With Delcampe now starting to expand some country categories in the Stamp arena I would recommend that attention is given with some urgency to providing sellers with a tool to move listings into the relevant new category without having to amend each listing. The latter task can be very time consuming if you have lots of items in a country category already.

The danger is that sellers will not have the time or inclination to make the changes leaving a large number of items in 'Unclassified'. This doesn't help the seller of course nor does it improve the image of Delcampe as the categories will become messy.

My plea is for an application that allows a seller to select all his listings in a specific [old] category; mark those that he wishes to move to another category; and then to select the new category. The application then applies all the marked items automatically to the new category. Simple? I would have thought that such a tool might be helpful to Delcampe 'Category Moderators' too.

Is this technically too difficult?

I think such a tool is needed before too many other changes are introduced.

If other sellers feel the same way please add your support.

Thanks,

Alan Catherall
Hoatzinstamps

I agree. Delcampe recently expanded Japan's categories. This is very welcome, but I had to go and individually enter each item's sale, adjust the category, and save it. Very time consuming. If I had more items for sale than I did, it would not have been worth the effort.

A way of changing the category in bulk along the lines you suggest would be most welcome.

I agree. Delcampe recently expanded Japan's categories. This is very welcome, but I had to go and individually enter each item's sale, adjust the category, and save it. Very time consuming. If I had more items for sale than I did, it would not have been worth the effort.

A way of changing the category in bulk along the lines you suggest would be most welcome.

With Delcampe now starting to expand some country categories in the Stamp arena I would recommend that attention is given with some urgency to providing sellers with a tool to move listings into the relevant new category without having to amend each listing. The latter task can be very time consuming if you have lots of items in a country category already.

The danger is that sellers will not have the time or inclination to make the changes leaving a large number of items in 'Unclassified'. This doesn't help the seller of course nor does it improve the image of Delcampe as the categories will become messy.

My plea is for an application that allows a seller to select all his listings in a specific [old] category; mark those that he wishes to move to another category; and then to select the new category. The application then applies all the marked items automatically to the new category. Simple? I would have thought that such a tool might be helpful to Delcampe 'Category Moderators' too.

Is this technically too difficult?

I think such a tool is needed before too many other changes are introduced.

If other sellers feel the same way please add your support.

Thanks,

Alan Catherall
Hoatzinstamps

This facility is already available to Moderators so extending it in a limited fashion should be fairly straightforward

Meanwhile, why not ask you friendly neighbourhood Moderator to move the items for you?

Not a bad idea!!

But it would not be fair to burden a Moderator with a task one could, with the right tool, do quite easily oneself.

Possibly with this facility available a lot of categories would be tidied up by the person responsible for the listing especially if they are given a friendly nudge to do so. In this respect I am thinking of the many thousands of wrongly categorised listings which have been deliberately created (eg. Japanese phonecards placed in Vatican City listings simply becuase the picture is Vatican related - there are literally thousands of such examples spread across most categories!).

Sadly I don't think providing the tools for sellers to do the job would result in any improvement - I come across many instances where stamps and postcards are in the wrong category even when it is patently obvious that it should be elsewhere and my GB Philately Moderator friend will probably agree

Not all of these can be put down to insufficient knowledge, so I must conclude that most culpable sellers either don't care/can't be bothered about using the correct category, or simple use the last category they encountered when listing previously

This is an interesting discussion.

I would prefer to have responsibility over my own listings ... and would not wish to pass the task to a Moderator. I have made a note to ask whether the tool used by the Moderators can be made available to sellers and of course whether it is suitable for use by a seller - it may be too 'technical'. Anyhow I will ask early in the New Year. I will update this 'posting' with the response.

While some folks may deliberately put their listings into the wrong categories I would think this is a minority. Personally I find that some Stamp categories are overcomplicated; others are too simple; and others non existent. With a tool for moving items around I would be asking for more revisions / improvements.

In summary, this remains an important topic.

Wishing you all a Happy New Year,

Alan Catherall
Hoatzinstamps

I can't think of a reason why you shouldn't be able to have control over your own listings, although I'm not privy to Delcampe's internal workings

The Moderator system works at a 'high' level across all sellers' listings, so as a seller you wouldn't need as much functionality - a sort of Moderator Lite...

Sadly I don't think providing the tools for sellers to do the job would result in any improvement - I come across many instances where stamps and postcards are in the wrong category even when it is patently obvious that it should be elsewhere and my GB Philately Moderator friend will probably agree

Not all of these can be put down to insufficient knowledge, so I must conclude that most culpable sellers either don't care/can't be bothered about using the correct category, or simple use the last category they encountered when listing previously

I agree with you that on occasions I come across postcards in wrong categories and at times it seems that the seller just can't be bothered. Occasionally insufficient knowledge comes into it (i.e. Buckingham Palace postcards listed under Buckinghamshire - one of my pet hates, as I collect Buckingham postcards) and occasionally a simple mistake by the seller (something along the lines of: list 3 India postcards, than moves on to listing a Japan postcard, but forgets to change the category - I think I may have been guilty of that on a couple of occasions and only found out by accident).

Having said that, after the category changes in UK postcards during the spring/summer, I must say that I am extremely grateful to mod charon for moving all my relevant items to the new categories, but with a bulk editing tool this would have been something I could have done and would have been happy to do myself. Provide sellers with the right tools and notify them when there is a change to a category they list in and I expect that in most instances they would be happy to make the changes themselves.

Where ever you buy/sell, you are always going to find items that are listed in the wrong categories and I believe there is a need for more people on Delcampe who would be willing to give up a little of their time and act as moderators in their particular field of expertise.

Following on from my previous comments I put my Moderator head on and tried to go through the Japan category but found page after page of stamps listed simply as "Japan pictorial stamp used" (all from the same seller) with no indication of year, subject, catalogue reference or anything else

They're still in 'Unclassified' but I did manage to move 31 pages of FDCs though

I am actually the seller of the Japanese stamps that has listed these items in the 'unclassified' category.

The reasons for this are that I do not have a catalogue to list them in the correct slot at the present time so rather than just put them in any slot the 'unclassified' section seemed best for the moment. There can be nothing worse than searching through a particular slot and finding page apon page of wrongly inserted items. So until I am able to get hold of a catalogue that will enable me to sort by date and issue this seemed the best place. Until that time any collectors of this material have the chance to pick up any bargains as well as I was also unable to price using a catalogue and simply placed a perecentage over what I paid. So I am sure many of these 10p stamps will be available at a fraction of whatever catalogue value they may be.

Of course I will have no problem if any Japanese expert moderator wishes to move them out on the 'unclassified' section into whatever the correct slot may be - but I will eventually do this myself when I have the source material to categorise these issues correctly. So a bulk edit tool will be a very handy addition to enable this to be done quickly and efficiently.

Not a snide criticism, Wycombe, merely a passing observation

If you don't have access to a catalogue it is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, although given the volume of items I doubt you'll get any offers of assistance in recategorising them

Just out of interest, my own Japan catalogue is way out of date and I never bothered to update it since I delve rarely into that country, so I'd probably be in the same situation with recent material

Good luck!

I am not averse to criticism - I know I make mistakes and I try to rectify my errors when I can. Often my own customers point out mistakes I have made in my listings which I am always grateful for.

The listing tool actually compounds errors when you are listing as there is no bulk edit facility. If you have listed say 500 items and you discover an error after you have uploaded then your only recourse at present is a one by one edit until you get crossed eyed altering the same item time and time again or run out of time. Even if you discover your mistake before upload it is a fiddly and time consuming task to alter each item one by one before upload. The much maligned Ebay Turbo Lister tool is much better in this respect where bulk editing is a fairly easy task. As Delcampe attracts more and more of the big business sellers I am sure the Listing Tool will improve in this respect as 'time is money' and spending a lot od time on fiddly editing will work out too expensive for these.

With the Japan I am awaiting a catalogue that covers these issues but they are selling quite quickly already so I suspect they are underpriced. One of my clients has already told me that the ones he purchased where catalogued at £1.75 each. I hope he spreads the word as the more that sell the less I will have to edit when the time comes!

This is an interesting discussion.

I would prefer to have responsibility over my own listings ... and would not wish to pass the task to a Moderator. I have made a note to ask whether the tool used by the Moderators can be made available to sellers and of course whether it is suitable for use by a seller - it may be too 'technical'. Anyhow I will ask early in the New Year. I will update this 'posting' with the response.

While some folks may deliberately put their listings into the wrong categories I would think this is a minority. Personally I find that some Stamp categories are overcomplicated; others are too simple; and others non existent. With a tool for moving items around I would be asking for more revisions / improvements.

In summary, this remains an important topic.

Wishing you all a Happy New Year,

Alan Catherall
Hoatzinstamps

As promised I did eventually get around to asking whether the Moderator's tool for moving listings between categories could be used by sellers. The answer was a little disappointing but perhaps understandable. See below:

"It is technically possible for members to but some sellers could use this tool in an abusive way.

That's why this tool is not currently available for members (even for 'Club+'). Maybe in the future ..."

Hopefully this thread will continue ... and keep this issue in the spotlight!

Alan Catherall
Hoatzinstamps

If the facility is restricted to items belonging to the member in question I don't see how the problem of 'abuse' can arise, do you? Unless of course they're trying to prevent us from abusing ourselves...

If the facility is restricted to items belonging to the member in question I don't see how the problem of 'abuse' can arise, do you? Unless of course they're trying to prevent us from abusing ourselves...

With Delcampe now starting to expand some country categories in the Stamp arena I would recommend that attention is given with some urgency to providing sellers with a tool to move listings into the relevant new category without having to amend each listing. The latter task can be very time consuming if you have lots of items in a country category already.

The danger is that sellers will not have the time or inclination to make the changes leaving a large number of items in 'Unclassified'. This doesn't help the seller of course nor does it improve the image of Delcampe as the categories will become messy.

My plea is for an application that allows a seller to select all his listings in a specific [old] category; mark those that he wishes to move to another category; and then to select the new category. The application then applies all the marked items automatically to the new category. Simple? I would have thought that such a tool might be helpful to Delcampe 'Category Moderators' too.

Is this technically too difficult?

I think such a tool is needed before too many other changes are introduced.

If other sellers feel the same way please add your support.

Thanks,

Alan Catherall
Hoatzinstamps

Let me resurrect this post.

In the light of the very significant changes to the 'British Commonwealth' section or G.B. Colonies category sellers with large numbers of listings need a tool urgently to move their listings to the rearranged categories.

My requests for this have been pushed aside. Only the moderators have acces to this tool.

These changes mean that I need to move at least 3-4000 listings! This is probably a low estimate too. I'm never going to attempt that manually.
The 100 or so listings that I have been advised have been moved overnight will all need to be checked as a few of these are wrong.

Besides that huge challenge I cannot see the sense in having country categories in two places. How confusing is that? The list of new country sub sections is far from complete too.

This month of changes on the Delcampe site has proved very demoralising and I am now thoroughly disenchanted with Delcampe. Eveything seems to be rolled out without much thought for the consequences to sellers.

Alan Catherall
[Hoatzinstamps]

I am in agreement with this last post. To move several thousand listings one by one is a thankless and time consuming task. I made a start and it took me a couple of hours to shift just two countries around - British Honduras and British Guiana. To move the rest will take ages. Hardly surprising Delcampe is such a mess with miscategorisations.

Dealers with a large number of listings need access to the tool that will enable the quick and efficient moving of listings from one category to another. Otherwise those with a large number of listings will become too demoralised to do it one by one - as who wants to spend all their spare time for the next six months shiting items from one category to another.

Whoever dreamt up these changes obviously had no thought about the logistics of it all and the huge impact it would have on those it affected the most. To me the new categories are welcome but thought must be given to the implementation of moving the huge number of items from one place to another in an efficient and timely manner.

Thanks for your support. I'm surprised that other Sellers are not complaining too.

My additional concern is that the changes are incomplete and perhaps not being implemented in the most sensible place. However, I don't wish to exacerbate the logistical nightmare that has been created by highlighting the glaring errors / omissions in the changes at this time!

Sellers with lots of listings need access to the tool available to the Moderators soonest please.

Alan Catherall
[Hoatzinstamps]

I'm sure that some dealers just do not care and will leave all their items in the wrong places. Others just do not access the forums and place their grievances on record here. For sure Delcampe has been bombarded with moans and groans over all this from those who are concerned - we just do not know who has complained.

Myself I have Emailed the guy in charge of categories with my concerns/complaints but do not hold out much hope of a response that will address the points raised.

The moderators that are active are well meaning but the tasl of moving items to their correct categories should not be left to 'volunteers'. I hope I am responsible for my own listings so cannot understand the intrasigence of Delcampe in refusing access to the 'shifting' tool.

Further to my last posting - I am finding it incredibly frustrating modifying my newly miscategorised items one by one. I well understand the OP's anger and frustration over all this. It seems surprising that none of the other dealers with major listings involved have not raised their voices in protest.

For me it seems an impossible task to get all my listings in some semblance of order - I have just spent about an hour moving about 30 items into their correct slots. At this rate I will be six feet under before I get anywhere near completing this horrendous task - there is absolutely no incentive to do this and I am another rapidly becoming disenchanted with Delcampe. Change is fine and the new categories are welcomed but I wonder how much thought was given to this new roll out? Many entities are impossible to find - so where the logic is in all this I fail to see. If one is going to undetake a category revision surely it is in everyones best interest to do a proper and worthwhile job?

It is not rocket science to use a catalogue as the basis for the any revision - in the case of British Colonies Gibbons Part One or similar spring to mind.

But it remains the point of disillusion that a huge burden has been placed apon those who have large numbers of listings to move without the necessary help or assistance to do this in a timely and effective manner. If anyone from Delcampe reads these Forums perhaps they can expalin why this has been done!