Hi Everyone,
Just want to give you a heads up that the project that we started a couple of months ago to add the ability to specify what country the stamp in the Auction Lot is from, is coming along well and I'm two or three weeks away from implementing it. I still have some coding to do but I wanted to let you know that it is coming.
The following image gives you an idea as to how it will work:
In the above test lot, you can see that I clicked on the "A" button to get a list of all the Countries that start with "A". Then I clicked on the "Australian States, New South Wales" button to pick the issuing country. The "Australia, New Zealand & Oceania" category was automatically selected. I then manually added the extra "Topicals" category.
Many thanks to Theresa, Ernie and Greg for their many hours of work on this project.
They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. -Benjamin Franklin 24 Jan 2016 03:16:58pm
re: Heads Up on an Enhancement to the Auction
Now that is impressive!
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re: Heads Up on an Enhancement to the Auction
Well done by everyone involved. Thank you to all!
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"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. - Maya Angelou"
That really looks great Tim, thank you for that upgrade. That must have taken a lot of pro-
graming work, but definitely worth the effort.
I think you'll also be pleased to know, that after checking several profiles of new members,
several have selected the third option that you added to "Willing to Correspond?".
Thanks for implementing my idea and I'm glad we could add an improvement to make SOR
a safer place to be.
Just realized that I haven't put this posting out. I'm planning on implementing the Auction Country enhancements this coming Sunday (7th Feb) morning US Central Time. Try to stay clear of posting new lots around that time. I sent out an email to all the sellers who have posted lots in the last 12 months, trying to make sure that they were all aware.
I have implemented the Auction Country enhancements this morning and I have edited the last dozen or so Auction Lots posted from last night so that you can see how the Country filters can work once the sellers change their process to include the Country selection.
Please Note: The Country Filter will not pick up lots from a particular Country until the seller indicates that the lot is from that particular Country.
i had the good fortune to be able to test early iterations; it's a great addition to our auction site. thanks, Tim, for the good idea and excellent execution
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luis, if the butterflies are from lots of different nations, just use MIXTURE and TOPICAL; if they are primarily from one country, add that country too. If they are primarily from, say, the old Soviet bloc, add Eastern Europe. but if it's one from Brazil, one from Israel, one from US, then don't include ANY country
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"Save the USPS, buy stamps; save the hobby, use commemoratives"
Tim,
Great addition to the auction section. I was wondering if a download of the country list and code is available. Maybe an Excel file or CSV format. I prepare my bulk load file offline and it would be helpful to have this information on my local computer.
Bill
Hi Bill,
Yes, I can add an Excel file for download. In the mean time, look at the bottom of the Bulk Loader screen. I have added a button there that gives you the list of Countries and Codes.
A couple of things I just noticed doing my Monday Night auctions:
1)The title of the auction when displayed has the country followed by a colon prior to the country name
United States - Back of the Book: United States #J4 Used SCV $70.00
Don't know if that was intentional.
2) Twice when I clicked on a country it did not populate the category. Had to go back and manually do it (US BOB & Kenya). When I went back after i was done and tried it again, it worked fine. Could have been me.
3) When you select a second category (as I did with Germany and post card) the next auction you do does not remove the manually added category, it only changes the one that matches what you selected as a country. The second category needs to be manually unchecked.
It is fast though, adding almost no time to the old system.
Greg
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Using Chrome along with XPSP3 (yes I'm one of those!). I'll check it out again tomorrow afternoon when I do 100 listings. If anything odd happens I'll report it here
Greg
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Did 96 auctions yesterday afternoon. 4 came back with the following message
The following errors were found:
At least one(1) Category must be selected
This message appeared even though there was a category selected, and it was highlighted in red. Clicked the button again and it was fine
I think it is faster than the old way at least for me. The issue of the categories not being in alphabetical order (and therefore being unlike all other auction sites) has been eliminated. Took 50 minutes to do 96 auctions.
Greg
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A short time ago, the enhancement of selecting the specific country that a stamp is from was implemented.
Since the implementation, I still see many sellers still entering the name of the country in the auction lot title. If you use the new function and select the country name, it is no longer necessary to enter the country name in the title line. You can use the limited 80 characters capacity in the title line for other notations, such as adding a topic.
The search engines will find your item if you use the country name enhancement.
I only do a handful of auctions but I noticed that on the last batch of auctions I had put up. It looked like I was stuttering ! It was not worth updating the descriptions but at least I know now for the future - that is much simpler !
Is it possible to include, on the invoice, the country name for each lot? If I fill an order from the invoice, I only see something like, "Used Airmail, 1949, C46."
Here's a new problem I just discovered: I use the dropdown country selector, so I leave the country name out of the title. But, now my listings don't turn up in a keyword search for that country.
Simple workaround: Include the country name in the description box. It is negligible extra work, as you only have to type it once, and each subsequent auction lot you create will copy the text from the one you just completed.
1. The Keyword search in the Auction Search facility now includes the Country in it's search criteria. If you enter "Australia" in the Keyword selection, it will retrieve all lots that have "Australia" selected as the County, even if the word "Australia" is not included in the Title or the Description.
2. The County Name is now displaying in the list of lots returned by the Search.
I am not sure if this has been brought up before, but it seems like there are some countries missing. For instance: I could not find Bavaria and DDR (German Democratic Republic). Is that intended or is this still a work in progress?
I suppose that it is the arbitrary way Scott works: South African states like Natal and Cape of Good Hope are listed separately, Canadian provinces separately but as part of Canada and the German states are all lumped together... I cannot see the logic.
Hi Jan-Simon,
There could well be some missing. It was a huge task I set my team in identifying all the countries that had ever issued postage stamps. I'm very happy to add countries as you and others discover then missing. Should German Democratic Republic as such or should it be listed under DDR? Should the German States be called out individually?
"DDR" is the German abbreviation. I think it should be in English: German Democratic Republic to be consistent with the rest of the listings, and placed under Germany. Can be abbreviated to German Dem Rep to save space.
For all those who have been asking to be able to clear the Country selection in the situation where you are copying one new lot to the next and you don't want to use the County selection on the second lot, I have added a Clear button to clear the Country selection. It also clears the Category selection. I have done this in the New Auction Lot screen and the Edit Auction Lot screen.
This is a very complex area of the system. If you find anything that now doesn't work correctly, please let me know.
There was another thread where Michael and I were discussing adding A United States Territorial Issues one for things like Ryukyus, Canal Zone, Hawaii, etc.