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31
The Noble Talk / Re: How do you make your profile unavailable?
« on July 1st, 2017, 06:43 AM »
It is understandable and it sounds like a lot people are willing to use Lestrades as long as it has more users, but not using it at all keeps that very status quo intact which is not found all that desirable in the first place. It is like saying: "Change has to start somewhere, but it better start with my neighbour and not me."
I also do not want to miss out on trades, but to do so I always update Lestrades and Barter completely and Steamtrades probably at least every 2-4 weeks.
I also do not want to miss out on trades, but to do so I always update Lestrades and Barter completely and Steamtrades probably at least every 2-4 weeks.
32
The Illustrious Idea / Re: Make trading great ag... err not that one.
« on June 28th, 2017, 12:46 AM »
I also have been wondering why people want to use Barter primarily when it is so so incredibly slow in finding matches or updating trade information. I suppose most simply do not know about its functionality and we're up against the first mover advantage. I did start a new thread at the Steam community as I noticed that it seems rather quiet there and most people probably do not even bother to look further if there appears little activity there. So what might work best is if a few more new threads are created at the Steam community by other people to show that there is activity. After that, people might have more success in inviting others.
To put the issue of the first mover advantage in perspective in for example the cryptocurrency market, everyone notices that Bitcoin is by the largest, even though there are now vastly superior alternatives. Bitcoin will however not remain the largest. Another example is the internetbubble. Most of the initial massive internet companies are now no longer around or fairly trivial, whilst other giants have come along which took over most of the market such as Google and Amazon. Of course the size of the markets is vastly different, but the same rules generally apply.
I think most people will probably keep using Lestrades if they have tried using it for about a week. The question to me seems how to get people to get to use it for a week. I do not think that giving away something should be necessary at this point. A tutorial might help with getting more users. At a later point it might be interesting to explore how users can be enticed to try it out for a week. Ultimately trading platforms help sellers of games as it improves liquidity. People tend to buy more bundles as they know they can exchange them for other items of interest. So what could potentially work is some kind of cooperation with certain gamebundle sellers. You could for example offer to provide a visible link to their websites in exchange for them offering a link to yours. Websites like Indiegala might like to pretend that their own trading platform is functional, but it really is not. So in that sense all parties stand to win something from such a setup, but the question is whether most gamebundle sellers also notice the strategic advantage from such kind of cooperation.
The alternative you have is to offer a service similar to what G2A has besides the trading platform. In case your prices would be lower than those of G2A, you'd attract an entirely different group of buyers and sellers and you could make money on each transaction. The downside is that you would then not be able to link to gamebundle sellers and vice versa.
As an alternative in case you would be interested in that, you could potentially decide to work together with Steamtrades / Steamgifts and integrate those platforms with what you have. The upside/downside is shared decision making. In case you would be able to integrate platforms, you would have access to a large user base by default. An alternative would be to join forces with Barter. Perhaps you can also join forces with others than the above mentioned who can give you what you need and vice versa.
All in all I think you have a lot of options, but what is most important is that you choose something that you are comfortable with yourself. I think the key questions are first of all whether you would like to run this as a profit or non-profit organisation and secondly how much help you need to accomplish those aims. Many people can have great ideas, but sometimes not all the skills are available to make it into a success. At other times, the cooperation itself can turn a success into a disaster, so best to choose wisely in that regard and set everything forth clearly into contracts in case you decide to work together with others if necessary (also the worst case situations, so that they can be undone relatively easy).
I myself unfortunately cannot offer much help as I am too busy with my own work. I do hope that the above is of some use.
To put the issue of the first mover advantage in perspective in for example the cryptocurrency market, everyone notices that Bitcoin is by the largest, even though there are now vastly superior alternatives. Bitcoin will however not remain the largest. Another example is the internetbubble. Most of the initial massive internet companies are now no longer around or fairly trivial, whilst other giants have come along which took over most of the market such as Google and Amazon. Of course the size of the markets is vastly different, but the same rules generally apply.
I think most people will probably keep using Lestrades if they have tried using it for about a week. The question to me seems how to get people to get to use it for a week. I do not think that giving away something should be necessary at this point. A tutorial might help with getting more users. At a later point it might be interesting to explore how users can be enticed to try it out for a week. Ultimately trading platforms help sellers of games as it improves liquidity. People tend to buy more bundles as they know they can exchange them for other items of interest. So what could potentially work is some kind of cooperation with certain gamebundle sellers. You could for example offer to provide a visible link to their websites in exchange for them offering a link to yours. Websites like Indiegala might like to pretend that their own trading platform is functional, but it really is not. So in that sense all parties stand to win something from such a setup, but the question is whether most gamebundle sellers also notice the strategic advantage from such kind of cooperation.
The alternative you have is to offer a service similar to what G2A has besides the trading platform. In case your prices would be lower than those of G2A, you'd attract an entirely different group of buyers and sellers and you could make money on each transaction. The downside is that you would then not be able to link to gamebundle sellers and vice versa.
As an alternative in case you would be interested in that, you could potentially decide to work together with Steamtrades / Steamgifts and integrate those platforms with what you have. The upside/downside is shared decision making. In case you would be able to integrate platforms, you would have access to a large user base by default. An alternative would be to join forces with Barter. Perhaps you can also join forces with others than the above mentioned who can give you what you need and vice versa.
All in all I think you have a lot of options, but what is most important is that you choose something that you are comfortable with yourself. I think the key questions are first of all whether you would like to run this as a profit or non-profit organisation and secondly how much help you need to accomplish those aims. Many people can have great ideas, but sometimes not all the skills are available to make it into a success. At other times, the cooperation itself can turn a success into a disaster, so best to choose wisely in that regard and set everything forth clearly into contracts in case you decide to work together with others if necessary (also the worst case situations, so that they can be undone relatively easy).
I myself unfortunately cannot offer much help as I am too busy with my own work. I do hope that the above is of some use.
33
The Detective League / [Groupees] Re: Bundle pre-orders
« on June 9th, 2017, 01:44 AM »But this doesn't show preorders, does it..?
Oh, I like the 'Bundle games' page... I can envision a similar page on LT where you could sort games by ratio and number of times bundled... Hmmmmmmmm :angel:
34
The Detective League / [Groupees] Re: Bundle pre-orders
« on June 9th, 2017, 01:22 AM »
I generally use the following to spot various bundles: Epic Bundle
35
The Fatal Problem / Re: Barter banning Lestrade's from list syncing
« on May 20th, 2017, 08:01 PM »
Are you all completely banned from Barter?
36
The Noble Talk / Re: What the flu?
« on May 3rd, 2017, 07:08 AM »
We can bring in Harvard if that helps:
Harvard Immunologist Demolishes Mandatory Vaccination Logic
If you look at the Measles Paradox, you will notice that most measles outbreaks happen in individuals who had been vaccinated:
Measles Paradox
Now of course it could be argued that the influence of the vaccine had weakened over time and it could be argued that the populations were not equally distributed, but that overlooks the low responsiveness of some population groups and the risk those who have vaccinated themselves pose to the rest. The evidence out there does not rule out that model I proposed. Would it not be more appropriate to blame imperfect solutions and work towards something superior? At the end of the day the mainstream scientific world has enough trouble curing a simple cold, without even talking about curing allergies and more advanced diseases. Why be content with that?
As far as placebos are concerned, how would that work with animals who are given homeopathic medicine and measurable results are observed? Would it work because the animal believes in the placebo? The first stage of science would seem to me to be to figure out what works, not why it works. Models have to conform to reality instead of attempting to conform reality to models.
The influence of power on science should never be underestimated. A nice example of this is banking. If privately owned central banks create money and have the monopoly on that creation of money and charge interest on that money (or better said fiat currency), the only thing you know for certain is that on an international level not all parties will be able to repay what they lent. Say a central bank brings $100 into circulation and charges 1% yearly interest (in a protectionist closed off society). How is that society going to come up with $101 by the end of the year when that $100 is the entire money supply? The population has no authority to create that extra $1. It would be called counterfeiting if they created an extra $1 by themselves. Lending more does not circumvent the problem, but it is that reason that that national debts of most countries steadily rise. If science was not compromised in this area, it would have exposed the anomaly. There is either an interest payment or inflation, but both denote an obvious scam.
What people consider as science is not always very scientific. Consider burn marks on your hand. Would you be inclined to put your hand in cold water or hot water when that happens? Have you ever tried purposefully burning both hands and holding one hand in warm water and one hand in cold water? The hand held in warm water will hurt far more initially, but will heal far quicker. Ironic, is it not?
Science is more often the realisation how little we know than the assumption that we know everything. The dominant Aristotelian perspective on science (as opposed to the Platonic perspective) at any rate relies on probabilities to define everything. Here we once again we run into the contradiction that we like to state only certainties, but in Aristotelian science we can only talk about probabilities.
Harvard Immunologist Demolishes Mandatory Vaccination Logic
If you look at the Measles Paradox, you will notice that most measles outbreaks happen in individuals who had been vaccinated:
Measles Paradox
Now of course it could be argued that the influence of the vaccine had weakened over time and it could be argued that the populations were not equally distributed, but that overlooks the low responsiveness of some population groups and the risk those who have vaccinated themselves pose to the rest. The evidence out there does not rule out that model I proposed. Would it not be more appropriate to blame imperfect solutions and work towards something superior? At the end of the day the mainstream scientific world has enough trouble curing a simple cold, without even talking about curing allergies and more advanced diseases. Why be content with that?
As far as placebos are concerned, how would that work with animals who are given homeopathic medicine and measurable results are observed? Would it work because the animal believes in the placebo? The first stage of science would seem to me to be to figure out what works, not why it works. Models have to conform to reality instead of attempting to conform reality to models.
The influence of power on science should never be underestimated. A nice example of this is banking. If privately owned central banks create money and have the monopoly on that creation of money and charge interest on that money (or better said fiat currency), the only thing you know for certain is that on an international level not all parties will be able to repay what they lent. Say a central bank brings $100 into circulation and charges 1% yearly interest (in a protectionist closed off society). How is that society going to come up with $101 by the end of the year when that $100 is the entire money supply? The population has no authority to create that extra $1. It would be called counterfeiting if they created an extra $1 by themselves. Lending more does not circumvent the problem, but it is that reason that that national debts of most countries steadily rise. If science was not compromised in this area, it would have exposed the anomaly. There is either an interest payment or inflation, but both denote an obvious scam.
What people consider as science is not always very scientific. Consider burn marks on your hand. Would you be inclined to put your hand in cold water or hot water when that happens? Have you ever tried purposefully burning both hands and holding one hand in warm water and one hand in cold water? The hand held in warm water will hurt far more initially, but will heal far quicker. Ironic, is it not?
Science is more often the realisation how little we know than the assumption that we know everything. The dominant Aristotelian perspective on science (as opposed to the Platonic perspective) at any rate relies on probabilities to define everything. Here we once again we run into the contradiction that we like to state only certainties, but in Aristotelian science we can only talk about probabilities.
37
The Illustrious Idea / Re: Trading system being worked on...
« on April 29th, 2017, 11:34 PM »The best I can do right now would be a 'Delete all' button...
38
The Noble Talk / Re: What the flu?
« on April 28th, 2017, 05:31 AM »A bit off topic here: I also had two recent flus which never happened. My theory is that it is related to the anti-vaccine campaigns :/Quote from Lestrade 尚 on April 27th, 2017, 04:45 PM ...
(And yes, I have the flu even though we're in Spring. Go ahead, laugh at me, 2017 is my lucky year. I should be in bed right now, I can't even think properly.)
https://imgur.com/t/science_and_tech/IwDF7
39
The Noble Talk / Re: What's up at Lestrade's?
« on April 27th, 2017, 05:47 PM »2 fixes I made a couple days ago & documented, but forgot to post...
FIX: Accepted offers were shown after declined offers instead of at the very top... Also moved 'Half-completed' statuses just below Accepted offers.
NEW: The sorting dropdown in list pages should now show up immediately, rather than after the entire list has finished parsing. This can means several seconds earlier with long libraries. It's just for the aesthetics though because right now it's not clickable until the page is done loading.
I have faith that Lestrades will keep improving and will continue to provide direct support for any and all issues. If you have any suggestions as to how to improve Lestrades, they will always be considered, so what you have here is direct input in building a practically perfect trading system. I do not think Lestrades is finished once it has all the functionality of Barter, but will continue to improve far beyond that. The idea behind a successful trading platform is that it provides the greatest chance of completing fair trades with the least amount of effort. There are aspects of this which have not been worked out properly yet at Barter as you will undoubtedly see in the future.
40
The Noble Talk / Re: What's up at Lestrade's?
« on April 4th, 2017, 05:24 PM »Seeing you working with search engine i came here to thank you for good work and write about one issue i found.
I prefer to copy-paste game names to search field rather than typing it. And if game name includes (') apostrophe, search not showing anything. Grand Pigeon's Duty for example. I must delete parts of game name to get it to work.
41
The Fatal Problem / Re: If it bugs you, then it bugs me.
« on April 2nd, 2017, 12:23 AM »
I also noticed that editing an offer and resending it, so that it does not expire can run into some issues when the quantities of games in the offer have been modified (as a result of other trades for example) and therefore they are removed from the new edited offer by default (unless reselected). I suppose they are allocated an unique ID of sorts and then Lestrades is unable to find that same ID later on when a specific game has been removed and then added again (to for example go from an imported Barter quantity of two to a single copy of a game).
This issue is not a top priority by any means and it might in particular be happening now due to the necessity of removing games and then adding them again due to multiple copies, but in the long run it would be nice if this would not be able to happen.
I was wondering if it would be useful to have a separate button to renew an offer instead of supposedly editing it and then resending it.
This issue is not a top priority by any means and it might in particular be happening now due to the necessity of removing games and then adding them again due to multiple copies, but in the long run it would be nice if this would not be able to happen.
I was wondering if it would be useful to have a separate button to renew an offer instead of supposedly editing it and then resending it.
42
The Trader's Clerk / Re: Wow, what a bargain!
« on March 30th, 2017, 08:51 PM »Wasn't civ 4 a recent tier 1..?
43
The Fatal Problem / Re: Issue(s)
« on March 29th, 2017, 09:44 AM »Yes, logged in and it doesn't work for me.Quote from Pika! Pika! on March 29th, 2017, 08:19 AM It still works fine for me. Are both of you logged in? If you are not logged in, I think most of the functionality is not available. In the upper left corner of the provided screenshot the 'Sign in with STEAM' icon is shown.
44
The Fatal Problem / Re: Issue(s)
« on March 29th, 2017, 08:19 AM »
It still works fine for me. Are both of you logged in? If you are not logged in, I think most of the functionality is not available. In the upper left corner of the provided screenshot the 'Sign in with STEAM' icon is shown.
45
The Noble Talk / Re: barter.vg down?
« on March 27th, 2017, 11:56 AM »Yes, I'm talking with him and it's not looking great.
No wonder though. Apparently he fixed the Steam Connect problem, so that means he started to work on his site... the day after I released the trading system here. The day after Barter was suddenly no longer mandatory to sustain a trader's life.