| Redisplay Messages: Compact | Brief | All | Full Show Messages: All | Without Replies| Author: | benelson  | | Posted: | Jan 25, 2024 02:04 | | Subject: | Re: Important proposal regarding catalog variants | | Viewed: | 56 times | | Topic: | Catalog | |
| Though I have an active seller account, I was unaware of this impending change
until Bricklink actually emailed members, two weeks after this forum posting.
(I nearly typed “proposed” change, but that’s not accurate. The forum post and
email are clearly informing members about a change that has already been decided,
rather than offering a proposal and requesting feedback before decisions are
finalized.)
Even though the tone of the initial outreach from Bricklink doesn’t really feel
welcoming to user input, I’ll offer a couple thoughts. First, as a seller, I
don’t do bulk sales of parts, and my sales are extremely low volume. So these
changes won’t materially affect me. But I can imagine that sellers who’ve invested
time & effort into maintaining these inventory distinctions might be very upset.
Not only have they already been doing more work to offer buyers the highest possible
level of specificity, but they’re now also shouldering the burden of having to
add variant descriptions to their inventories. That seems doubly unfair. Or triply
unfair, if there’s also a significant difference in the sale value of different
variants.
As a buyer, I can imagine that these merges would make navigating Bricklink extremely
cumbersome for anyone interested in mold variations. In particular, constructing
multi-shop orders using wanted lists would become virtually impossible if you
cared about mold variants. Rather than adding a particular variant to their wanted
list, a buyer would have to create carts, then check each cart for part descriptions
(which are visible in created carts, but not during the cart creation process).
And then, would potentially also have to communicate individually with each shop
to confirm whether parts without specific descriptions could be available in
variants. If any step in that chain didn’t work, the buyer would have to start
shopping from scratch. It would be essentially impossible for a collector trying
to assemble, say, a 1980s Classic Space set using a minifigure torso that has
short interior prongs and tiles without bottom grooves to use the function of
shopping with wanted lists. That website function would be basically broken for
that user.
I also don’t entirely buy the argument that all of these variants are unnecessarily
burdensome to sellers. To me, it’s much, much easier to see the difference between
a reissue torso vs. a vintage torso than it is to distinguish between old light
gray and light bluish gray bricks. And, the grays are purely “cosmetic” differences,
not functional differences. Wouldn’t it save sellers far more effort to just
merge those color variants? I guess the point is that the logic of these particular
merges feels arbitrary, without further explanation.
I’m not entirely opposed to reducing the specificity of variants in the catalog.
I’m sure there are many genuine examples of overly detailed distinctions between
part variants, and some of those are probably among the ones proposed for merging
here. The timetable for these changes does feel rushed and kind of closed off
to member input, though, which is unfortunate in a community with so many knowledgeable
and passionate participants.
In Catalog, Admin_Russell writes:
| | Hello everyone,
As a platform, we have decided to take a hard look at some of the mold variants
that we are currently asking you to recognize. For sellers, more variants means
extra sorting and extra work while pulling orders, plus the issues that arise
from variant misunderstandings.
For buyers, excess variants mean that it's harder to assemble a wanted list,
find stores, and ultimately obtain the parts you are looking for.
I have put together a quick Help page to outline these proposed changes:
https://www.bricklink.com/help.asp?helpID=2625
Notice the date on this is coming up quickly (Feb 1), so I'm not giving a
lot of time for discussion. I'm aiming for about 1 week of discussion and
then we'll give sellers 2 weeks to adjust the descriptions on affected items
if they wish to retain the distinctions.
I plan to construct a full FAQ page with answers to all your questions. This
will serve to inform users about what was done here in February 2024, and also
help point the catalog in the right direction in the future.
To get started, I'll list a few here:
1. This sounds like you're dumbing down the BrickLink catalog to make
it easier for new users. Is that what is going on?
Not really. There are many, many other variants we expect people to sort and
care about. These ones don't really seem to matter much, and some of them
(e.g., the minifigure heads) actually cause problems for the catalog that cannot
be corrected otherwise.
2. What if I really care about a certain variant that is going away? Can I
still buy and sell that variant?
Absolutely! You can add notes to your listings to make them as "determined"
as you wish. Buyers can still search within notes for extra details, or they
can simply observe them as they browse listings.
3. How do I know which exact variants will be merged? I only see one example
in each category.
Please ask in this thread and I can be very specific. Usually we are talking
about a handful of parts and the printed versions.
4. Has a merge like this ever been done before?
Yes, there was a precedent - the Headlight Brick with Slot:
https://www.bricklink.com/message.asp?ID=1016584
It was marked for deletion a few years ago and was finally merged last August.
5. Are these the only parts up for consideration, or are there other variants
that will be merged as well?
This is all for now. Based on how well this goes, we may elect to remove other
entries later. However, we will keep all functional variants and important cosmetic
variants.
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| Author: | benelson | | Posted: | Apr 23, 2022 15:39 | | Subject: | Re: Wanted List Sort Alphabetical & Filter/Search | | Viewed: | 32 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
| I think this is an older message, but I wanted to give it a thumbs up after finding
it recently, while searching how to set the default Wanted List order to alphabetical.
(Which doesn't seem like an option currently.) I'm relatively new to
Bricklink, and while many of its quirks are endearing, it's kind of maddening
to have to re-sort the main Wanted List page to alphabetical every single time
I toggle back and forth to it. In the way that I use my Wanted Lists, the date
created is pretty much irrelevant. Thanks!
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| Author: | benelson | | Posted: | Mar 4, 2022 23:35 | | Subject: | Help identifying c. 1980 town cardboard scene | | Viewed: | 121 times | | Topic: | General | |
| Hi all, I'm relatively new to Bricklink, and hope this is an appropriate
place to post this message. I recently purchased some vintage instructions online,
and to my surprise they also included two Classic Town scenes printed on thick
paperboard, almost like a box or insert. I'm absolutely baffled as to what
they are. Based on the sets pictured, I think they're from 1979-1980; included
with the instructions was also a #6000 Idea Book and US Catalog from 1980. I've
attached a photo. Let me know if you have a sense of what they might be. Many
thanks!
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