On February 1st 2024, Bricklink is going to be making some changes that effect me and this channel – if you want your voice to be heard in the matter, you can contact Bricklink here: https://www.bricklink.com/v3/help/contact.page
Here’s the list of changes so you can see the update for yourself: https://www.bricklink.com/help.asp?helpID=2625
Here’s the direct time stamp for Ross Scott’s perfect analogy: https://youtu.be/5n90WohCSIg?si=4ADTCLYzmA2vgMxO&t=3637
CHAPTERS:
0:00 Introduction
0:27 Who am I?
1:01 The Update
3:10 Why is this update GOOD?
3:59 Why is this update BAD?
6:37 Hypothetical Situation 1
8:13 Hypothetical Situation 2
10:03 Bricklink is so much more than a place to buy LEGO
13:49 Is there anything we can do?
15:50 In summary
source
I wrote to brick link over this issue
This is it? This is the big disaster? Yeesh, slow news day.
One can't point out the ramifications of a company abusing a monopol situation to wipe out parts of internet and individual effort enough.
Rebrickable?
Having worked at an archive that was in the process of digitization, I don't understand why they don't just archive the part sites with a little note that says that these won't be separated on the market due to differences being too minor.
The update page seen here means all of the little work required to point this out has already been done, just copy it over to the parts page, slap a little red banner on top that it's no longer getting updates and link to the part that is now treated as equal. I know there's a (very slight) cost involved in keeping that archived site running, but it's LEGO, it won't exactly cause their earnings to drop.
i love ya slug, but you can do a lot better than duckduckgo
If you think this data is invaluable, nothing prevents you from preserving it. That is how history is preserved, because someone figures it is important enough to preserve.
Most of the data on Bricklink is easy to export to a different database.
Personally I think that information on mold variation should only be preserved if the variation entails significantly change in how a piece functions.
I'm not a huge Lego nerd, so I'm looking at this from an outsider's perspective. What the hell is the Lego Group doing here?
I get simplifying the selling process and how it's a pain in the ass for sellers to have extremely slight variations of pieces which ultimately don't culminate in that much (outside the toothed hinges, that actually has play impact, however minor), but at the same time there's gotta be a way to do that without being too much of a blow to preservation.
And I entirely agree with you, MORE specification is better here. Maybe there's a middle ground where Bricklink begins to catalogue more specific pieces (in your example, the pre-2005 orange "frosted neon" 2×2 disc and the post-2005 ye olde neon) but they're grouped together under "orange neon 2×2 disc" until you click on the page. Maybe when you purchase a set, you can chose between just getting all the pieces for it (basically the hypothetical situations you proposed) or the most accurate you can get as of that point.
Either way, great video!
Dang this sucks. Erasing history and and minor but situationally important information.
And seeing as you’re probably buying parts using bricklink for a specific nice need, this is heartbreaking and detrimental to being able to complete old LEGO sets as they came, or finding some of these obscure parts for specific odd purposes.
Any ideas on how we can fight this?
Hi, just a quick question about the full list of all the parts . Where did you find the full list of each individual part to be merged? Completely new to the forum and I can only find the first list shown. Thank you
Typical. A company takes control of a fan made service and is then too lazy and incompetent to actually manage it properly.
You make a crucial point. Now, I think this decision is probably partly due to Bricklink trying to become more accessible to casual buyers. Bricklink can be intimidating if you're not a big LEGO nerd. In that sense, I understand it. But like you said, vintage fans now have no way to know wich part they need to complete certain sets. BL defended the decision by saying you can still put the specifics in the description, but that's missing the point of the catalog function.
P.S. By "no entries will be merged", they mean that there are currently no differing entries for that part, I think. So no-one's inventory will currently be impacted by it.
Well that just sucks. Just got set 6394 Metro Park and Service tower but it's missing a few parts that don't affect the whole feel of the set too much and are common parts. It doesen't help when you are trying to get era specific parts.
Here's the latest from the admin at Bricklink:
https://www.bricklink.com/message.asp?ID=1450622
I'm curious to hear what comes next! The idea of this information being preserved in the Help pages as Admin_Russell suggests is somewhat intriguing to me! Anything has to be better than just wiping it from the website, haha.
With that being said though, accessibility to the information is just as important as the information itself, in my opinion. Burying this stuff away in the Help pages or simply resorting to using the Wayback Machine as others suggested are NOT ideal scenarios to me.
A lot of folks have been informing me of errors I made in my understanding of some of the proposed changes – I really appreciate the clarifications! However, with that being said, focusing on the trees that look incorrect and not seeing the forest is something we need to avoid here. Correcting folks on a couple of smaller points does not debunk the message or the overall sentiment here.
Additionally, my hypothetical scenarios in this video were unfortunately based on a misinterpretation on my part – but, no worries! Simply transpose the examples onto something like the smooth vs textured slopes or X vs + axle holes and the message still rings true.
Lastly, I have been truly shocked by how many people have come out of the woodwork to chime in on the matter! Given how lowkey and rushed the timeline seems to be on this "proposed" update to Bricklink, there's a very real chance that many people would not have had an opportunity to weigh in had this story not taken off. Thank you for sharing it around!
There's still a very real possibility that the admin at Bricklink will just push this through despite the overwhelmingly negative backlash they're receiving, but that's their prerogative. It's their website – they're free to make unpopular changes should they wish.
For me, I'm going to start taking the time to learn utilizing other websites such as Rebrickable and Brick Owl. This whole debacle has been a good wake up call for me, I think. Time to start holding Bricklink at arms length.
I know some folks are going to expect a follow up video to all this, but that's exactly the "current event for clicks" spiral I want to avoid. Like I said in this video, I didn't monetize it and that's largely because I don't want to financially incentivize myself to turn on a microphone and ramble for a few minutes; despite making some good points (if I do say so myself!), this video is not indicative of what I want to create on this channel. I only wanted to get the ball rolling on this discussion, and let me tell you, mission accomplished!!
Thanks everyone! ❤
This is nothing more than a False Economy.
This website should be never in hands of Lego corporation, same like IMDB is in hand of Amazon, Rotten T in Disney's I believe etc…
When the LEGO Group bought BrickLink, they swore to honor the legacy of Daniel Jezek, founder of Bricklink, who sadly died at a very young age.
This is how the LEGO Group keep their promises. They fuck everything up as long as they can maximize their profit. Disgusting!
Bricklink 2025 : 1×1's are all the same now, round square, whatever
I'm of two minds on this matter. One, I've only recently gotten back into Lego, and a lot of the part variations kinda muddy the waters when it comes to getting some things. I especially specifically want to collect (eventually) all the parts needed to build M:Tron sets, so your example of the Mega Core Magnetizer was helpful. But I don't know if I'd especially care that much to have the original element variations, especially if they're rarer pieces and I'd accidentally pay a lot more for them instead of functional equivalents. For the vent pieces you mention, I'd actually prefer from a rebuilding standpoint to have the variation with a lip to make for easier disassembly. I know there are a lot of other variations of parts, like clips, where I don't really care which variation I get. So something like this change where I can just get any variation would help me as a buyer.
But as you say, there's the catalog and preservationist side of things, and losing that information forever in the name of easier buying/selling would be a shame.
Some sort of happy medium where buyers could specify an exact variation if needed but default to "don't care / any variation"? Maybe sellers who want to keep variations separate for these discerning buyers can opt in, but have a pile of unspecified inventory if they don't?
I don't really feel qualified enough as a recent/casual user to think my voice matters. Especially not enough to try to deal with the 30-year-old looking interface of the BrickLink forums.
re: "contradictory language" regarding tiles. Those listings aren't being merged or combined, they just will no longer have "with groove" in the description. So that tile will just be "2×2 Tile" instead of "2×2 Tile with Groove"
RRslugger you should have those said brick categories being removed added to the internet archive. So that its preserved one way or another and honestly even if its inconvenient it would exist to some extent.
It was kind of hilarious seeing slugger’s mouse do laps around the text in the contact support part
Who cares if it makes seller’s lives easier? Their job is to provide specific products that people want. When they cannot do that to the extent they used to what is the point of even having parts listed
Wow that's pretty shit. So now I can be ordering a bunch of circular plates with the intention of putting them on an axle, and I could end up getting some bricks that can't go on those axles because bricklink is going to allow sellers to sell parts as something they're not.
why did lego buy bricklink if they were gonna do what the fans don’t want
The hell are they thinking? What a stupid update. Just erase all the voluntary work that FANS have done, keeping this hobby alive. Lego as a company nowadays is backwards and needs to be run by actual fans, not a bunch of corporate softy yes-men. PRESERVE THE HISTORY. Seems like Lego doesn’t even care about its own history.
Surely this won’t backfire on buyers. Bricklink would rather confuse you and potentially sell you something you don’t want then rather keep the ALREADY EXISTING AND ESTABLISHED SYSTEM THAT TOOK YEARS TO CATALOG.
Easy fix: take hundreds of screenshots.
The analogy of the Twitter update was spot on. 😄