Author:  bagelboybugle  Posted:  Jan 10, 2024 17:34  Subject:  Re: Important proposal regarding catalog variants  Viewed:  70 times  Topic:  Catalog Cancel Reply

BrickLink ID Card bagelboybugle (3408) Location:  United Kingdom, England Member Since Contact Type Status Mar 5, 2006 Seller  Store: Bagels clearout

In Catalog, Admin_Russell writes: I'm a little out of touch with this so apologies if I've missed something. Back in my selling days I got very frustrated with the amount of irrelevant variation catalogued, especially when parting out sets or trying to buy parts. I fully respect the need to find the exact variation when restoring a set or seeking a specific aesthetic but when you're just building fire engines for your kids you really do not care which variant you get, you just want to know where you can buy 40 of them from the same place, even if that is 10 of a, 25 of b and 5 of c. Perhaps where variants need to remain, undetermined from a wanted list can calculate and aggregate if the user selects a box for "find all variants"? that way a user can find someone who has 20 of one and 20 of the other just by telling the system they need 40 and they don't mind which they get. Seats are a great example of something I would have bought more of when I was building stuff had there been one product rather than two. There's a balance between technical correctness (which is difficult because mold changes are often gradual and more than one variant of a part can appear in some sets, giving significant value to the undetermined variant being the right one to use when it is in fact not known if a specific variant is intended at design or manufacture).    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.

Message is in Reply To:

Important proposal regarding catalog variants - Admin_Russell

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 [...] (5 months ago, Jan 9, 2024, to Catalog)

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