Hallelujah! Trade compare back on Pinpics!

I think this literally just updated while I was messing around on the site (unless I'm blind and have missed it)!

Looks like the compare feature is back on Pinpics!

This is an absolutely necessity for those of us who trade for other traders, and was sorely missed!

They keep this up and I might actually start liking Pinpics again. It's a shame it's a for-profit venture now...I would never feel comfortable helping out by posting some missing pins when I know they'd be used to profit someone else. But continuing to add features like these are definitely a good step forward!

If you think about it, no one else has a database as large as Pinpics. I never paid to upgrade my Pinpics account and I still get everything I need from it. People are spending hours on program changes trying to make the site better. I feel our contributions to the site are not helping them, they are helping all of us who use the site.

Suzziesue said:

If you think about it, no one else has a database as large as Pinpics. I never paid to upgrade my Pinpics account and I still get everything I need from it. People are spending hours on program changes trying to make the site better. I feel our contributions to the site are not helping them, they are helping all of us who use the site.

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There's some truth to that. But it's also true that they purchased something that was built by fans, for fans, to try and make money off of it, and that's why it's the biggest database out there...not because thy created it. There's a lot of people who put a lot of time and effort into that to help fans, for free. It's the reason that there are so many gaps in the pins now...some fans don't want to contribute free labor to a for-profit site.

At the end of the day, I think people would have been more accepting of the whole thing if they had built their own database from the ground up, improved on what Pinpics was already offering, then presented the paid tiers.

So far, I haven't seen anything that the old site didn't have (that I would use), with the exception of the pinpoint search (searching WITHIN a member's stuff), which is a great addition and an amazing time saver. But everything else I remember being on the old site.

I'm relieved and grateful they haven't closed it off to non-paying members yet, but I'm not super hopeful that that won't change one day.

It doesn't get me worked up, but I still have opinions on it, I guess.

Crazy step backwards to get rid of groups. I don't know what they were thinking. The "part of" or whatever it is in the search feature is terrible. There should be a place to add things like hashtags so people can find stuff, and then just create a list of hasthags. Like #ptd, and then you can search that and find them. Something, anything.

OH YAY! Comparing trades to wants was always there, but I missed comparing their wants to my OWNS in case there was something from my collection that I might be willing to let go of for a grail.

Vixy said:

OH YAY! Comparing trades to wants was always there, but I missed comparing their wants to my OWNS in case there was something from my collection that I might be willing to let go of for a grail.

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Yeah, that was missed, too. But, for me, the biggest thing I missed was being able to check a friend's Wants to a member's Traders, which is what I used to do all the time. You know, third party stuff. And before (on the new site), we could only do it from our own account.

OMG yes, that too. When I'm trading with someone I often look to see if they have anything my best friend wants.

markheardjr said:

Crazy step backwards to get rid of groups. I don't know what they were thinking. The "part of" or whatever it is in the search feature is terrible. There should be a place to add things like hashtags so people can find stuff, and then just create a list of hasthags. Like #ptd, and then you can search that and find them. Something, anything.

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I speak to Bev occasionally, and she told me she was working on the Groups part of the database, she was separating groups from the members that created them, because when you click on some members at the moment, there are groups attached to them. Mine have never been attached to my profile, so I dont know whats up with that. However, she gave me a link to the main list of groups, which she said I could use. I havent spoken to her in any depth about it, but I do know she spends a lot of time on making improvements to the database. So who knows what else will come out of it.

Abyssinian28 said:

But it's also true that they purchased something that was built by fans, for fans, to try and make money off of it, and that's why it's the biggest database out there...not because thy created it. There's a lot of people who put a lot of time and effort into that to help fans, for free. It's the reason that there are so many gaps in the pins now...some fans don't want to contribute free labor to a for-profit site.

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This.

My biggest issue with adding new pins to the site is that any images or descriptions I provide automatically become copyrighted and *owned* by PinPics. That really bothers me, enough so that I won't post any new pins to the site.

Abyssinian28 said:

There's some truth to that. But it's also true that they purchased something that was built by fans, for fans, to try and make money off of it, and that's why it's the biggest database out there...not because thy created it. There's a lot of people who put a lot of time and effort into that to help fans, for free. It's the reason that there are so many gaps in the pins now...some fans don't want to contribute free labor to a for-profit site.

At the end of the day, I think people would have been more accepting of the whole thing if they had built their own database from the ground up, improved on what Pinpics was already offering, then presented the paid tiers.

So far, I haven't seen anything that the old site didn't have (that I would use), with the exception of the pinpoint search (searching WITHIN a member's stuff), which is a great addition and an amazing time saver. But everything else I remember being on the old site.

I'm relieved and grateful they haven't closed it off to non-paying members yet, but I'm not super hopeful that that won't change one day.

It doesn't get me worked up, but I still have opinions on it, I guess.

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Okay so let's separate some fact and fiction here.

Figgy and Brit wanted out of pinpics, they no longer had the time or desire to do what needed to be done.

The new owners offered a pay portion to pinpics for those who wanted to pay for extra bells and whistles. When somebody spend the amount of time and money to buy and run a site like pinpics it has to be for the love of the pin trading community. There was and never will be enough profit in it to make it truly a for profit site. If they strictly charge for the site people will leave and find other ways to catalog their stuff.

For those who did not want to pay it was and always will be free.

There is no longer a pay portion to pinpics.

Any picture donated to pinpics has always been the property of pinpics and could be used as long as credit was given. This was true long before the new owners took over.

Currently there is one Admin and one programmer trying to fix what the original programmers were not able to do, get it working the way it should. Does it take a while to get things fixed, with this limited staff yes it does, but they are working on it.

Are they trying to make it so it is a world class site again, from what I have seen yes they are.

Groups were taken out because people started using them for things they were not intended for. Like unauthorized pins I have for trade, and pins I have for sale. Well those can't be up there because Disney has told pinpics that they can not allow unauthorized pins to be traded and pinpics has always banned selling of pins through their site.

Opinion time:

Where there mistakes made, sure there were. Are they trying to fix them and make as many people as possible happy, again from what I have seen I like the new direction they are going.

Was I as critical as anybody about the new site? Yep, I sure was! Again, I am happy with the direction of the new site and I am able to figure out how to use it again. I have been doing a ton of trading on the site lately. Easy 10+ trades a week all over the world. It is always easier to trade when you have a lot of pins to trade with, so my results are not the same as many, but the point is valid in that there are people trading again. How is that a bad thing?

I have a hard time understanding why this bothers everyone. It's just a picture. Once I take a picture of a pin, what else am I going to do with it? It helps the pin community. What is wrong with that? I think everyone is so bitter since the old site was shut down that they look for every excuse to hate the new site. I mean no disrespect for people's opinions but how many of you have really truly tried to use the new version of Pinpics? I know some people have refused to even try. I am basing this on the comments I read in blogs. If you take the time to explore, learn where everything is, it is still very useful.

The trade assist has always been an issue, I agree with that, but who else has come up with anything better? If you don't like the trade assist feature, use the compare feature and send a message instead. It may take 5 minutes longer to type a message but with all the hours we spend on pin trading, 5 minutes is nothing.

unibear said:

My biggest issue with adding new pins to the site is that any images or descriptions I provide automatically become copyrighted and *owned* by PinPics. That really bothers me, enough so that I won't post any new pins to the site.

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Regretting starting this thread, tbh. Or at least making the off-the cuff comment towards the end of my post, which seems to have opened the debate once again. We've done this song and dance about Pinpics a million times, I wasn't really looking to re-hash it.

Doc, (and I'm not saying this agressively, fyi) I'm not sure what "fiction" I was laying down that "fact" had to be pulled from it- the new owners did or do (in the future) intend to make money off Pinpics, yes? Were we all lied to about that? That was my understanding. That's pretty much all I said on the subject.

Yes, it's expensive to run...I never implied it wasn't? We used to have fundraisers to help with it. The pay portion is gone? News to me! Is that for good? By that, I mean have they given up on making money on it? Like, that would be a pretty big change in motivation, if it's gone from a business purchase back to a fan site.

I totally believe that there are new people working on it- I had heard that they had issues with the people they had handed it over to, originally. It's why I made this post...the site is improving, definitely. Pleased to see it.

Suzzie, we have to use the new site now...the old site was shut down. And whether or not people would contribute photos to Pinpics from this point on would probably depend on what they intend to do with the site. Like many others, we don't want to provide free labor to a profit making site, especially when the site was built by fans for fans, originally. If Pinpics is moving away from that model and to a different purpose, then that's different.

Actually, my number one issue with Pinpics is that we don't KNOW what's going on with them. Like, if they're that concerned about how bad things have gone, a little "press release" type open letter to the pin community would probably be a good idea. We have no idea what they're up to or where they're coming from. A lot of what I hear is people saying, "I talked to so and so at this convention or event"...you know, secondhand stuff.

docfish2u said:

Where there mistakes made, sure there were. Are they trying to fix them and make as many people as possible happy, again from what I have seen I like the new direction they are going.

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Suzziesue said:

I have a hard time understanding why this bothers everyone. It's just a picture. Once I take a picture of a pin, what else am I going to do with it? It helps the pin community. What is wrong with that? I think everyone is so bitter since the old site was shut down that they look for every excuse to hate the new site. I mean no disrespect for people's opinions but how many of you have really truly tried to use the new version of Pinpics?

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Okay, I apologize in advance for what's about to be a long rant here. But you did ask.

Yes, I have been using the new site all along; I'm still using it because it's still currently the most useful pin site out there, and I really like some of the new features.

I'm also still angry at them for some of their actions.

It's not about the photo itself. It's that they literally destroyed another fan site, as in took legal action and forced the site to be shut down, over photos and text submitted by volunteers.

That action was petty and unnecessary. Since that wasn't a for-profit part of their site, and since the other site was not for-profit either, there was no REASON for them to do it; they weren't losing anything. There was no threat to their site. Whether or not they had the right to-- they may have, I don't know-- it was unnecessary. To me that shows a meanness of spirit that I can't quite reconcile with everything else.

(I don't mean to start the legal arguments about it all over again, so please let's not. Whether or not the other site's runner could've legally won that battle is irrelevant; all legal battles take time and money and energy, and if you haven't got those to spare, then you just haven't. Can't get blood from a turnip, as my mother used to say.)

And of course there were the folks who got banned for doing nothing but mistakenly logging into a part of the site they didn't even know how they got to. (Like Judy. Judy! As if there were ever anyone LESS likely to be trying to hack or cause trouble for a site!) Again, that doesn't say "working to make things better for the fans" to me.

So I'm conflicted. I appreciate the ongoing improvements to the site. I have a harder time dismissing their "mistakes" because some of them were actually harmful (a lot of time and money went into the site that was lost) and no, they aren't trying to fix those mistakes. I'd actually appreciate it a great deal if they would try. Reinstating the accounts that were banned unfairly, maybe. Even a public apology would do. At the very least, a public explanation of why they took those actions. Something. It would show some good faith toward the pin community and maybe rebuild some of the trust that they destroyed.

Suzziesue said:

I have a hard time understanding why this bothers everyone. It's just a picture. Once I take a picture of a pin, what else am I going to do with it?

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By biggest issue that that once I post MY picture, it automatically becomes PINPIC'S picture, and now I have to ask THEM permission to use MY picture!! That is it, in a nutshell...

Abyssinian28 said:

Actually, my number one issue with Pinpics is that we don't KNOW what's going on with them. Like, if they're that concerned about how bad things have gone, a little "press release" type open letter to the pin community would probably be a good idea. We have no idea what they're up to or where they're coming from. A lot of what I hear is people saying, "I talked to so and so at this convention or event"...you know, secondhand stuff.

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This. It really would be appreciated if they'd open communications.

unibear said:

By biggest issue that that once I post MY picture, it automatically becomes PINPIC'S picture, and now I have to ask THEM permission to use MY picture!! That is it, in a nutshell...

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That's my only real problem. I don't care if they "own" them, provided they give credit (which I haven't seen on those I've submitted, but I haven't looked that hard). I can take another photo. But I can't use the other pictures for my own use. I make picture inventory documents of my pins, but sometimes I can't get the pic to insert and I didn't want to take a picture and go through the steps (okay, I'm lazy). Frustrating. Unlike some, I've had no other problem with pinpics.

Abyssinian28 said:

Regretting starting this thread, tbh. Or at least making the off-the cuff comment towards the end of my post, which seems to have opened the debate once again. We've done this song and dance about Pinpics a million times, I wasn't really looking to re-hash it.

Civil discussion is always a good thing and I have seen this thread be very civil. It never hurts to have a discussion and I did notice you were talking positively about the new additions to the site. I try to avoid the slamming threads as not much is accomplished in those. But since this one was civil I thought I would throw in what I knew and try to clarify some things.

Doc, (and I'm not saying this agressively, fyi) I'm not sure what "fiction" I was laying down that "fact" had to be pulled from it- the new owners did or do (in the future) intend to make money off Pinpics, yes? Were we all lied to about that? That was my understanding. That's pretty much all I said on the subject.

Yes, it's expensive to run...I never implied it wasn't? We used to have fundraisers to help with it. The pay portion is gone? News to me! Is that for good? By that, I mean have they given up on making money on it? Like, that would be a pretty big change in motivation, if it's gone from a business purchase back to a fan site.

You had mentioned that they were still a pay site, they are not. So I took the chance to talk about a few things I know about. I hope you don't think I was going after you personally. I know a lot of people have said a lot of things they have heard good and bad about pinpics. Like every discussion there are 3 sides, party A's, side, party B's side and the truth is usually someplace in the middle. The pin database was always always will be completely free to use, I have heard that from the owner himself. The only thing on the pay side was the price guides and some other bells and whistles that you could choose to pay for or not.

I totally believe that there are new people working on it- I had heard that they had issues with the people they had handed it over to, originally. It's why I made this post...the site is improving, definitely. Pleased to see it.

You and me both!!! I am very hopeful it will continue to get better.

Suzzie, we have to use the new site now...the old site was shut down. And whether or not people would contribute photos to Pinpics from this point on would probably depend on what they intend to do with the site. Like many others, we don't want to provide free labor to a profit making site, especially when the site was built by fans for fans, originally. If Pinpics is moving away from that model and to a different purpose, then that's different.

Again, the database was never part of the pay side of the site. The donated pictures have always been the property of pinpics, but you were free to use them all they asked is you gave them credit.

Actually, my number one issue with Pinpics is that we don't KNOW what's going on with them. Like, if they're that concerned about how bad things have gone, a little "press release" type open letter to the pin community would probably be a good idea. We have no idea what they're up to or where they're coming from. A lot of what I hear is people saying, "I talked to so and so at this convention or event"...you know, secondhand stuff.

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I agree, more communication is always a good thing! That being said, I can see how they might have be/ have been upset by the beating they took by all of who were complaining about them. Yes I was one of those people! I hated the new pinpics site as they rolled it out. What they are doing now is much better for this old dog and I am very happy with the direction it is heading.

Vixy said:

Okay, I apologize in advance for what's about to be a long rant here. But you did ask.

Yes, I have been using the new site all along; I'm still using it because it's still currently the most useful pin site out there, and I really like some of the new features.

I'm also still angry at them for some of their actions.

A lot of people were/are.

It's not about the photo itself. It's that they literally destroyed another fan site, as in took legal action and forced the site to be shut down, over photos and text submitted by volunteers.

That action was petty and unnecessary. Since that wasn't a for-profit part of their site, and since the other site was not for-profit either, there was no REASON for them to do it; they weren't losing anything. There was no threat to their site. Whether or not they had the right to-- they may have, I don't know-- it was unnecessary. To me that shows a meanness of spirit that I can't quite reconcile with everything else.

I can't talk to the legal side of this. I am not a lawyer and don't play one on tv. I loved Ethan's site, it was easy to use and I liked the layout. I was thrilled when he did it! But I can also see how pinpics would not be happy since he used a web crawler to take the information directly from pinpics.

(I don't mean to start the legal arguments about it all over again, so please let's not. Whether or not the other site's runner could've legally won that battle is irrelevant; all legal battles take time and money and energy, and if you haven't got those to spare, then you just haven't. Can't get blood from a turnip, as my mother used to say.)

And of course there were the folks who got banned for doing nothing but mistakenly logging into a part of the site they didn't even know how they got to. (Like Judy. Judy! As if there were ever anyone LESS likely to be trying to hack or cause trouble for a site!) Again, that doesn't say "working to make things better for the fans" to me.

So I'm conflicted. I appreciate the ongoing improvements to the site. I have a harder time dismissing their "mistakes" because some of them were actually harmful (a lot of time and money went into the site that was lost) and no, they aren't trying to fix those mistakes. I'd actually appreciate it a great deal if they would try. Reinstating the accounts that were banned unfairly, maybe. Even a public apology would do. At the very least, a public explanation of why they took those actions. Something. It would show some good faith toward the pin community and maybe rebuild some of the trust that they destroyed.

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I believe most of the people who were banned have been reinstated. I am not sure about why those who were not reinstated were not, might have been the way in which they were talking to mods and admins there. I know during that time frame everybody was pretty hot on both sides and things may have been said that should not have been on both sides.

Vixy said:

This. It really would be appreciated if they'd open communications.

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This would be a great thing, but again, they were flamed pretty hard during that time. Let's hope both sides can get over the past and move forward to make pinpics a top notch site again.

docfish2u said:

Let's hope both sides can get over the past and move forward to make pinpics a top notch site again.

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Not going to happen.

PinPics used to be constantly and thoroughly updated and corrected *BY the community FOR the community*. It hasn't been in three years. Therefore the current site has bad information, repeat information and lack of information. (Seriously, it's tragic how much inaccurate information has been put on there, how many duplicate listings were added and not cleaned up, and worst of all how many hundreds and potentially thousands of pins from these last few years are not listed on there and will never be.)

Which is sad for the community as it used to be. However, since I would venture to guess that at least half the people currently trading/buying/selling pins (i.e. the hundreds or thousands using social media exclusively) have no use for PinPics or even awareness of it, it won't ultimately matter.

They made themselves obsolete and I don't know if the new owners will have much to show for their investment in the long run besides debt and memories of what used to be a preeminent site - as created and maintained by the community that they disrupted.

I hope that pinpics is not obsolete, those of us who have used it for years will be lost. I have looked into a few Facebook groups and trading there seems to be pretty inefficient. You tell everyone what you are looking for, and hope someone comes across it. What we need to do is introduce these people to pinpics and unite the pin trading community.

^ And if PinPics doesn't list the pins they're looking for? How does that help them?

This is why from the very beginning I always kept my own database of pins - doing my own research, gathering my own information, keeping my own records. Because at least for a completist like myself, PinPics has been obsolete and inaccurate for years since the new ownership pushed away the former regular contributors to the site. I'm losing track of the number of times I mention a pin to someone and they give me a blank look as they've no idea it exists because "it's not on PinPics".

Editing to add - I haven't spent much time on RyanFury's site (PTDB?) but when I did look there, they seemed to have a better representation of newer/recent pins. But I haven't looked deeply into the site nor have I signed up for it. Been burned too many times at this point to want to put more time and effort into anyone else's site.

Everything Jabberwocky said!!

And to clear up some misinformation, some of us who were banned, were not helped by their staff to be reinstated after pinpics site debacle. I basically got a too bad so sad from staff. I spoke to a unrelated tech person who told me how to unban myself. I was never rude or nasty to anyone there when this happened. I can't say the same for them. I have the emails somewhere. Anyway, while I have moved on, I haven't forgotten the treatment or other incidents.

I still use the site for reference, but so rarely for trading, and there have been improvements. I don't want any sugar coating going on when the past is drug up again. They need to own how they treated people. Since they won't, that's fine. But I don't want what happened swept under the rug.