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Hey, you can even edit forum posts here. That's nice. I'm available to answer questions if you have any.
There is lots to do here and you get somewhat paid for it!
> Wow, it's nice to feel wanted somewhere. :)
>
> Hey, you can even edit forum posts here. That's nice. I'm available to answer questions if you have any.
OMG...
What I'm I reading (and seeing on BL), I had no idea until this thread came around.
Wanted ? That's an understatement! People like you is a 'must have' my friend (hope I can call you that) :-)
Welcome, and looking forward to your input and your expertise, this site needs and deserves it ;-)
Feel free to pop me a message anytime if/when you need the slightest guidance.
Once you've learned your way around, I'm sure you'll see how great it is, and what you can do to improve the overall experience.
Cheers, Eric
> Wow, it's nice to feel wanted somewhere. :)
>
> Hey, you can even edit forum posts here. That's nice. I'm available to answer questions if you have any.
I hope you’ll feel like this can be your new home! I know you’ll be want to explore the catalog here and I know there’s missing data.
I’m sorry that BL admin is so myopic in their business decisions. You will be a big loss to them!
I have a bunch of questions but I’ll start with just one, which positions at BL ARE paid?
Thanks!
Miffy.
They're all paid positions except for the catalog administrators, the inventory administrators, the discussion moderators, the collage moderator, the links administrator, and the translated help editors.
I look forward to answering any additional questions you may have. I bear no ill will toward BrickLink, so don't expect me to start bashing them. I will say that the site is insanely out of touch at all levels with the community it exists to serve and doesn't realize that at all.
Personally I have stopped even the small amount of updates I was doing on BL and when I moved over to BO, I realised that this site actually rewards contributors
I am genuinely concerned at the direction that BL seems to be taking, almost like there is no captain at the helm.
BrickLink has its good and bad qualities as a website. I've spent a while looking around Brick Owl, which I hadn't really done before, and I see that the same is true here. I haven't spoken with Lawrence before, but I'll be emailing him today to see how open he is to site improvements.
While it is true that I left BrickLink because they would not pay me, I left for the larger principle that they don't (generally speaking, although there was a significant change implemented which I advocated for during the time I was there) reimburse anyone for their time and effort. I don't believe anyone should work for free for a for-profit company - not me and not site builders (contributors). I wouldn't go down to my local supermarket and offer to stock their store shelves for free, so what makes online companies think they have any right to expect that of me?
And when I said there that I only wanted a part-time job on BrickLink, that was true. We never discussed pay specifics, but I would still be there now if they had offered me a flat $10/hr for 24 hours a week. That's not much to ask, especially considering that I was putting in 30-40+ hours a week and I also have a full-time job.
I also left because they condescend to and ignore their community in many ways and because they are spending all their time and money working on fancy gadgets instead of solidifying their core offerings (the catalog and its inventories and the process of buying and selling). If you don't get your core offerings done right, then it is beyond me why you'd go chasing after all the side projects they're blowing so much effort on.
I feel differently about Brick Owl because the catalog is open source. This means that it is owned by the community which built it, which I strongly support. However, Brick Owl has an appearance of being unfinished in a number of areas six years after it began. If we as a community want to offer a true alternative to BrickLink, then this level of incompleteness will not be sufficient. That is why I want to speak with Lawrence before deciding what, if anything, I'll be doing here.
Thank you all again for welcoming me and I'll let you know where I stand regarding Brick Owl soon.
EDIT: I said I didn't want to badmouth BrickLink and it looks like I've already strayed into that territory. Oops. :(
> I feel differently about Brick Owl because the catalog is open source. This means that it is owned by the community which built it, which I strongly support. However, Brick Owl has an appearance of being unfinished in a number of areas six years after it began. If we as a community want to offer a true alternative to BrickLink, then this level of incompleteness will not be sufficient. That is why I want to speak with Lawrence before deciding what, if anything, I'll be doing here.
What do you mean by this?
I'm sure that Lawrence and the BO team will love to improve the site!
> > @StormChaser said:
>
> > I feel differently about Brick Owl because the catalog is open source. This means that it is owned by the community which built it, which I strongly support. However, Brick Owl has an appearance of being unfinished in a number of areas six years after it began. If we as a community want to offer a true alternative to BrickLink, then this level of incompleteness will not be sufficient. That is why I want to speak with Lawrence before deciding what, if anything, I'll be doing here.
>
> What do you mean by this?
>
> I'm sure that Lawrence and the BO team will love to improve the site!
As someone who's been on both platforms for some years, I agree that the culture here is completely different and that the admin here is much much more responsive and pro-active than they are on Bricklink. Unfortunately my main suggestion, for BrickOwl to support the most important Dutch payment method iDeal, has not been implemented yet, but I assume this is just because there's only so many projects one single person can take on. Most importantly it has been confirmed it WILL be implemented, which is already much more than what I've heard from Bricklink about the topic: exactly zero response at all despite various attempts..
Maybe now that the "oh man, no US seller will be able to charge postage properly after X date" is on the production system, other big ticket items like this can be implemented. I'm glad to hear it was confirmed that it will be taken on, that's great news, @Teup ! :-)
> What do you mean by this?
>
> I'm sure that Lawrence and the BO team will love to improve the site!
I'm sure that is the case. However, our definitions of the word "improve" may differ. I'm talking about significant, noticeable sitewide improvements which would make BO a viable competitor for BL.
Some Lego buyers require a historically accurate database in order to complete projects, but it isn't really necessary to have that in the same place they shop. There's Peeron, Rebrickable and - indeed - Bricklink, amongst others. It would, however, be awesome if we could add BrickOwl to that list.
Stormchaser, I for one do hope you get involved because I've seen some of your recent projects on Bricklink and I agreed with all of them.
While updating the catalogue here is still a voluntary activity, BrickOwl does offer 'points' in exchange for updates, which can be exchanged for rewards, mostly aimed at sellers, but perhaps Lawrence is open to taking another look at this.
It is particularly galling that the AFOL community built the Bricklink database for free only for the Bricklink company to claim it as proprietery.
Particularly as a good chunk of the Bricklink database, including the naming conventions, was lifted from Peeron in the first place.
> iDeal may have been temp deprioritized due to the US postal system change to zoned shipments for first class mail (the common method almost all of use) - that was a major implementation that had a government-driven deadline (and there's only one admin as you note) of 1/27/19, and required an API setup with our Federal postal service, etc. - and of course, he finished early in time for plenty of offline testing because he is AWESOME!! ^:)^
Oh I see, it's so easy to see the issues from your own reality but it must be so tough to run an international platform and try to be up to date and solution oriented with everyone's problems...
>
> Maybe now that the "oh man, no US seller will be able to charge postage properly after X date" is on the production system, other big ticket items like this can be implemented. I'm glad to hear it was confirmed that it will be taken on, that's great news, @Teup ! :-)
Thanks! I think it would be a great upgrade for everyone here, as the Dutch market is very large and 99% of the Dutch people who come out of their dark ages will not have PayPal and are going to pay by bank at first. That can either be a written description on how to send the payment and what details to use (like now), OR... a button (iDeal) :D Then usually after some positive experiences and some increased level of hype about Lego, Dutch users go on to sign up for PayPal and start buying abroad. Every single Dutch BL'er that I talked to signed up for PayPal after they already started buying on BL. iDeal is going to be such a great way to draw people in.. :)
> forgive me but why would the owner of this site want to change it to the way you would like to see it ? as a buyer this site is set out better than bricklink but i still buy from both sites would your time be better spent on a site of your own then would be they way you want and earn more ? as it seems no mater the story it comes down to money
BrickOwl is great, better than Bricklink, but not perfect.
A fair point (we all tend to get into the weeds of our own needs on occasion), I promise no offense was meant! :-)
> forgive me but why would the owner of this site want to change it to the way you would like to see it ? as a buyer this site is set out better than bricklink but i still buy from both sites would your time be better spent on a site of your own then would be they way you want and earn more ?
Why should the site change? To grow and improve. As to whether my vision would be appropriate, who knows?
As you say, though, my time would be better spent on a site of my own. If I think I can do things better than BrickLink and Brick Owl, then there is really only one way to prove it.
I have not met with much success regarding reform attempts at either site and I will spend my future time exclusively on the goal of creating a third LEGO buying and selling site. Hopefully the third time will be the one that gets things right, right from the start. :)
> I have not met with much success regarding reform attempts at either site and I will spend my future time exclusively on the goal of creating a third LEGO buying and selling site. Hopefully the third time will be the one that gets things right, right from the start. :)
Actually, it would be the 4th site then, as there is the German based site 'Scout', but they experience the exact same issue BO has: filling data...
You see, a few persons indeed cannot fill an entire database in a short time, as at any time one needs to avoid IP/CR infringements. New data ain't too much of a problem as it's simply available at TLG, but old data is harder as you need 'images' for all of that.
I do agree BO should put in more efforts in regards to inventories of old sets, or at least offer the option to quickly add inventories trough Bricksync, as it would improve the database.
Now should you start a new site, then I'm wondering whether you would have sufficient support from contributors to fill data. A lot of contributors came over to BO, spend their time building the database, adding images, etc, just to get away from BL and it's 'protection' policy. I doubt those same people would put in the same effort in yet another site, personally I probably wouldn't, unless there would be a serious amount of 'compensation', which would be tough for a starting site, unless it has some serious 'investments' (or investors)
Then, the next issue is 'synchronisation', works pretty good between BL and BO, if another site wants to be a competitor, then synchronisation is a 'must have' from day 1, otherwise you simply won't have enough sellers, without sellers with large variety, no buyers... No sales, no fees, no income... From my point of view it would be tough to 'survive', as 'income' would be the primary target to 'compensate' contributors (which clearly is an issue on BL, so what would be different 'elsewhere' for that matter).
I also do no feel a third, a fourth or 'xx' competitor to BL would/will make a difference, the more (smaller) competitors, to more BL will hold the overhand (divide and conquer). If one day this community wants to have a competitor that might 'eventually' outclass BL, then the only way I see that happen if there is 'joined forces' in stead of spreaded efforts.
If you do decide to start a new site, then I wish you good luck as well, but I'd rather see you talk to Lawrence, and I do hope Lawrence is willing to listen and maybe change his vision on certain things.
Cheers, Eric
>There's Peeron,
Peeron ???
Peeron hasn't been updated for 8 years...
look at the bottom:
© 1998-2011 Peeron.com
Hardly a reference... and certainly not 'historically accurate'
Granted, it does have a lot of the 'old' data.
But they just gave up along the way, and never bothered handing over their site to other people.
Last time I sent a mail (many many years ago) I wasn't even responded to, I would have gladly taken over the management of the database ;-)
> While updating the catalogue here is still a voluntary activity, BrickOwl does offer 'points' in exchange for updates, which can be exchanged for rewards, mostly aimed at sellers, but perhaps Lawrence is open to taking another look at this.
The rewards are a nice thing, but they are not sufficient enough to take this site to another level IMHO.
Ultimately, partnerships with people with 'know how' (or efforts) in various branches is IMO the only way to grow, and particularly 'grow faster'.
> Actually, it would be the 4th site then, as there is the German based site 'Scout'
Yes, I found this site after I posted my message. I wasn't aware of it previously.
> You see, a few persons indeed cannot fill an entire database in a short time
Perhaps not with photos, no, but the populating of a catalog with 100K items could be done fairly easily if the process could be automated in some way. The photos could be added gradually, but three or four dedicated contributors could still make significant inroads on the photos.
>I'm wondering whether you would have sufficient support from contributors to fill data.
Perhaps so, perhaps not. Hard to say. The prevalent thinking for startups is that you should first build a MVP and add on as necessary. I believe if you could launch with a full-featured site, meaning a site which contains features lacking on current sites, then people would naturally migrate that way. One of the key things which would draw contributors is compensating contributors, which, as you say, would require some cash up front.
The problem, then, is money.
>'income' would be the primary target to 'compensate' contributors (which clearly is an issue on BL
BrickLink has money, but they waste it through mismanagement. BrickLink could compensate contributors if they chose. BrickLink could also significantly improve many things about the catalog and buying and selling. Instead, they continue to pump out junk no one asked for and ignore the needs of the community which pays the bills. They have a corporate mentality and all of the above are merely statements of facts.
Yes, it would be tough at first for a new site to survive. That brings us back to the issue stated above: money. Without it, a new site would be doomed to failure.
> I also do no feel a third, a fourth or 'xx' competitor to BL would/will make a difference
I have already decided that I want to start a new site, but it will likely be some time before that happens (if it ever does). As we both agree, a decent sum of money must be in place before any new site could hope to rise to the forefront.
As for joining forces with an existing site, I'm confident I wouldn't be welcome back at BrickLink. As long as they continue on their current path, I wouldn't want to be there anyway. As for Brick Owl, there are some fundamental things about the site which need to change if it is ever to successfully challenge BrickLink. When I spoke with Lawrence (who was very gracious and responded quickly) I didn't sense an interest in fundamental changes.
And that's fine. It's his site and I might not be interested either if someone like me came along. I appreciate your thoughtful input as always, robernat, but I still think it would be best to start over fresh by building an exceptional and full-featured site which cares deeply about its community of users.
I really hope the new market place will materialise. I'm saying that because of Bricklink, not because of BrickOwl. BrickOwl is great and I hope it will grow, but for now it just doesn't nearly generate the sales Bricklink does.
I hope you do build a new site. The saying is to not put all your eggs in one basket and right now we have only two baskets. BL and BO.
One is run by management that, as have been pointed out many many times, don't care or dont understand the community and what sellers and buyers need.
The other is run by, as I understand it, one single person. Due to unforeseen events, BO could be gone over night.
From a business viewpoint this situation is a bit unsettling so I'd welcome another well made site to sell on. As you say, BO is a nice site for the average LEGO builder who needs more parts but it does not come close to fulfill the needs of true AFOLs.
1. Site branding. The Brick Owl theme is a sort of whimsical, magical brand which draws in some ways from Harry Potter (there is at least one reference on this site, never explained, which refers to the Brick Owl Magic). This theme should either be more fully developed or dropped altogether. As it is now, the half-hearted attempt at a theme doesn't, to my mind, succeed.
2. Site catalog. It's quite a mess - worse in many ways than BrickLink's catalog mess which I was in the process of cleaning up before I left. Fixing it may require coding to restructure some areas. It's also significantly incomplete, but that could be rectified. One thing which concerns me is that, if I interpret things correctly, there are catalog requests still not acted upon which have been pending since 2013. This makes me wonder how the site would handle large groups of change requests.
3. Site inventories. These desperately need help to compete with the industry leader in inventories.
4. Site images. These need work. Some are fantastic, others are not. There are people who would be willing to contribute great images if the conditions were right.
5. Site contributions. These must increase and the current system of soliciting contributions clearly isn't working. I believe the only morally right thing to do here is to reimburse contributors for the time and effort they put into building the site.
6. Site content. Many written areas of the site could use improvements in the grammar, clarity, and consistency of the language used. The catalog in particular has few guidelines as to how its content should be structured and presented.
So what am I suggesting? Revisit all the site's written content and clean it up. Draft written guidelines governing the catalog and inventories to increase across-the-board consistency and accuracy in the way the catalog and its inventories is structured and presented to users. Restructure and expand the catalog and inventory system as necessary to be truly competitive.
Once those things are done, then look at how to increase contributions (the current Catalog Points system is, to my mind, in definite need of improvements). At this point, my suggestions become more controversial because I would support raising fees to fund improvements to the catalog. It's really tough, though, to raise fees once you have them in place and people are used to them. Were I starting my own site I'd set the fees closer to 5% - not to get rich, but to fund images, inventories, and catalog contributions. Whether it would be necessary to go that high here is an unknown. The current Brick Owl philosophy appears to be undercut BL fees for a lesser catalog/inventory system. My philosophy would be to charge a little more for a product which is superior.
I don't think it would be difficult to draw major contributors away from BrickLink (and believe me, most of the work on that site is done by only a handful of people) if they could come to a place where their effort is truly valued, where the catalog is community-owned, and where they can find an equal or superior cataloging and inventory system.
> nobody will stand fees going up
Your evidence? I agreed that it would be a hard sell, but the benefits would be worth it.
>there is an old saying which comes to mind if it aint broke dont fix it
I see 10,000+ unnamed items on a site where nothing is broken. I see 1,500+ sets uncategorized. I see 1,500+ parts not categorized. There are no places in the catalog for catalogs or books (although some books are categorized as sets). I see many instances of items in the catalog with exactly the same name (there are, for example, over 30 different catalog entries titled simply "LEGO Animal Head"). I see tens of thousands of missing pieces of data and missing images, as well as inadequate set inventories.
I've been around for a while in the LEGO hobby and I wouldn't be saying something was broken if it wasn't. I could add to the examples above for a while. I'm not saying any of this to tear down BO, but you are mistaken if you think that everything is great here just because this site gives you a warm feeling.
>i do not know how long this site has been here
Visiting the "About Us" link at the bottom of this page will provide that information for you.
>but its lasted and Lawrence seems to be happy running it the way he likes
And more power to him. I'm sure BL are happy running their site in the way they like. That's why my time would be better spent working on running a site in the way members would like.
>i do agree that some more item pictures could be added and would improve the overall look but it still better than bricklink in looks and ease of use imo
Let's take a random example. I searched for "dinosaur leg" on BL just now and got 0 results. That's because their search sucks. But then I searched for "dino leg" and got 64 results on BL, all of them legs for dinosaurs.
I searched for "dinosaur leg" on BO and got 30 results, four of which were for complete dinosaur assemblies. Then I searched for "dino leg" and got an additional 10 results, two of which included Duplo figures and one of which was a minifigure legs assembly.
That, my newest friend, you will not fix by simply adding some pictures to get a better overall look. Those search results show problems on both sites, yes, but the problems here are obviously far worse than the problems there. The problems here stem from lack of organization, which stems from a lack of written policies regarding how the catalog should be organized and how entries should be titled.
Adding pics won't fix the problems under the surface and those must be fixed if you ever want something more than a place where, to quote you, "people seem to do ok with there shops . . . and most people are happy when they come to buy items."
I believe the AFOL community has the capability of doing better than just okay. BL has been lost forever to a condescending and uncaring corporate mentality (as I always feared it would be), BO is stuck in a rut, and I believe a new site is the only way to go. Again, I plan on working on that when/if I have the money to do it properly, and only then. As some have said, there would be no point whatsoever in doing everything again unless you could do it right.
And from my experience at least, the buyers here are much smaller buyers compared to the other site. More like moms buying some parts for their kids vs serious AFOLs on the other site.
Personally I wish the traffic was much higher here but for now the bread and butter comes from the other site. I would not oppose improvements that could turn this situation around and I don't know why anybody else would either.
There are definitely issues and I really hope the owner would be willing to listen to those with knowledge and years of experience. I was for years involved in another community (nothing to do with LEGO) where the owner had this "I know best" and "not invented here" mindset. He refused to listen to sound advise from the community and things slowly got worse and worse until the doors closed. It was a real shame.
The problem with BL and BO is that 1,000s of users make money from using the sites, 1,000s more buy their stuff from them, but almost all of them expect the site's to just "exist" and don't contribute anything themselves.
Have to be honest @Stormchaser, I think you're after something that is neither needed nor necessary - a purist's catalogue that offers the ability for users to buy and sell. I'm not even sure why you'd think about the name BrickOwl, it's the SEO stuff that matters more than the name itself. If that was your opening gambit, that the name needs work after all these years, then you were always going to be told, politely I'm sure, to bugger off. You've spent years at BL while barely giving BO a thought, then you walk through the door and expect the site's owner to agree to all your changes, just because you claim you know best?
The more purist a catalogue becomes, the harder it is to buy and sell. There must be 1,000s of variants that don't make their way into BL/BO, yet we know they exist. The 2x2 transparent bricks that are sold as the modern variant even though they match the old variant. The refusal to add known colours simply because they were only used for one or two items, even though they then added other colours used only in watch strap parts that never sell. Such decisions delight as many people as they frustrate, but the minutia of details that you COULD go into would only ever be of interest to, and relevant to, so few people as to make justifying the time and expense required almost impossible.
You're always going to need to draw a line between accuracy and usability with something as complicated and massive as Lego's back, present and future products, and both BL and BO have chosen lines that suit them, but apparently not you (and I agree, likely many others too). That's fine, horses for courses and all that.
Would I love to see a purist catalogue? One that's 100% accurate and reliable? Of course, what Lego fan wouldn't.
Would I like to see that catalogue used in a Lego marketplace? No thanks, sellers would miss-list items with the wrong variant (we see it now), buyers would be annoyed at getting something they didn't expect, etc. It would be a nightmare for most buyers and sellers who just want to crack on and trade, where a lip or a groove or the width of an anti-stud's supports didn't matter to them.
> Vast majority of images on BO come from Lego themselves, with others contributed by users. If you have a better image, contribute it.
>
> The problem with BL and BO is that 1,000s of users make money from using the sites, 1,000s more buy their stuff from them, but almost all of them expect the site's to just "exist" and don't contribute anything themselves.
As a seller I pay the monthly fee. BO is not, nor is BL, a non-profit organisation.
I don't volunteer for Apple to do free work for them. If I sold stuff on Amazon, I would not volunteer to improve there web site or whatnot. I don't walk into a local store and volunteer to work free for them. I don't volunteer to do free work for PayPal, I pay the fee they ask for the service they provide.
BO and BL are for profit companies and sellers pay a fee to use the service. It's really on BO and BL to provide what is necessary to make their service work. Same as Amazon, the Steam marketplace, the App Store or any other.
> BO and BL are for profit companies and sellers pay a fee to use the service. It's really on BO and BL to provide what is necessary to make their service work. Same as Amazon, the Steam marketplace, the App Store or any other.
The fee you pay results in the service you see. Have you any idea how much the fee to use the service would be if everything was laid on a plate for you? There's a reason why volunteers have been used until now.
You don't have to do anything with the catalogue if you don't want to, nobody's forcing you, but if an item you want to sell has no image, a poor name, no measurements or weight, etc. isn't it in your interests to make that information available? You ain't gonna sell that item here on BO unless you do.
> Have to be honest @Stormchaser, I think you're after something that is neither needed nor necessary - a purist's catalogue that offers the ability for users to buy and sell.
Here you are definitely incorrect. It is true that I believe the optimal catalog would serve all users equally. Nevertheless, the default position for any catalog should be the simplest version. Advanced users/purists/collectors should be able to opt-in to see the features they desire (part variants, for example).
> > @Hoddie said:
> > Have to be honest @Stormchaser, I think you're after something that is neither needed nor necessary - a purist's catalogue that offers the ability for users to buy and sell.
>
> Here you are definitely incorrect. It is true that I believe the optimal catalog would serve all users equally. Nevertheless, the default position for any catalog should be the simplest version. Advanced users/purists/collectors should be able to opt-in to see the features they desire (part variants, for example).
Okay, but how far do you go? We know for a fact that 99% of sets come in two packaging variants. No-one cares about that right now but in 15-20 years, it might make a massive difference to price. One may be incredibly rare. So, right now, someone needs to add those variants to the purists' catalogue. Even though, right now, that's worth nothing to anyone. Some polybags come in numerous packaging variants. List them all?
How about books licensed by Lego, some of them come in 20+ languages. These are throwaway products that will likely never be valuable, but a catalogue for purists demands they all be listed.
How about the Dacta/Education sets that spanned various years, with updates every year where parts were replaced by new mould variants, but only as they ran out of the old ones? Where the insert cards were re-printed to account for the changes but, again, only after the old ones were used up? Where the limbless Duplo figures were replaced by the more modern type? So a particular Dacta set may have 20 variants to account for all this. List them all even though no-one really cares that one variant is only a variant because they used the new mould for a part even though the inset shows the old one? Against which variant does a seller list their sealed Dacta set without knowing which variant it is?
How about the cardboard boxes that elastic bands, cloth pieces and other things come packaged in? List them? Include them in inventories? Even though most people may not know to look for the boxes in inventories when they're after an elastic band or Superman's cape?
How far? Why not as far as possible and doable? It will always be a work in progress but that is no reason to not start at all.
Your argument sounds a bit like " It can't be made perfect so don't bother with any improvements".
Is there a market for rubber band boxes? If so, sure, list them. If not, then no need for it. No need to create arguments for the sake of arguing either...