Minifigures - time to start using Brickowl instead of Bricklink?

CCC

As the title suggest, is it time to start using Brickowl for defining the minifigures in the Brickset database rather than Bricklink? Lots of weird stuff is showing up as minifigures now due to the way Bricklink cataloguers are changing things to fit rules rather than using common sense. LEGO's own Bricklink seems to strongly contradict what LEGO calls a minifigure.

We have already seen these "minifigures" appear at Brickset:




No doubt these ones will be appearing too, as Bricklink now calls these minifigures:



A possible natural extension will soon be that any character built from parts will also be a minifigure no matter what it looks like.


Is it time to sever the link now that LEGO Bricklink's new catalogue administrators seem to have completely redefined what a minifigure is based on applications of badly written rules leading to absurd decisions to skirt around defining what a minifigure should contain and instead use data from more sensible sites such as Brickowl.

akunthita

While I agree with you that the categorization is weird, it's not new and not something that LEGO has done. This was a standard established years ago by BrickLink's admin and the BrickLink community.

If I remember correctly, the conversation started with the Toy Story figures. The rationale was that people consider these characters as persons and will look for them by name, so they should be listed as characters, which equals minifigs in the BL catalog. Their only other option was animals, which would be just as weird. 

This was okay for a while, but then LEGO started taking on more and more licenses with humanized characters, and the list of these non-minifig persons got weirder and weirder.

The ideal solution would be tagging and improving the search function, but BrickLink doesn't have a tagging system and everything has to go into one category.  

CCC

LEGO has supported new admins that have allowed further changes to be made. At the same time as not allowing the naming of all characters to change from Minifigures to Characters. If they had a Characters section, within which Minifigures was a category, then it makes sense. However, they are not doing that. They are now calling anything that represents a character a minifigure.

The end result will be Brickheadz, Bionicles, Mixels, anything representing a character will be a minifigure no matter what its scale as it fits their definition of a minifigure. 

560Heliport

I think it's absurd to call them all minifigures. It seems confusing. "Characters" or "Figures" would be much better. 

CCC

I see these are now minifigs at brickset too.

https://brickset.com/sets/5546-1/Thomas-at-Morgan-s-Mine

Coming next as minifigs, Bob the Builder's construction vehicles.

CCC

These are now minifigs too...!

AllBrick

As Mr. Horse would say, “no sir, I don’t like it”. 

its just going to clutter up the category to no end. 

SumoLego

I'm worried that the parts inventory for sets will be changed.

CCC

On bricklink they are, as the parts in the "minifigs" are removed from the set so as not to duplicate them.

Lebostein

We need more API Information about Minifigs. At the Moment Brickset does not allow to get Information about Minifigs via API. this is not a satisfactory state...

Huw

You can get minifig info from BrickLink via CSV.

It's not our information to give away, hence not being available via our API.

Istokg

CCC said:

On bricklink they are, as the parts in the "minifigs" are removed from the set so as not to duplicate them.

Not a big fan of that... take #6075 (USA) Yellow Castle... the box says 779 pieces.  Bricklink says 706 pieces + 14 minifigs.  Brickset says 767 pieces.  ???

Yellowcastle2

They don’t define me. :o)

Lebostein

Huw said:

You can get minifig info from BrickLink via CSV.

It's not our information to give away, hence not being available via our API.

With Bricklink API?

andhe

Have bricklink rejigged some part definitions? I was looking for a slope piece and I'm sure it used to be small number first eg 1x3, but nothing came up so searched 3x1 and there it was.

CCC

Possibly, it depends whether it is front on. They are considering making hundreds of category changes in the near future, so expect to have to relearn many obscure parts.