Subject:
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Re: Peeron inventories
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.inv
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Date:
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Thu, 8 Mar 2007 21:08:00 GMT
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(details)
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In lugnet.inv, John Patterson wrote:
> I have collected Lego for more years than most of the users of Lugnet have
> been alive.
See, now, again, this has nothing to do with anything. Yeah, you're older than I
am. You're older than most AFOLs. Ok. But I don't think being older gives you a
free pass to be condescending. That's the sort of thing I mean. You can say what
you want to say while still being polite. You don't have to call "white" "black"
or "grey" "white" or anything. But you can say it in a way that will make people
WANT to help versus NOT want to help.
Inundating people with complaints is one way of making them want to ignore you.
> As to 95% errors, it does not matter if it is one part or 100, an incorrect
> inventory is an incorrect inventory.
I beg to differ, but I still agree that a 100% accurate inventory is valuable.
If you gave me two inventories, one was 99% accurate and one was 12% accurate,
it's pretty clear which one's better.
> If you were counting a million dollars at a bank and you were off by 500
> someone would want the error corrected.
The difference is that when I go to a bank, I'm paying them for their service.
And they're dealing with my property (my money) that I entrusted them with. They
have an *obligation* to be accurate. Peeron's a free service. They don't have an
obligation to be accurate.
> the problem is with them not correcting the errors. 2 years ago I sent a
> part correction, three different types of large hinge plates. To this date
> they have not fixed that.
Maybe this is part of the problem: how are you defining inaccuracy? You state
that you were trying to correct three different types of hinge plates? As in the
fact that Peeron doesn't distinguish the type of plate hinge, or that they used
the wrong part variation? That is to say, Lego changed the mold one year, and
Peeron has the wrong hinge variation on a particular set?
A better example might be 2x3 inverse slopes (part 3747). Now, in the past
couple years, Lego actually changed the mold. And Peeron doesn't yet
differentiate between the old mold and the new mold. They just don't. Part (but
not all) of why they don't is because Peeron attempts to match the LDraw
convention. Another part is because people who inventory sets don't bother to
check to see which variation the part is.
Is that an inaccuracy? Well, you could call it that. You could also try and
distinguish the however-many-bunch of 2x4 brick molds that exist, and claim that
Peeron is wrong for stating that the 725 Town Plan came with any 2x4 bricks,
because technically, the 2x4 bricks it came with aren't the same type of molds
that are used in 2x4 bricks today thanks to the font on the studs, the sidewall
supports, plastic material, tube slots, and whatever else has changed since
1961.
Inaccuracies also come in varying levels of difficulty to fix. Saying "set X is
missing part Y" is easy. You can verify it pretty quickly, and it's probably a
quick thing to repair. Saying "set X should have 47 of part Y instead of 45" is
a bit trickier, because the onus is on Peeron to verify that you're a
trustworthy source, or that your correction is accurate.
But saying "set X should have part variation Y rather than part variation Z" is
even harder, because it's been proven that even if you ARE a trustworthy source,
your data might be wrong, because Lego sometimes releases sets that differ from
each other. I'm sure Clark could name you off bunches of these, no doubt. Also,
it's not an easy fix to make, even if it IS verified data. And probably the
hardest thing to verify is bizarre colors. If someone says a piece is
"FabuBrown" and someone else says it's "DkNougat", it's ridiculously hard or
impossible to tell who's right.
There's also incompleteness in the way that Peeron handles its data, which Dan
has been interested in changing for some time. Things like sub-parts (minifig
hands, turntables, etc) which have conventions that people might misinterpret.
Minifigs are one of the more common ones-- if I have a "hips and legs assembly",
should its color be denoted by the hip color or the leg color? And it's
generally not possible for the Peeron admins to double-check that people
followed the conventions correctly.
I guess my point is that if you're saying any inaccuracy is equally inaccurate
as any other inaccuracy, it's actually not true for most people. Most people
don't particularly care if you don't distinguish your 2x4 brick molds. Some
might. Even though "inaccurate" is technically a black and white term, the
reality is that it's a grey term.
> I have another 6000 or so sets to inventory so my time is dear to me.
> Hopefully you will see my point, I just would like them to use the stuff I am
> sending in.
Hey, so would I. But I find that complaining loudly can be counterproductive.
Luckily, Dan's a nice guy. But I can imagine a lesser person just saying "Oh
yeah? Tough. Now we won't accept your data." I hope neither you nor the Peeron
admins fall to that level of childishness, but if you don't treat each other
respectfully, it's a risk you might run.
> For some I have waited a half year and it has not been changed,
> please define patience in this context.
Note that I said both patient and persistant. These guys are volunteering their
time, so it's not at the uber-top of their list of things to do. Sometimes, it
takes a few friendly reminder emails to get things moving. And not reminder
emails in terms of "I waited 24 hours, and it's not done yet!"
Part of this is working within a framework. It's an on-demand world, but you
can't expect people to follow your schedule. And if a Peeron admin who normally
gets corrections at a rate of 1 per week suddenly gets thwocked with 100 of them
at once, it may actually *decrease* their desire to get cracking on them,
because it can be overwhelming-- particularly for volunteer work.
But mostly, I just want to see a bit more respect and gratitude from you for
what Peeron offers the community. You'll see a lot of people come forward to
defend Peeron because it's a great service. If you go knocking it, be prepared
to take some flak in return.
DaveE
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Peeron inventories
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| (...) Flak isn't so bad, might get them to listen. I offered to volunteer since I am retired. I have a lot of gratitude as their data base for parts is great. It took a lot of work to set up and I am amazed at the effort to get it going. They just (...) (17 years ago, 8-Mar-07, to lugnet.inv)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Peeron inventories
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| (...) Dave: It is not my purpose to be insulting; I call things like I see them. I am almost 60 and I was a little less blunt when I was 30. Now at this age, I call black black and white white. I have been 30 and was a bit less direct. I doubt that (...) (17 years ago, 8-Mar-07, to lugnet.inv)
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