What is a water "tideline"? 5 5

[Gaard]

On 6/11/2022 at 4:33 PM, CHASEnBLUE said:

I'm thinking of cracking one of the cases open and go page by page to see what and where the heck this might be...

If you're going to send them to Tony anyway, you may as well crack them out and have a look.

[Lightning55]

Yeah, they probably lost all of their market value by being graded 9.0. 

I guess they could have given you a 9.8 qualified green label, as in "it would have been a 9.8 if it wasn't for that hidden damage at the time of manufacture".  Similar to other now-invisible interior defects like a missing centerfold poster.  I'm not sure which is worse - a blue 9.0 or a green 9.8.  But I'm just throwing stuff at the wall, as I don't know all the rules for Qualified grades.

Certainly could have been much more specific about where the tide line was located.

Edited June 12, 2022 by Lightning55

[CHASEnBLUE]

On 6/12/2022 at 12:09 AM, Lightning55 said:

Yeah, they probably lost all of their market value by being graded 9.0. 

I guess they could have given you a 9.8 qualified green label, as in "it would have been a 9.8 if it wasn't for that hidden damage at the time of manufacture".  Similar to other now-invisible interior defects like a missing centerfold poster.  I'm not sure which is worse - a blue 9.0 or a green 9.8.  But I'm just throwing stuff at the wall, as I don't know all the rules for Qualified grades.

Certainly could have been much more specific about where the tide line was located.

Exactly. Clearly, I realize now more than ever we are "just a number" when it comes to submissions. Don't bother looking at the history of the submitter (1K + submissions overall) and think maybe a notation of why a newly produced comic would get a low grade when the member normally submits 9.8's with a handful of 9.6's. To make matters worse, they use the catch all of "provide photographs of the comics before submission" - really? 

[CHASEnBLUE]

Just making @CGC Mike aware of this thread. He probably already seen it though because I've bugged him in the past.... 

[CGC Mike]

On 6/13/2022 at 2:55 AM, CHASEnBLUE said:

Just making @CGC Mike aware of this thread. He probably already seen it though because I've bugged him in the past.... 

Thanks for the heads up.  It seems that many people are hoping for graders notes, or more detailed graders notes that would answer questions as to why a book received the grade that it was given.  Am I correct in assuming that this is the takeaway from this thread?  I can try to get a definition for water tideline.

[CHASEnBLUE]

On 6/13/2022 at 5:02 AM, CGC Mike said:

Thanks for the heads up.  It seems that many people are hoping for graders notes, or more detailed graders notes that would answer questions as to why a book received the grade that it was given.  Am I correct in assuming that this is the takeaway from this thread?  I can try to get a definition for water tideline.

Thank you Mike. I would say at a minimum to include grader notes when it makes sense. An older book with issues obviously will have flaws that the submitter will know about for the most part. For newer books, when all the other books are 9.8 and two are a 9.0, I would think that they would at least mark why. In a case like mine, there's absolutely no hint in looking at the comic, from the outside at least, on what would justify such a markdown.

Edited June 13, 2022 by CHASEnBLUE

[lostboys]

Impressive that the graders remembered these specific books that did not have graders notes.

[Gaard]

Right?

[CHASEnBLUE]

On 6/13/2022 at 12:26 PM, lostboys said:

Impressive that the graders remembered these specific books that did not have graders notes.

That's exactly what I said to the reps.

[Qalyar]

On 6/13/2022 at 7:02 AM, CGC Mike said:

Thanks for the heads up.  It seems that many people are hoping for graders notes, or more detailed graders notes that would answer questions as to why a book received the grade that it was given.  Am I correct in assuming that this is the takeaway from this thread?  I can try to get a definition for water tideline.

Better consistency with grader's notes would be a good mid-term goal for the company, I think, once the quality control problems are remediated.

The counterargument has always been that doing so will further delay TATs. But I know that there are some backend software and process improvements in the pipeline. If those aren't yet set in stone, they provide a very good opportunity to revising the grader's notes process as well. The idea for grader's notes should not be an attempt to provide an exact diagnosis of the problems with a book, only to indicate their nature in broad terms. If I were building the interface for this, I would make the most common issues available in a "build your own note" selection system. While evaluating the book, the grader would have an interface where they could select:

• Type of defect, chosen from: abrasion, bend, crease, tear, stain
• Severity of defect, chosen from: minor, moderate, severe
• Location of defect, chosen from: front cover, back cover
• Area of defect, chosen from a list. I think the most useful list -- offering specificity without flooding the list with options -- would be sextants (UL, UR, CL, CR, LL, LR), plus a seventh option for "whole book".

Obviously, that doesn't cover everything (spine splits, interior defects, and so forth), so the interface also includes a box that can be checked to instead allow the grader to enter a freeform note, as they do now. With minimal training and repetition, this should allow notes to be created and entered fairly quickly.

Now, if CGC does actually still have two graders review each book -- and I'm not going to speculate there -- it is possible that you would not make these "raw" notes customer-facing unless they match to some extent. You'd need to iterate to determine the details of the process that works best for the company. But at the very least, if you do have multiple graders entering notes on the same books, even if we don't see them, that should be queryable data, which you can use to audit grader performance. If Grader Bethany consistently identifies books as having minor creases while Grader Joshua categorizes those same books as moderate creases, then you have a disconnect regarding your grading standard (one way or the other) and can provide additional training.

Regardless, the bottom line is that CGC should standardize grader's notes formatting, to the extent feasible, both to provide a better customer experience AND to provide actionable intelligence about how the process is performing.

The topic this thread is about is sort of an aside at this point, but I really struggle to see anything in that picture that would constitute a tideline, or water damage of any sort. A better grader's note system might very well have prevented this problem.

[CGC Mike]

I appreciate the feedback, @CHASEnBLUE and @Qalyar 

[CHASEnBLUE]

On 6/15/2022 at 10:24 AM, Qalyar said:

Better consistency with grader's notes would be a good mid-term goal for the company, I think, once the quality control problems are remediated.

The counterargument has always been that doing so will further delay TATs. But I know that there are some backend software and process improvements in the pipeline. If those aren't yet set in stone, they provide a very good opportunity to revising the grader's notes process as well. The idea for grader's notes should not be an attempt to provide an exact diagnosis of the problems with a book, only to indicate their nature in broad terms. If I were building the interface for this, I would make the most common issues available in a "build your own note" selection system. While evaluating the book, the grader would have an interface where they could select:

• Type of defect, chosen from: abrasion, bend, crease, tear, stain
• Severity of defect, chosen from: minor, moderate, severe
• Location of defect, chosen from: front cover, back cover
• Area of defect, chosen from a list. I think the most useful list -- offering specificity without flooding the list with options -- would be sextants (UL, UR, CL, CR, LL, LR), plus a seventh option for "whole book".

Obviously, that doesn't cover everything (spine splits, interior defects, and so forth), so the interface also includes a box that can be checked to instead allow the grader to enter a freeform note, as they do now. With minimal training and repetition, this should allow notes to be created and entered fairly quickly.

Now, if CGC does actually still have two graders review each book -- and I'm not going to speculate there -- it is possible that you would not make these "raw" notes customer-facing unless they match to some extent. You'd need to iterate to determine the details of the process that works best for the company. But at the very least, if you do have multiple graders entering notes on the same books, even if we don't see them, that should be queryable data, which you can use to audit grader performance. If Grader Bethany consistently identifies books as having minor creases while Grader Joshua categorizes those same books as moderate creases, then you have a disconnect regarding your grading standard (one way or the other) and can provide additional training.

Regardless, the bottom line is that CGC should standardize grader's notes formatting, to the extent feasible, both to provide a better customer experience AND to provide actionable intelligence about how the process is performing.

The topic this thread is about is sort of an aside at this point, but I really struggle to see anything in that picture that would constitute a tideline, or water damage of any sort. A better grader's note system might very well have prevented this problem.

Very well stated/explained. Thank you. 

Not to keep beating the horse to death, but your post made me think that I should have included the 9.8's of the same issue that came back. Now that I look at both back covers in comparison at least on the outside (though I do not recall any problem on my initial prescreen of the inside back/front cover), what I mentioned in the first post that could be related on the lower portion of the back cover of both "9.0's" looks just like this 9.8 from the same batch (Virgin cover).

9.8 and 9.0 Comparison:

 

@CGC Mike

Edited June 16, 2022 by CHASEnBLUE

[PovertyRow]

Remember too that water is, itself, a solvent. Just a drinkable one for us! But water can dissolve dirt on a book and, when that area dries, can leave a cleaner area with a thin accumulation of the dissolved dirt/matter forming a darker outline (the "tideline) around the area. Very common to see in books hit by water but in a new book...weird.

Edited June 18, 2022 by PovertyRow
punctuation

[Gaard]

"Impressive that the graders remembered these specific books that did not have graders notes. "

"We generally receive about 30-40 thousand submissions a week"

 

[enigmatech]

On 6/12/2022 at 4:19 AM, CHASEnBLUE said:

Exactly. Clearly, I realize now more than ever we are "just a number" when it comes to submissions. Don't bother looking at the history of the submitter (1K + submissions overall) and think maybe a notation of why a newly produced comic would get a low grade when the member normally submits 9.8's with a handful of 9.6's. To make matters worse, they use the catch all of "provide photographs of the comics before submission" - really? 

I have all those prior to submission photos. Does it really make any difference?