Question:
How about doing your investigating BEFORE you list an item, especially as a newbie? The people who have listed their PC games in the Photo-Electronics:Games category did so by their own free will, not eBay’s. I’m not saying the category is correct. But, it appears to be where the masses are placing their auctions. Also, for what it is worth, a good number of folks will argue that categories are not as important as good titles and descriptions. This is based upon the idea that many people do keyword searches to find items they are looking for. You’ll find eBay is probably a lot more difficult to change than to work with its faults. Mike Tedeschi – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – You are new to eBay. You have a pc game to sell. You click SELL. First window you see is a page with major catagories. You look and see this setup link: _Computers_ , software,games,…etc. You complete the auction setup in that catagorey. You view your auction catagorey for others selling pc games and see maybe one other pc game. Then you find the vast vast majority(90%) of pc games for sale are in Photo-Electronics:Games, NOT COMPUTERS,as you were first directed to. Look, don’t tell me I can switch catagories,thats not the point. There’s a blatant error in the setup SELL page. Noone is selling pc games in: Computers. I emailed them last month and they say they have forwared my suggestion to their catogorey review board.No change. I think they automate replies with keywordings. Go see for yourself. Hundreds if not thousands of pc games listed under Photo Electronics:Games. A new user should not be misdirected so. I wonder if a few of you wouldn’t mind forwarding this email to eBay (after confirming). If for no other reason,to see if eBay needs a lot of emails to set them into some kind of action, even if it’s not a really serious issue or flaw. I suppose there are bigger issues, so maybe…nevermind. jdc
Response:
How about doing your investigating BEFORE you list an item, especially as a newbie?
Be gentle; the very definition of "newbie" is probably "person who makes a lot of irritating mistakes", irritating to self and others. The people who have listed their PC games in the Photo-Electronics:Games category did so by their own free will, not eBay’s.
Right: in US jingoese: "…the right of the people to peacably assemble…". I’m not saying the category is correct. But, it appears to be where the masses are placing their auctions.
Just like Net newsgroups; give time for a crowd to assemble, then start selling tickets while you can, before the flock veers away. Also, for what it is worth, a good number of folks will argue that categories are not as important as good titles and descriptions. This is based upon the idea that many people do keyword searches to find items they are looking for.
Very good idea, the whole point of searching is to get the information seen in mind but somewhere just out of reach on the web site. You’ll find eBay is probably a lot more difficult to change than to work with its faults.
Speaking from within eBay Product Development, you have no idea how much harder. The categories issue is under pretty much continuous review and categories are split, changed, whatever works, on a fairly regular basis. They still need even more splitting to make the volume of each smaller, so that searching a particular category for an item of the type to be found there gets less painful, but then the categories themselves, as in the present complaint, become harder to find. It’s a puzzlement. We could probably use a good librarian, book indexer, or other classification specialist online and inhouse, and for all I know may have several. I just read http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20001005S0004 that university enrollments for librarians in the UK are the only ones going up faster than the ones for web technologists. May be a cause and effect relationship there. Also, there is more than one way to slice a pie. Take a look at http://www.links2go.com for a fairly novel approach to a net wide problem: how to get the information seeker to the information in the least painful way possible. This searching, indexing, classifying, categorizing business is not a done deal by any means, there are still huge grounds for improvement, at eBay and elsewhere. Don’t expect perfection ever, the problem is much too hard. Do expect that eBay is constantly aware of and working the issue, and that incremental improvements will continue. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -Mike Tedeschi You are new to eBay. You have a pc game to sell. You click SELL. First window you see is a page with major catagories. You look and see this setup link: _Computers_ , software,games,…etc. You complete the auction setup in that catagorey. You view your auction catagorey for others selling pc games and see maybe one other pc game. Then you find the vast vast majority(90%) of pc games for sale are in Photo-Electronics:Games, NOT COMPUTERS,as you were first directed to. Look, don’t tell me I can switch catagories,thats not the point. There’s a blatant error in the setup SELL page. Noone is selling pc games in: Computers. I emailed them last month and they say they have forwared my suggestion to their catogorey review board. No change.
A month is far shorter than a software development cycle. For lots of enterprises, software updates range from twice a year to once every two years. Here at eBay we are lunatics, we try to do a rollout a week, but that doesn’t mean in the door and out onto the site in a month. A month probably won’t get the Marketing Requirements Document written, reviewed, and approved, among all the other changes competing for attention, though that’s a guess. That then has to be translated from Marketing’s "wouldn’t it be nice if the user experience was" to Engineering’s "here’s how we plan to support the user doing" in an Engineering Requirements Document. Then you go from that architecture level document through design, code, unit test, debug, system integrate, test, debug, quality assurance in depth testing and user friendliness testing, debug, rollout to production. Then the real debugging starts, as scenarios never envisioned in testing hammer our "poor defenseless" code, as of yesterday, at almost 900 megabytes per second, in and out, a new record. My particular contribution (really low level internals stuff invisible to users, except as quicker bug fixes if all goes well, sorry) has been underway since early June, and is just this past week starting to trickle into the production code, to give you a little more realistic set of expectations for the necessarily glacial pace of changes in large, easily broken, difficultly modified, software source code bases. I think they automate replies with keywordings. Go see for yourself. Hundreds if not thousands of pc games listed under Photo Electronics:Games.
On the bright side, I cannot think of anything _else_ that would go in such a category, except perhaps handheld games, and if you are advertising to game players, best to advertise where their eyes are already looking. A new user should not be misdirected so.
Were your first experiences driving a car perfectly smooth? Probably very little in the owner’s manual was of help at all. It isn’t really fair to expect that your first try will be as easy as your hundred and first try. The eBay site is, and advertises itself to be, a tool, a "facilitator" in the words of the help pages. Like all tools, skill grows with use. I wonder if a few of you wouldn’t mind forwarding this email to eBay (after confirming). If for no other reason,to see if eBay needs a lot of emails to set them into some kind of action, even if it’s not a really serious issue or flaw.
It is amazingly unproductive to try to provoke email carpet bombing of eBay; for every issue you have with the site, something like 19 million other users have each probably got a separate "eBay’s worst feature" all picked out, not likely to be yours. On the other hand, with 19 million users, I’m guessing, just guessing, mind you, that we are doing at least a little bit right, and that after you get over your first use of a new tool hurdles, you will find something you like about the site too. I doubt it will be the Photo Electronics Games category, though! ;-) I suppose there are bigger issues, so maybe…nevermind. jdc
We have a fellow in public relations (VP in charge of, to be precise, or, in the really just _lovely_ press term, "corporate flack") who just loves to hear about ways we are doing things well and ways we could do things better, so consider your message forwarded. Speaking just for me, not the folks who sign my paycheck, as ever. Cheers! xanthian. ===== random archival quality quote ===== Guilty of thread drift again. — Kent Paul Dolan.
Response:
HI JDC, I know that ebay has been trying to fix some of the screwy categories. They recently re-did the jewelry category which was a real mess. I sell mostly pottery and glass in those categories there are misspellings, and several cases of porcelains in the pottery category and vice versa. Frustrating, yes. When it will be fixed? Your guess is as good as mine. Jessica – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -You are new to eBay. You have a pc game to sell. You click SELL. First window you see is a page with major catagories. You look and see this setup link: _Computers_ , software,games,…etc. You complete the auction setup in that catagorey. You view your auction catagorey for others selling pc games and see maybe one other pc game. Then you find the vast vast majority(90%) of pc games for sale are in Photo-Electronics:Games, NOT COMPUTERS,as you were first directed to. Look, don’t tell me I can switch catagories,thats not the point. There’s a blatant error in the setup SELL page. Noone is selling pc games in: Computers. I emailed them last month and they say they have forwared my suggestion to their catogorey review board.No change. I think they automate replies with keywordings. Go see for yourself. Hundreds if not thousands of pc games listed under Photo Electronics:Games. A new user should not be misdirected so. I wonder if a few of you wouldn’t mind forwarding this email to eBay (after confirming). If for no other reason,to see if eBay needs a lot of emails to set them into some kind of action, even if it’s not a really serious issue or flaw. I suppose there are bigger issues, so maybe…nevermind. jdc
Ebay:JVincentGallery Online Shop: http://www.rubylane.com/shops/junqueslr
Response:
You are new to eBay. You have a pc game to sell. You click SELL. First window you see is a page with major catagories. You look and see this setup link: _Computers_ , software,games,…etc. You complete the auction setup in that catagorey. You view your auction catagorey for others selling pc games and see maybe one other pc game. Then you find the vast vast majority(90%) of pc games for sale are in Photo-Electronics:Games, NOT COMPUTERS,as you were first directed to. Look, don’t tell me I can switch catagories,thats not the point. There’s a blatant error in the setup SELL page. Noone is selling pc games in: Computers. I emailed them last month and they say they have forwared my suggestion to their catogorey review board.No change. I think they automate replies with keywordings. Go see for yourself. Hundreds if not thousands of pc games listed under Photo Electronics:Games. A new user should not be misdirected so. I wonder if a few of you wouldn’t mind forwarding this email to eBay (after confirming). If for no other reason,to see if eBay needs a lot of emails to set them into some kind of action, even if it’s not a really serious issue or flaw. I suppose there are bigger issues, so maybe…nevermind. jdc
Response:
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