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Ok, Lego does its own job of hosting instructions at:
http://www.lego.com/eng/buildinginstructions/
If TLG was funding BrickShelf, I can see why they would drop this duplicate
expense.
My questions are:
What instructions on BrickShelf are not duplicates of the TLG ones?
Is TLG committed to keeping theirs online?
Can peeron.com legally link to lego.com pdf's instead?
Did someone have a BitTorrent to download these? As it is 8+ gig would it be
broken down by product year?
Thanks,
Andy Cross
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In lugnet.general, Andrew Cross wrote:
> Ok, Lego does its own job of hosting instructions at:
> http://www.lego.com/eng/buildinginstructions/
>
> If TLG was funding BrickShelf, I can see why they would drop this duplicate
> expense.
TLG's instruction database is pretty incomplete, though. For example, their
themes list doesn't contain Pirates at all, and when I tested a particular
Pirate set (6285, Black Seas Barracuda), they had no instructions for it.
I think it's great that they're providing their own instructions, but I hope
they'll make the database complete.
> What instructions on BrickShelf are not duplicates of the TLG ones?
Well, at least the above. I suspect much more.
> Is TLG committed to keeping theirs online?
There will be no way to get an informed answer to this.
Still, to me, BrickShelf was never about instruction scans. I've rarely needed
instructions for a set I don't own, and of course I keep all the instructions
for those myself.
What Brickshelf is about (IMHO) is a place to search for creations of other ALEs
by keyword, or just to browse recently added creations. Hosting MOCs on widely
scattered servers elsewhere is not nearly as useful, because it's not searchable
(nor can you easily see what's new).
Best,
- Joe
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In lugnet.general, Andrew Cross wrote:
> Ok, Lego does its own job of hosting instructions at:
> http://www.lego.com/eng/buildinginstructions/
>
> If TLG was funding BrickShelf, I can see why they would drop this duplicate
> expense.
Actually, the instructions on LEGO's website only represent recent sets. These
instructions compliment those hosted on Brickshelf because of Brickshelf's self
imposed rule of not accepting instruction scans from current and recent (1-2
years old?) sets. This would encourage people to actually go out and buy the
sets while they're still available.
Brickshelf was more interested in maintaining a historical archive of all LEGO
sets ever released. Not too long ago, LEGO extended a helping hand by providing
Brickshelf with a large number of instructions in PDF format, improving the
quality of some of the scans, I guess.
> My questions are:
>
> What instructions on BrickShelf are not duplicates of the TLG ones?
I think that because of the rule mentioned above, all of the instructions at
TLG, you will not find at Brickshelf.
> Is TLG committed to keeping theirs online?
I don't think TLG has a need to keep an archive of instructions on their own
servers - especially available to the public. It's probably better left in the
hands of AFOLs/ALEs anyway. The only reason I see why the ones that are
currently on TLG's own website are there is as a Consumer Affairs resource -
referring customers that have lost their instructions to the website instead.
> Can peeron.com legally link to lego.com pdf's instead?
I don't see why not, as long as proper credit is given, and you don't d/l the
PDFs and host them on your own server.
> Did someone have a BitTorrent to download these? As it is 8+ gig would it be
> broken down by product year?
No I don't think any BT files have been set up for these scans...
-Bryan
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In lugnet.general, Andrew Cross wrote:
> Ok, Lego does its own job of hosting instructions at:
> http://www.lego.com/eng/buildinginstructions/
>
> If TLG was funding BrickShelf, I can see why they would drop this duplicate
> expense.
As Joe said, I don't think the issue would be with the instructions themselves--
plus, the gallery is what generates the heaping swaths of traffic from what I
understand. Not that the instructions don't generate their own heaping swath,
it's just less heaping. I just doubt the savings would be that noticeable.
> What instructions on BrickShelf are not duplicates of the TLG ones?
As answered, not many duplicates relative to the number BrickShelf has.
BrickShelf has a lot more historical instructions, whereas TLC's site is just
more recent stuff.
> Is TLG committed to keeping theirs online?
That's the big problem. Sure, TLC might think it's nifty for now, but going
forward? And integrating with other fan sites? Tough. There's nothing to stop
them from changing the formatting, interface, urls, etc. Plus, what's the
inscentive for them to retro-fill instructions historically? There's not really
any money in it, so why bother? At least if they sell currently available sets
they can avoid sending *some* replacement instructions by saying "these are
available on our website".
The community, however, is much more dedicated to getting accurate historical
records for their own sake.
Kinda like that old Fibblesnork survey question: 'How would you rate the
official Lego website?' One of the answers was 'It will never be as good as fan
sites' or something. It's just true. There's always some fan out there who's got
more dedication to the hobby than the company itself does. And since the Lego
community consists of people who are both creative and constructive by the very
NATURE of the hobby, I've always thought Lego's ultimately doomed to never have
as good of a site as fan sites. Lego COULD do it, but there's just no business
case, so it's often just best left to fans.
> Can peeron.com legally link to lego.com pdf's instead?
I don't think it'd be a question of legality, but feasibility. Certainly Lego
could force referers to be coming from lego.com, change their URLs, or whatever.
But even more annoying, even *WITH* consistant URLs, there's no way to tell when
updates have been made (versus BrickShelf where I think there was some automatic
checking to verify that BrickShelf *HAS* the instructions before Peeron shows
the link).
Plus, there's not necessarily a good concept of "set ID". Like set 6075, which
could be Wolfpack Tower or the original yellow castle. Lego.com would need a
rapport with fan sites that it doesn't have. The fan community on the other
hand, generally has a good rapport with itself. The Lego ID may be totally
different, and not on record with Lugnet/Peeron/BrickSet/BrickLink.
DaveE
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In lugnet.general, Joe Strout wrote:
> Still, to me, BrickShelf was never about instruction scans. I've rarely needed
> instructions for a set I don't own, and of course I keep all the instructions
> for those myself.
Heh. I actually bought my kids about 50 pounds of legos off eBay. This was to
let them have building blocks that were not Daddy's toys, er, Star Wars
"Models". But we didn't have many instructions books. My son and I figured out
which sets matched our treasure trove of pieces. A quick jump to Brickshelf and
we were making that set.
I'll agree that I visit BrickShelf almost daily to see the new MOCs.
Andy Cross
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