eBay

lovefindingtreasures2 · ‎10-22-2019

Interesting read this morning.

https://www.ecommercebytes.com/2019/10/21/ebay-turns-to-tech-students-to-help-build-product-catalog/

southern*sweet*tea · ‎10-22-2019

From kindergarten straight to college..

Maybe there will be hope in a decade or so.

Best thing for search would be to dump the whole kit and kaboodle and go to a real search that pulls up exactly what the buyer types in, not what some AI bot thinks the buyer means.

Sometimes I truly despise "advanced" technology.

The easier you are to offend the easier you are to control.

We seem to be getting closer and closer to a situation where nobody is responsible for what they did but we are all responsible for what somebody else did. - Thomas Sowell

emerald1830 · ‎10-22-2019

"Best thing for search would be to dump the whole kit and kaboodle and go to a real search that pulls up exactly what the buyer types in, not what some AI bot thinks the buyer means.."

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This!

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As a buyer I cannot believe some of the things I pulled up when I searched "Furry Slippers Womens Size 7"...

wesk_36 · ‎10-22-2019

eBay Turns to tech students to help ~~build~~ fix product catalog.

I suppose at a corporate level, it's a good idea to use free student volunteer labor to fix problems that are apparently over the heads of in-house paid ebay programmers.

There is a product catalog already. Shouldn't challenges and problems have been worked out before they launched this catalog long ago?

The end of this "competition" is March of 2020 so does that mean all the issues will continue to at least that date?

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zamo-zuan · ‎10-22-2019

@wesk_36 wrote:
eBay Turns to tech students to help ~~build~~ fix product catalog.
I suppose at a corporate level, it's a good idea to use free student volunteer labor to fix problems that are apparently over the heads of in-house paid ebay programmers.

There is a product catalog already. Shouldn't challenges and problems have been worked out before they launched this catalog long ago?
The end of this "competition" is March of 2020 so does that mean all the issues will continue to at least that date?

The catalog team is all remote/outsourced. It was a horrible idea to design it this way in the first place. It has done nothing but limit visibility for nearly 2 years now, rather than boost it how they promised.

It seems the structured data team isn't all too skilled at handling structured data 😕

earlyant-77 · ‎10-22-2019

eBay got its start by allowing people to easily buy and sell rare goods, without requiring sellers to enter standardized product attributes in structured fields. But that’s a challenge for search engines that has compounded over time

Well, I don't know of many 'rare goods' that need structured data - but we DO need a search engine that actually finds exactly what the user types in, and not what their artificial incompetence comes back with.

lovefindingtreasures2 · ‎10-22-2019

I think it is odd that eBay is turning to college kids with a 'prize' of working at eBay if they can fix the issues?

I didn't know if I should laugh or ??? when I read this this morning. Free students to fix their issues? Isn't there a COMPETENT company or whatever they can PAY WITH REAL MONEY that CAN fix this royal mess of a platform?

I still don't know what to think of this ;-~

kathieskorner · ‎10-22-2019

Can't be any worse than their in-house IT performance.

greg213213 · ‎10-22-2019

So in general, eBay is saying that their current IT team isn't smart enough on how to fix this messed up catalog. How many months have they been trying to get it to work?

I just did a listing for a tote bag and their crazy catalog brought up a man's shaving bag as a suggestion. A shaving bag has nothing to do with a tote bag. What is wrong here with their IT team who are supposed to be top notch people?

Maybe they are all working on all of the glitches that they have created and trying to remember what they did wrong.

Can't get much worse here!

darkeyedman · ‎10-22-2019

I agree with the previous poster. These kids could be ebay's future, just don't let the existing workforce near them.

They don't need to learn how to ignore problems, and they certainly don't have the decades necessary to study and learn from all of ebay's tech staffs mistakes. Ebay needs to contract out the various tech jobs to qualified third party contractors, preferably not based in India.

nc-daydreamer · ‎10-22-2019

Hey - we all who respond to these boards work for free, don't we? Imagine what our giving has benefited eBay, via many hundreds of thousands of dollars I'd believe saved by eBay via not having to pay a team to do it? Scrooge? It is close to Christmas isn't it? Maybe eBay can learn a lesson?

So, in the corporate mind I reckon, why not have free catalog help with a prize - at least they get to compete for a prize - a job complete with paid housing for a few weeks - we don't get that.

Once upon a time at least we got a 'thank you' - but that has been a long time ago. Heck, I'd settle for a new tee-shirt and a phone charger/flashlight... (I am not hard to please - 🙂 )

I am a founding member of the eBay Community Expert Group: a USA volunteer mentor with over a decade of experience. I am not an eBay employee.

Live simply. Care deeply. Love generously. Speak kindly. Laugh loudly. Act responsibly. Rejoice daily. Help cheerfully. Plan carefully. Criticize sparingly. Invest wisely. Forgive willingly. Shop seriously. Play fairly. Learn graciously.

dhbookds · ‎10-22-2019

@wesk_36 wrote:
eBay Turns to tech students to help ~~build~~ fix product catalog.
I suppose at a corporate level, it's a good idea to use free student volunteer labor to fix problems that are apparently over the heads of in-house paid ebay programmers.

There is a product catalog already. Shouldn't challenges and problems have been worked out before they launched this catalog long ago?
The end of this "competition" is March of 2020 so does that mean all the issues will continue to at least that date?

They've abandoned the catalog, at least in the iteration they had been using..... was announced at ebay when they started talking about substituting Item specifics......instead of trying to use UPC's etc........ there are still some of the catalog pages around, many of them wrong and they will probably be around since no one could ever figure out how to get rid of them apparently......

zamo-zuan · ‎10-22-2019

@dhbookds wrote:
@wesk_36 wrote:
eBay Turns to tech students to help ~~build~~ fix product catalog.
I suppose at a corporate level, it's a good idea to use free student volunteer labor to fix problems that are apparently over the heads of in-house paid ebay programmers.

There is a product catalog already. Shouldn't challenges and problems have been worked out before they launched this catalog long ago?
The end of this "competition" is March of 2020 so does that mean all the issues will continue to at least that date?
They've abandoned the catalog, at least in the iteration they had been using..... was announced at ebay when they started talking about substituting Item specifics......instead of trying to use UPC's etc........ there are still some of the catalog pages around, many of them wrong and they will probably be around since no one could ever figure out how to get rid of them apparently......

This is true, at least in the sense of "matching your items to the catalog" when you create a listing.

But this expansion of item specifics is that old catalog system which is now being "adapted" for the new purposes.

Structured data team was the one in charge of the catalog, and is now in charge of this mess. And they're the ones that are outsourced (easily confirmed if you received Jira logs when sending tickets to them).