ComicArtTracker.com 3 3

[SquareChaos]

13 minutes ago, JadeGiant said:

How so?

Someone that earns some portion of their living providing an internet presence for various dealers does not want some other site scraping the content they host and becoming a 'central gathering spot' for the community. It may be good for the dealers, they may see a few more sales since the art is somewhat easier to find, but if the CAT site traffic gets large enough, it is not a far leap to start wondering what service the (suddenly) middleman is actually providing. Who knows what business model CAT may be considering down the road... just the question I previously asked in this thread.

[SquareChaos]

13 minutes ago, JadeGiant said:

How so?

Someone that earns some portion of their living providing an internet presence for various dealers does not want some other site scraping the content they host and becoming a 'central gathering spot' for the community. It may be good for the dealers, they may see a few more sales since the art is somewhat easier to find, but if the CAT site traffic gets large enough, it is not a far leap to start wondering what service the (suddenly) middleman is actually providing. Who knows what business model CAT may be considering down the road... just the question I previously asked in this thread.

[JadeGiant]

18 minutes ago, SquareChaos said:

Someone that earns some portion of their living providing an internet presence for various dealers does not want some other site scraping the content they host and becoming a 'central gathering spot' for the community. It may be good for the dealers, they may see a few more sales since the art is somewhat easier to find, but if the CAT site traffic gets large enough, it is not a far leap to start wondering what service the (suddenly) middleman is actually providing. Who knows what business model CAT may be considering down the road... just the question I previously asked in this thread.

Dunno about that, but I see the point. As an aggregator, I don't see a conflict. CAF and CAT are very different animals that would appear to easily coexist and I don't see how CAT diminishes the value prop for those hosting on CAF but I don't know how the arrangements between CAF and the dealers work in detail. 

[Pete Marino]

Just now, JadeGiant said:

Dunno about that, but I see the point. As an aggregator, I don't see a conflict. CAF and CAT are very different animals that would appear to easily coexist and I don't see how CAT diminishes the value prop for those hosting on CAF but I don't know how the arrangements between CAF and the dealers work in detail. 

I can see it pretty easily.  Why should someone pay for the $50 annual membership, where the biggest boon is the bi-daily keyword emails, when CAT can provide that, plus more?

Doesn't mean i agree per se, but I can see that path of logic.

[SquareChaos]

2 minutes ago, JadeGiant said:

Dunno about that, but I see the point. As an aggregator, I don't see a conflict. CAF and CAT are very different animals that would appear to easily coexist and I don't see how CAT diminishes the value prop for those hosting on CAF but I don't know how the arrangements between CAF and the dealers work in detail. 

Please let me be clear, I am not accusing anyone of anything (not sure 'accusing' is the right word here, as basically, if that were the intent it would simply be competition), I've just worked on software too long not to know how people tend to think about these things. Traffic is everything, if CAT gets a lot of traffic, it will gain influence and opportunities will appear. 

[JadeGiant]

36 minutes ago, Pete Marino said:

I can see it pretty easily.  Why should someone pay for the $50 annual membership, where the biggest boon is the bi-daily keyword emails, when CAT can provide that, plus more?

Doesn't mean i agree per se, but I can see that path of logic.

I can see path of logic, just not the jump to seeing it as being problematic but it's not my business so I will assume that CAF has good reasons for what they are doing presently.  CAT is still new so it could be a watch and learn situation. I am a regular CAF member and don't see CAT impacting my activity there in any significant way. 

Edited October 27, 2017 by JadeGiant

[Nexus]

I haven't had a chance to dig into CAT yet, but from what I've seen, looks like a fantastic resource.

I'm disappointed that my site won't be included. I will talk to Bill about it.

My guess is that one of the primary reasons CAF-hosted sites aren't being shared is bandwidth usage. I know CAF's bills are huge, certainly relative to income, and there's no clear direct benefit to CAF for another site to grab their images. Again, just my guess.

Hopefully, something can be worked out.

[SquareChaos]

18 minutes ago, Nexus said:

I haven't had a chance to dig into CAT yet, but from what I've seen, looks like a fantastic resource.

I'm disappointed that my site won't be included. I will talk to Bill about it.

My guess is that one of the primary reasons CAF-hosted sites aren't being shared is bandwidth usage. I know CAF's bills are huge, certainly relative to income, and there's no clear direct benefit to CAF for another site to grab their images. Again, just my guess.

Hopefully, something can be worked out.

Correct - they're scraping the site constantly at some timed interval I imagine, forcing a frequent serving up of many, many images. I remember talking about this when someone brought up some sort of similar idea in the modern forum... I think it was a consolidation site for comic books.

 

I'm sure that is a short term concern, I'd still be very surprised if at some point there were not long term concerns about giving away data (the hardest thing to acquire for these type of sites).

[vodou]

45 minutes ago, JadeGiant said:

I can see path of logic, just not the jump to seeing it as being problematic but it's not my business so I will assume that CAF has good reasons for what they are doing presently.  CAT is still new so it could be a watch and learn situation. I am a regular CAF member and don't see CAT impacting my activity there in any significant way. 

Eh. I think the real question is why didn't Bill -- clearly a technology leader and in a position of considerable influence in the hobby for over ten years -- do this himself?

I met Bill in person way back in the very beginning and he's a really nice guy. We were both in CFA-APA together too for a while and he gave a lot there. I was (and still am) one of the earliest CAF adopters from Year One. So I have no beef with him, his site is still great and it has definitely changed the hobby for the better. But I could have said exactly the same thing five or even ten years ago. What I haven't been able to say since is what he's done lately (aside from tweak enhancements to the existing platform). No major innovations, no new products or integrations of separate products (excepting the illustration site...I guess?) Bill has been resting on his laurels (or we could say inward-facing) for a long time. Instead of having this for himself, building and defining it his way and for his audience, owning the product, the process and (eventually) the ROI...he left the opportunity out there dangling for somebody else to pick up. And man, that did not happen overnight either. Years and years and years later...here we are. The competitive free market solves problems. Plain and simple.

[williamhlawson]

Just discovered the 'track' due to this being bumped up near the top.  I'm small time but pay attention to what's going on as I start buying again.  This site saves me time and has led me to dealers I didn't know existed, many with pieces I have put on a list in order of wants.  Just saying, this thing is fantastic and those dealer's, house's, etc. not working with this site may seriously need to reconsider.  I'm impressed...from a buyer's perspective, it is a wonderful one stop shop setup.  Just my 2.5 cents (adjusted for inflation).

[Rick2you2]

18 hours ago, Nexus said:

I haven't had a chance to dig into CAT yet, but from what I've seen, looks like a fantastic resource.

I'm disappointed that my site won't be included. I will talk to Bill about it.

My guess is that one of the primary reasons CAF-hosted sites aren't being shared is bandwidth usage. I know CAF's bills are huge, certainly relative to income, and there's no clear direct benefit to CAF for another site to grab their images. Again, just my guess.

Hopefully, something can be worked out.

I'm not knowledgeable about how site scraping works, but why can't CAT scrape the underlying sites instead of CAF? That wouldn't be blocked. Is there an additional cost of doing business that way?

[MyNameIsLegion]

I figured CAF would eventually block CAT, for multiple reasons- bandwidth being one- the other being it took views away from CAF directly, and the advertisers links hosted there.  I'd hope that some compromise could be made that was a win-win.  If CAT just indexed the listings on CAF to at least get the searches for title and artist that's a huge boon- with a link back to CAF to view the thumbnail so it doesn't suck up bandwidth for CAF without driving views to the site. There are some definite advantages that CAT has over CAF when it comes to search design- something that CAF has a lot of opportunity to improve-  I"d even be interested in some partnership or collaboration that made CAT a value-added feature for CAF for premium member members. The one advantage CAF has is better hosting, which is a weak spot for CAT since it's all out of pocket for him. CAT does shed light on a lot of other sites not hosted by CAF- they too could end up blocking CAT indexing (either deliberately, or automatically if they think it's a threat) but I don't see how it can't help them. It's more eyeballs for the likes of Mitch or Spencer or Danzig and a lot of mom and pop sites, and a helluva lot better that the fragmented marketplace that FB is starting to create.  And I will pay anyone who can let me filter out Cool Lines.  The one good think about CAT now is it's been done for me no matter what.

[williamhlawson]

Personally, I see CAF as a 'fan's' tool.  I'm there to learn and see, meet others with similar interests, admire, hate, etc. etc..... I get to see ton's of art that I simply don't search for in a buying environment.  I understand the links leading to sales sites are everywhere on the pages.  But...NOT everything on CAF is for sale, although I have managed to relieve one gentleman of a NFS Bianchi.  On CAT I'm looking for items for SALE, not just to admire, discover new artists, envy the rich, etc, which is what I use CAF for primarily.  I see something on CAT I know it is obtainable in some way usually....on CAF it varies.  Another 2.5c

 

[NicoV]

Thanks for your (public or private) support.

We are in a two-weeks holidays in France, so sorry if I'm not as available as usual. I would like to give my (probably biaised) opinion by answering a few posts. As usual, I hope my English won't deserve me, so please keep in mind that I'm not fluent in English and I may be clumsy sometimes.

 

On 27/10/2017 at 4:03 PM, Panelfan1 said:

you need to consider comicarttracker (...)  Its kind of what uber is to cabs.

I love this catchphrase 

 

On 27/10/2017 at 8:07 PM, SquareChaos said:

Someone that earns some portion of their living providing an internet presence for various dealers does not want some other site scraping the content they host and becoming a 'central gathering spot' for the community. It may be good for the dealers, they may see a few more sales since the art is somewhat easier to find, but if the CAT site traffic gets large enough, it is not a far leap to start wondering what service the (suddenly) middleman is actually providing. Who knows what business model CAT may be considering down the road... just the question I previously asked in this thread.

Would you consider Google (or any other search engine) as a threat to CAF? However

- Google scraps CAF and dealers websites (and thus increases bandwidth)

- Google displays CAF and dealers images (and thus increases bandwidth)

- Google is clearly a central gathering spot for all of us... including when I want to find original art from a specific artist

But you know what? Not only Bill does not block Google, but he probably does his best to ensure that CAF and dealers websites are scraped by Google bots as often as possible and that his pages are displayed as often as possible on Google search results pages.

For dealers and collectors, CAT clearly only has benefits:

- ComicArtTracker started because I was frustrated at trying to find relevant art for sale. Frustrated by some auction houses websites first (when you cannot even have a watch list), but also by marketplaces (where there is so many and it's not so easy to only check for new art, if you don't come on a regular basis) and a lot of dealers websites with no or limited search engine, poor unresponsive design, no notifications to avoid me coming every day and see no change... Well, you know what I mean, I'm convinced that I'm not the only one to be frustrated by all these websites.

- Regarding dealers (or auction houses), any free advertising is beneficial. If you're a small fish it's even better because a lot of collectors did not even know you were there. But even well established dealers can benefit from CAT. Because a lot of them have old, old-fashion websites. Because it's easier to dig into old inventory with CAT, where dealers websites tend to focus on new art. Because a lot of french collectors don't really know how to navigate into english websites (and I could easily translate CAT in Spanish or Chinese or whatever). Because collectors don't have time to come on their website every week (CAF answered this last point for 20+ dealers with daily notifications). 

It's not so simple with CAF. CAF has two different activities:

1) as a community platform, CAF offers a place where people can share their original art collection, sell art with no fee,... Bill clearly did a lot for this hobby of ours, when creating CAF where nothing existed before, and greatly helped to make this hobby more visible and more accessible to all of us. This platform costs money because it takes time to develop and maintain a website, and because CAF has to pay for hosting, emails, ... Premium accounts help to pay the bill and are rewarded with extra services. But I would be really surprised if premium accounts paid for all the costs. Advertising and affiliation are other sources of income.

2) as a professional services provider, CAF offers turnkey websites to dealers (I hope "turnkey" is the right word) and deep integration with CAF, which offers added visibility. I don't know how these deals work but as a website developer I have no doubt that Bill has in mind that SEO is key and does his best to ensure that his dealers websites are as well referenced as possible on search engines. CAF also takes care of hosting (and probably benefits from scale factor on hosting costs by hosting so many websites). Dealers are happy as they don't have to manage their website by themselves (and we are talking about a long time ago where building websites was not so easy and cheap as it can be nowadays) and have a good visibility both on search engines and on the number 1 original comic art website. I don't know if they pay a fixed or or variable price, but I guess that what they pay is reasonable compared to the benefits or they would not stay. Bill won't get rich with this activity but it helps consolidate the whole stuff and all this data (original art for sale coming from dealers) is also a huge added-value to his website and increases the interest for premium accounts.

I really love this idea and I consider that Bill Cox was really farseeing in building this virtuous circle.

So why would CAT be considered differently than Google? Because of the bandwidth? Because CAT has features that CAF does not have? Any other reason? I don't say that CAT and CAF don't compete on anything, they definitely do. But they could also benefit from each other and I told Bill that I would be more than happy to consider any solution.

1) as a professional services provider, Bill could integrate CAT to his offer, as he probably considers SEO (search engine optimization) as part of the deal. We could work together to reduce CAT footprint on CAF servers (CAT could load less pages daily than any real collector wandering on dealers websites, if we work on a way to exchange information). Bill could tell his dealers that CAT is free for them only because they already pay for the bandwidth through their deal with CAF (which is truth). We could work on having lighter images for CAT, to reduce bandwidth. And if - even with all precautions - it still costs more than today, he could ask dealers if they are ok to pay for that. Don't get me wrong: maybe he could not for any good reason I don't have in mind... but he did not wish to discuss any option.

2) as a community platform, maybe he considers CAT as a threat for his premium accounts (Google is clearly not). But here again, we could build things differently. CAF as a source on CAT would also give extra visibility to sellers. He could consider sharing only sales from premium members on CAT, or giving CAF premium members an advantage by sharing dealers sales on CAT with a delay - I mean a few hours after they are visible on CAF / dealers websites (that's already what 2DGalleries do: premium members see sales 1 hour before other members). 

 

On 27/10/2017 at 8:31 PM, Pete Marino said:

I can see it pretty easily.  Why should someone pay for the $50 annual membership, where the biggest boon is the bi-daily keyword emails, when CAT can provide that, plus more?

Sorry if I'm rude, but if these emails are the only reason why you pay for a premium account, you get it wrong. For eBay you can have it for free. For dealers websites you could easily find a browser add-on (or many websites) that will alert you as soon as something changes on the "new items" page from each dealer - not only the ones hosted by CAF. That's what I did prior to working on CAT.

 

On 27/10/2017 at 8:56 PM, Nexus said:

My guess is that one of the primary reasons CAF-hosted sites aren't being shared is bandwidth usage. I know CAF's bills are huge, certainly relative to income, and there's no clear direct benefit to CAF for another site to grab their images. Again, just my guess.

I offered Bill to host a copy of all dealers images on my own servers. I also offered to ask each dealer if he was ok for CAT to copy his images. Of course, ultimately it means that I would have to find a way to finance this hosting. But I don't consider this as being a good solution: I don't want to replace CAF! Nobody asks Google to pay for the extra traffic / bandwidth it generates.

Edited October 29, 2017 by NicoV

[vodou]

50 minutes ago, NicoV said:

...but he did not wish to discuss any option.

I think it's Bill's turn to explain his pov and justify to his hosted sites customers why he's cutting them off from greater targeted and international exposure?

[comicwiz]

On 27/10/2017 at 2:56 PM, Nexus said:

My guess is that one of the primary reasons CAF-hosted sites aren't being shared is bandwidth usage. I know CAF's bills are huge, certainly relative to income, and there's no clear direct benefit to CAF for another site to grab their images. Again, just my guess.

I don't know all the technical ins/outs of CAT, but my hunch is that it is a federated search software that relies on the native search features of a website to perform it's content scraping. Because of this, and depending on how many people are using CAT at any given time, it could mean multiple requests made to CAF's search feature, and bogging down processing and/or server performance. I can't speak on bandwidth usage, but conversely this may mean slowing down the site for regular users if a number of people are using CAT at the same time. I don't know if you recall how these boards scaled down on it's search function leading-up to the site migration, but I certainly noticed that at least a year earlier, we started to lose the ability to recall based on passage of time. I remember being able to search back to posts at least a decade ago, and longer, but that all changed because of site performance issues. There was also a restriction of time between performing a search - I can't recall if it was 30 seconds or a few minutes of time a user had to wait before being able to perform another search. The host then began to look at restricting search functionality even more (which sucked because it was reduced from 10+ years to only being able to search for posts no further than 2 years back). I mention the latter because a lot of the way a site is architected and designed determines how it load balances those processor intensive features and tasks. Unfortunately, this is usually an after thought, and what wins out (specifcally in the case of these boards) is going with open source because of the wide developer community, and/or it's cheap or free to run, and only ramping up hardware specs when you encounter an issue.

Edited October 29, 2017 by comicwiz

[Panelfan1]

If any of you reading this liked using CAT and think it could be useful to you (especially if you tried it before the blocking of some dealer sites) - I encourage you to do as I have:

email the dealers on the list that you know personally and tell them why you like CAT and why they should support it by asking Bill At CAF to unblock the searches. 

If enough folks talk to their dealer friends, we may get a grassroots  type of movement to have better search available for all us comic art fans.

I just want everyone to get along and make collecting comic art a better experience.

[Nexus]

Bill Cox just reached out to me and we had a long chat by phone. He has very specific (and IMO, legitimate) reasons for not allowing CAT access to CAF's network of sites. I encouraged him to share them here, which I hope he will.

He does, however, have a compromise in mind. So fingers crossed, Nico will work with him toward a fair resolution for all.

 

[SquareChaos]

8 hours ago, NicoV said:

Would you consider Google (or any other search engine) as a threat to CAF? However

- Google scraps CAF and dealers websites (and thus increases bandwidth)

- Google displays CAF and dealers images (and thus increases bandwidth)

- Google is clearly a central gathering spot for all of us... including when I want to find original art from a specific artist

But you know what? Not only Bill does not block Google, but he probably does his best to ensure that CAF and dealers websites are scraped by Google bots as often as possible and that his pages are displayed as often as possible on Google search results pages.

I like CAT, as a developer I respect the work and time you've put in to it. I think the result you're driving towards is a better end user experience than the pre-existing alternative... but I also think your analogy here is incredibly misleading.

I highly doubt Bill would ever have the concern that Google is going to begin specializing in the original comic art niche as a potential competitor to his own business model, while alternatively, it would be somewhat reckless not to consider CAT a potential threat for reasons already mentioned. That is just the facts of the matter. And when one views this scenario from that perspective, you're simply taking other people's data to drive CAT.

I personally hope something can be worked out, something that results in a better experience for the collector / consumer, something that utilizes all of the hard work you've put into this project, but I'm currently dubious. If the worst occurs, you'll have three choices; you can become a competitor in the truest sense of the word, you can ignore their wishes (find ways around the blacklist), or CAT likely dies as you don't have your own data and at it's core, the site is fully data driven.

[SquareChaos]

Relevant read on the topic - https://benbernardblog.com/web-scraping-and-crawling-are-perfectly-legal-right/