account to do so.
Remembers layout: open/close state of filters stay how you left them
All new Advanced filtering which will allow multiple conditions. For example - find stories featuring the Ninth or Tenth Doctor, including Rose or Martha, but none that include Mickey Smith or Captain Jack. That complex filter was impossible before but it will soon work!
I just wanted to know if you had any ideas for changes I could make to improve website filtering for your use cases?
Please let me know below your ideas for new filters, or changes to the current ones.
The “Past/Present/Future” Time Travel filter isn’t really fit for purpose (it was really designed for just a handful of TV stories but it has to cover everything) so I want to replace that with a filter that says when the story is set.
Something like Time setting? Timeframe? I am not sure about the name yet.
That needs some work to design it as it might get complicated (do we put exact years like 2601 or “25th Century” for example), and I might make a new thread for that, but just wanted to point out that it is coming!
What’s to prevent us from adding multiple timeframes?
Why not both? That would make it easier for some searches wouldn’t it? I assume that if a story only has 2601 but not 25th Century, the search would only pull if you’re searching for a certain year?
This could be a great solution to the problem of some stories having unknown dates. It could work in a similar way to Location. For example, The Impossible Astronaut could be:
21st century > 2010s > 2011
(Not all of these need be shown on the story page, but they would all be in the data, and ’the 2010s’ could be accessible from ‘2011’ the same way ‘Scotland’ is accessible from ‘Glasgow’ in the Locations filter.)
It would be a great way to filter by date—if you want to find all the DW stories that take place in the 1700s or the 1950s (or, say, London in the 1960s) it would only be a few clicks away!
I’d personally find it useful to save searches you do frequently and pull them back up from the filters page, since at the moment I’ve got a few searches bookmarked that I pull up repeatedly. (Mostly being able to pull up 9-12 and 13-15 quickly for Whodle.)
I also find it a little inconsistent that when I click on Stories->Doctor Who->All Doctor Who, it goes to a browse/search screen, but if I click on, say, Stories->Doctor Who->The Third Doctor, I wind up on a page for that set. And since that’s a set, if what I actually wanted was everything with the 3rd and 4th Doctor, I have to go through the first, as I can’t just add the 4th to the latter.
Admittedly, not sure how to solve the latter, but it’s definitely something I’ve accidentally done before…
I agree with this suggestion! But also, I would love to see how hyper specific we’d be able to get. For example if a story gives us an exact date, then putting that down (this would probably be most often for stories that are pure historicals or holidays).
Obviously that might not be the most practical or feasible given some stories might give a date but not a year.
But, i can just picture some beautiful timeline being made placing stories in a bizarre yet wonderful chronological order.
A problem with this is that some stories don’t have dates? Or only the novelisations of TV stories have dates, or two different stories give the first story two different and contradictory dates. It could work but it’ll get kind of messy, I think. (although I suppose much the same is true of locations)
I imagine most stories wouldn’t get more specific than a decade, or a year. And then assumably there’d have to curatorion rules for what is considered proof of the date somethings set, which could definitely lead to a whole lot of admin
I’ve been meaning to ask for a little while if the promised ‘saved filters’ for the randomiser are at all on the horizon. Seems half-relevant here so here I am, in case it’s part of the same build. I’ve been using the randomiser a lot more lately and always setting the same fairly specific parameters. Hardly the end of the world at all but given that it does say the saved filters are coming soon, I wonder if they might also be part of this work?
An “and” filter for raitings, or just one for “any raiting” (opposite of not raited)
Add “stories I own” to the list of filters. Not only would this allow filtering owned stories on a narrowed selection than “literally everything”, it’s inconvinient to have to go to a whole seperate page that exists purly to apply this one filter.
The ability to add multiple filters before applying them. I frequent check all released stories I own and haven’t done, and this process is:
Navigate to “stories I own”
Wait for that massive search to complete
Click “not completed”
Wait for that massive search to complete
Apply a release date filter of today
Finally wait for the search I actually wanted to perform.
Step 4 (and possibly 2) are redundant and prevent me from setting the remaining filters
I’d like an option to view specifically stories that don’t have enough ratings for an average yet. Or just something for viewing things without many ratings in general.
The opposite would be true as well. Every now and then I want to check the lowest raited stories, and have to wade through several pages of “???” To find where the raitings start
Again, this is more related to the randomiser than the main search, but it’s possible the same applies (I haven’t checked because I’m lazy). Currently, the filter for ‘Rated by me’ gives all the options for how a story has been rated, but there isn’t an option for ‘hasn’t been rated’. There’s a filter for ‘Only stories I have not completed’, which for some members will equate to the same thing. But for me, when I’m randomising, I’d like to include those I’ve completed but not rated (i.e. marked as completed because I did so long BTG, but currently lacking a rating because I don’t remember my opinion clearly enough) and exclude those I have rated. Hoping this makes sense and apologies again if it’s not relevant to what you’re asking. Just thought I’d mention in case the same applies to the main search function.
