photos on the manage active listing page

[dasarock]

@bryan.t@ebay

when and why did ebay remove the ability from the manage active listings page to SORT listings by those with or without photos?  as far as i know it was the only way and easiest way to locate the listings that ebay has removed all the photos from.  and yes, they have removed all photos from some older listings and some newer (as in the past 30-45 days or so).

please have them reset the photos column to sortable again!

without this ability sellers have to view each listing page to find listings without photos (photos that ebay has removed in it's wisdom).  but that still doesn't help the listings that ebay removed all but one of the photos from.  and yes, ebay does that too.

[dasarock]

answer from ebay rep

"Hi @dasarock - since all listings require at least one photo, the ability to sort by which listings do and do not have photos isn't something that would be particularly helpful, even for the situations you describe. While there was a technical issue impacting photos last year, there have not been any other issues reported - so if you're coming across recent listings of yours where photos have been removed please contact CS directly so they can investigate to see what may have happened. Thanks!"

Thank you for the very informative non-answer in community chat today.  all it tells me is that ebay doesn't care if photos continue to disappear from listings.  (which problem has been occurring for the past few years at least)  it just means that listings that seller's pay for never get seen because they do not have a photo.  yes i can go through my 700+ listings and find all that are missing photos (with a large segment of my time wasted on something that should not have occurred to begin with).  but it affects all sellers!  i find listings without photos all the time when i look in stores as a buyer.  sellers with 5000, 10000 and more listings do not have the time to do so.  ebay continues to degrade the seller's ability to maintain their listings in 'viewable' condition and doesn't care.  

the usability and functionality of the maintain active listings pages continues to degrade with each loss of functionality ebay removes.  YES THERE IS profit in a seller being able to quickly locate all listings that have lost their photos due to ebay's coding.  it allows ALL listings to be viable when the photos disappear.

Please Put The Ability To Sort By Photos BACK Into Play and Make It Available Again!

as for calling customer service regarding this, they just say 'i'm sorry but i can't find out why the photos disappear, but i will submit a ticket".  when means absolutely nothing, which is the same thing that has been done to rectify the issue, for years.

[dasarock]

"Hi @dasarock - since all listings require at least one photo, the ability to sort by which listings do and do not have photos isn't something that would be particularly helpful, even for the situations you describe. While there was a technical issue impacting photos last year, there have not been any other issues reported - so if you're coming across recent listings of yours where photos have been removed please contact CS directly so they can investigate to see what may have happened. Thanks!"

Thank you for the very informative non-answer in community chat today.  all it tells me is that ebay doesn't care if photos continue to disappear from listings.  (which problem has been occurring for the past few years at least)  it just means that listings that seller's pay for never get seen because they do not have a photo.  yes i can go through my 700+ listings and find all that are missing photos (with a large segment of my time wasted on something that should not have occurred to begin with).  but it affects all sellers!  i find listings without photos all the time when i look in stores as a buyer.  sellers with 5000, 10000 and more listings do not have the time to do so.  ebay continues to degrade the seller's ability to maintain their listings in 'viewable' condition and doesn't care.  

the usability and functionality of the maintain active listings pages continues to degrade with each loss of functionality ebay removes.  YES THERE IS profit in a seller being able to quickly locate all listings that have lost their photos due to ebay's coding.  it allows ALL listings to be viable when the photos disappear.

Please Put The Ability To Sort By Photos BACK Into Play and Make It Available Again!

as for calling customer service regarding this, they just say 'i'm sorry but i can't find out why the photos disappear, but i will submit a ticket".  when means absolutely nothing, which is the same thing that has been done to rectify the issue, for years.

[berserkerplanet · Accepted solution]

You can kludge the functionality by using a URL like:

 https://www.ebay.com/sh/lst/active?action=sort&sort=image

or

 https://www.ebay.com/sh/lst/active?action=sort&sort=-image

(you can sort ANY of the columns that way if you can nail down the sort keyword for that column)

alternatively, the photo column can be made sortable by adding a

shui-dt--sortable

attribute to the photo column table header in the HTML. Can be done via the browser web developer HTML inspector console but that has to be repeated every time as the page reloads once the now clickable column is clicked and doesn't include the change made (column goes back to being unsortable).

Could maybe* be done automatically with a GreaseMonkey or TamperMonkey script (about 20 total lines of code and the column would always be sortable - the script would add the attribute every time the page loads if it isn't already there).

Could maybe* be done with a bookmarklet - same idea as the GreaseMonkey script nut manual. Bookmarklet would have to be clicked every time the page loads/reloads when sorting the photo column is desired.

*the maybe is because I've run into issues with script access to the seller hub actives page. Some JSON stuff going on and the page doesn't fully finish loading before the scripts fire, and the DOM structure doesn't finalize soon enough. On the back burner to figure out some day.

The first URL kludge seems workable.

[dasarock]

@berserkerplanet 

thank you for the work around ... it is not ideal but it helps a lot!  ideal would be ebay adding the functionality back into the manage active listing pages.

i am sure tho that it will help others as well as myself, again thank you.  my forte is is coding for actual stand-alone databases and such, not so much browser languages and such.

[berserkerplanet]

No problemo!

If the URL (or URLs) is bookmarked should help for your purposes - it is a sortable column then, but instead of clicking the column you reach up a little further to the browser bookmarks toolbar and click the bookmark.

I know next to nothing about databases and can barely cobble together rudimentary SQL queries to (try to) retrieve data from Firefox browser database(like) files but that's it.