Silk Road forums
Support => Feature requests => Topic started by: Burning Babylon on September 23, 2013, 12:36 am
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Due to Atlantis shutting down soon ( http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=213396 ) there's not many days left to analyze how Atlantis has functioned. The purpose of this thread is to try and detail every single Feature Atlantis used which was either unique or used differently compared to Silk Road. Now I registered a Vendor Account there many months ago but never got around to paying the bond and using it as such, so my perspective will be quite limited in the sense I know roughly how Silk Road works but I only know how Atlantis works by my experience of browsing around on it. I will post my perspective of it below but hopefully some more experienced Atlantis users can post their Perspective and more importantly some Vendors who have access to functions I'm not able to see currently.
A) Introduction
B) Login
C) Start
D) Settings
E) Profile
F) Listings
G) Unique
A) Introduction
Atlantis decided right from the start to differentiate itself from Silk Road by utilizing an Introduction page which clearly state their name and their benefits over other sites ( these benefits were clearly not entirely accurate but it's a difference nonetheless ). It seems it was built for a minimum resolution of 1152x864, for reference this is how it looked like 2013-09-22: http://torimagesbp2vt3u.onion/i/mlMU.png
B) Login
The login page differentiated itself by including three additional things, namely "About", "Forgot Password" and the line "IMPORTANT! Please verify that your URL is: atlantisrky4es5q.onion". The last line is particularly ironic as Atlantis was periodically used in phishing attempts by other websites and clearly that last line was either not included or changed in any such phishing attempt. One could argue the Silk Road system for Recovering Accounts is better compared to the Atlantis way of doing it since it's not tied to an e-mail and it can still be reset through the forums - the only question is how many are aware of this? For reference this is how the login page looked like 2013-09-22: http://torimagesbp2vt3u.onion/i/KvEv.png
C) Start
Starting out with a reference picture right away dated 2013-09-22: http://torimagesbp2vt3u.onion/i/GdPq.png
Now there's a couple of menus not visible due to utilization of dropdown menus, they can be seen in this image: http://torimagesbp2vt3u.onion/i/LLh6.png
If we take the dropdown menus into consideration and compare we see there's a quite different focus on the Start Page, with Atlantis trying to give access to almost anything by just clicking once. Noteworthy for Vendors is the ability to mark orders as "Approved", ie. an option of marking an order as being processed - this alternative does not exist on Silk Road.
If we go to the Front Page itself there's by default 40 listings on Atlantis, while Silk Road has 16 listings. The listings themselves differ slightly in appearance, Atlantis has a Picture with an alternative of three different overlays ( Litecoin Price, Bitcoin Price and Verified Seller ) in addition to having the dimensions 160x115 compared to Silk Road which utilizes just a picture with the dimensions 180x135. Another small Feature Atlantis has is it will show a small Popup indicating the Litecoin Price for the first four listings - however not for a single one after that ( Programming Error or just no one has bothered to fix it, might be due to a "Featured Listing System" ). Atlantis had one additional Sorting Method called "Random Items" which Silk Road doesn't have an option to active ( although the Start Page kind of works like that ), which does exactly what it sounds like.
D) Settings
Reference picture dated 2013-09-23: http://torimagesbp2vt3u.onion/i/bTJt.png
Pretty similar to Silk Road overall, with the notable exceptions Passwords Support 6-50 characters ( why there even is a cap is a mystery ) and the Options "Order Notifications", "Auto-encrypt incoming messages using GPG" and the option to show the balance in Litecoin/Bitcoin. Order Notifications and Fan Notifications sound like Interesting Features, but I haven't seen them in action so someone else will have to explain how these work. As for the Country Setting Atlantis utilizes 237 unique Regions, it seems fairly up to date as can be seen from the post http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=171551.msg1239820#msg1239820 - Åland Islands is one of the Missing Regions, supposedly there is one more missing - no idea which one.
E) Profile
For a Reference picture for a Profile I decided to take a screenshot of Atlantis biggest Vendor, adventure_time ( AdventureTimeSupply on Silk Road now ) - dated 2013-09-23: http://torimagesbp2vt3u.onion/i/5fov.png
The first noticeable difference here is Atlantis utilizes textboxes, although they do not appear to be customizable in size by the Vendor. Other than that it's pretty much identical, although the Atlantis way of doing it gives significantly less space for the Profile Description. Now it's worth mentioning the "Report User" function is basically worthless, by pressing it all that happens is you're given the following message: http://torimagesbp2vt3u.onion/i/EFrW.png - I presume a Moderator will supposedly send a message after clicking this but what a mess compared to Silk Road where you're given the ability to mention exactly why you're reporting.
F) Listings
Atlantis just went down and I can't reconnect so I will return to this section later when it's up again. As for the structure of listings it's identical to Silk Road in the sense one has to include weight in the title itself and there's not many options to filter or compare with other listings easily.
G) Unique
Here I will list all Unique Features Atlantis has compared to Silk Road - will update this section as Atlantis is currently down for some reason.
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I'm hoping to reply to this in much more detail later this weekend, but I do want to point out a couple of the differences that I miss the most from the viewpoint of a former Atlantis vendor's point of view.
1) Fan Messages
On Silk Road I can look at my profile and see I have a bunch of fans, but I'm not exactly sure how that's of any benefit to me here. Maybe some buyers here can enlighten me on what happens when you become a fan of a vendor. On Atlantis if I had fans I was able to send out a bulk message to all members that added themselves to my fan list. This allowed me to send out what I called "Fan Spam" when I had sales or new products, directly to the people that wanted to hear from me. On Silk Road it seems like there's no direct way to communicate with my loyal customers and that blows. Since Silk Road defaults to sorting by best selling, the only way to get the word out is to spam the forums and reddit, but that is going out to everyone and feels more like sleazy spam than sending messages people that have directly shown an interest in my service.
2) Vendor Forum
Here I have to wait about a month before I can access the vendor forum here. If I have to pay $500 for the privilege of joining the ranks of great Silk Road vendors I think I should be able to communicate with other vendors and get support. The idea of keeping the Vendors Roundtable somewhat exclusive is a very good idea, but I do think there should be a newbies vendor forum where people like me can communicate with other vendors .
Anyway, those are my two most pressing issues coming from Atlantis to Silk Road. As I said I hope to get more into the details this weekend if I have enough time.
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If you are a fan a buyer can always find a vendor when they are in stealth mode, everyone else can't see you. You also always get a link in your main page to get to the vendor easily without having to do a search.
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It's just a tiny thing but being able to mark orders 'confirmed' before marking them 'sent' made life so much easier.
Means it's easy to distinguish between orders you've seen and maybe packed but not sent and new orders that come in while you were dealing with older ones.
Like I say it's a tiny thing but makes life that much easier. Please, please implement it here DPR. Ta.
Thinking of more...
-they had a thing where the buyer could cancel the order any time until the vendor marked it confirmed, that was useful (though somewhat disappointing at times) too. Means we don't have to deal with cancellation requests via pm and buyers get coins back quicker.
-On the order page the item quantity needs to be bolder or higher contrast or in a different position or something, right now it's too easy to miss.
-The site asked if you were sure before performing any actions, this is really useful for stoners and busy people alike.
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I processed orders on Atlantis.
Some features that I really liked as a vendor there:
1. You had several options when marking orders, such as "accepted" and "in transit" so you can better signal to your customers the status of their package. On SR I find this area like bloodletting now, it's either "in transit" or... no other option.
2. I was given a chance to leave feedback for my buyers, and view what other vendors have said about them before I accepted their order. Very useful tool and I found I was using it more than I thought I would. It didn't seem to be abused in any noticeable amount either. Vendors left responsible, helpful advice because they seemed to foster the "life you save may be your own" mentality.
3. Adding listings was a breeze. Any vendor here nows that one listing will require maybe a dozen refreshings! Over there you could just click all these boxes and load a new listing super fast with a single refresh. Managing your listings was a lot more efficient as well.