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Bye Bye Craigslist

blog.padmapper.com

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Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#261

Post by ericd »

GigabyteCoin wrote: post #219
ericd wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the explanation! I've talked with lawyers about this in the past week, and facts, totally rewritten summaries of fact, and collections of facts aren't copyrightable in the US, so it's not really an issue of their content, as far as I understand. They do have a right not to be crawled by me, though, especially if it causes a burden on them. I wrote that crawler specifically to be very light on their servers…

What about copyright traps? Say Craigslist created a fake listing or two for say a 2 bedroom apartment in the middle of an industrial complex? (ie, an apartment that doesn't exist, but was placed there by Craiglist to serve as evidence against your copying). If the Craigslist lawyers find that fake listing on PadMapper, could they do anything to charge you with regards to a copyright violation? I'm not trying to drag…

Right, but there they were wholly copying what is essentially a drawn representation of geography, which is an original work. If you made a rough sketch of that map, it wouldn't be copyright infringement.

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#262

Post by ericd »

nabraham wrote: post #245
ericd wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the explanation! I've talked with lawyers about this in the past week, and facts, totally rewritten summaries of fact, and collections of facts aren't copyrightable in the US, so it's not really an issue of their content, as far as I understand. They do have a right not to be crawled by me, though, especially if it causes a burden on them. I wrote that crawler specifically to be very light on their servers…

I agree that this isn't a copyright issue. If you're operating in California, the 9th Circuit is probably your best bet for holding that your scraping of their data doesn't damage or impair their computer system. But given your other comments, it is unlikely you want to raise the funds or spend the time to battle it out in court. But there is an another way - let us (all of us) get the Craigslist data for you. You co…

Thanks for the advice! But yeah, court sounds like a pretty big clusterfuck with a potentially bigger clusterfuck at the end of the rainbow. I have a feeling that the plugin would get me sued as well, though I suppose that would be a more winnable battle.

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#263

Post by ericd »

[deleted] wrote: post #253
refurb wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you post on Craigslist, you're posting on a public forum. What expectation of privacy could you possibly have?

[deleted]

Deletion should be reflected on PM reasonably quickly, not so much edits, though, to reduce crawling load.

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#264

Post by sltkr »

phaus wrote: post #183
kylelibra wrote: post #156

For those wishing to take action: jim@craigslist.org – Jim Buckmaster, CEO craig@craigslist.org – Craig Newmark, Founder @jimbuckmaster on twitter - http://twitter.com/jimbuckmaster @craignewmark on twitter - http://twitter.com/craignewmark Simple email to copy and paste: Jim and Craig, I'm a longtime user of Craigslist, but I'm really disappointed in your decision regarding PadMapper. It would be great if you could…

Good luck, but I doubt it will work. My first experience with craigslist was trying to figure out why they had the capability to block my wife's ad for a free dog that contained a mispelled word while the site's creator was busy trying to tell the government that there was nothing he could do about the many child prostitution ads that appeared on craigslist.

> a mispelled word

Oh, irony.

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#265

Post by intended »

wallflower wrote: post #258
intended wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot to be said for it. It's constant in hn discourse to put great UI up there and to give advice on it. Yet if anyone here has sat on a Bloomberg terminal, used Craigslist, or even games like net hack or dwarf fort, it's pretty clear that interface can be damned. Not in all cases perhaps, agreed. But in these cases, after a while of using it people get faster and develop the muscle memory to become efficien…

> after a while of using it people get faster and develop the muscle memory to become efficient on the site, so the UI fades into the background anyway. Jared Spool has said that when you change the user interface - fairly dramatically - you frustrate your regular users because they are now unfamiliar with it and have to restart their learning/experience curve. "At eBay, they learned the hard way that their users don…

"If it works, its good enough?"

Honestly thinking about other sites, digg died because of content, reddit survives because of content; even if someone could improve the interface, its not really going to matter.

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#266

Post by sltkr »

phaus wrote: post #236
gringomorcego wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One depends on a spellchecker?

If you can parse text for spelling, surely you can parse text for the sexual exploitation of minors.

I would think that these ads aren't exactly to-the-point considering what is offered is extremely illegal. I sincerely doubt you could reliably identify them based on keywords alone.

If it were so easy to spot child exploitation ads, why doesn't the police or the FBI monitor sites like Craigslist? I'd much rather see the people involved in that filthy business prosecuted than simply having their ads blocked (which doesn't do anything for the victims).

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#267

Post by ryanmerket »

ericd wrote: post #218
felixchan wrote: post #186

Can you open source padmapper so we can run it ourselves? That way, no matter what Craigslist does, people would still be able to use the great service.

Hm, that's kind of an interesting idea. I'd be pretty embarrassed at all the hacks I've added over the years, but I'll definitely keep that in mind.

Yes. Please open source it...

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#268

Post by X-Istence »

makmanalp wrote: post #32

I've used padmapper twice to get an apartment so far, and It's great! I've loved the fact that it's constantly improving and has exactly the features I need: Walkscore, bookmarking, map, proper filters. It's strictly better. To the author: I would have paid for this. It sucks that this waas mainly an interface to craigslist, and now they're gone. I hope this gets enough critical mass that eventually so that the unusa…

Padmapper has data from more than just craigslist ...

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#269

Post by stingraycharles »

sliverstorm wrote: post #152
bermanoid wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, there's a catch-22 here: when your site has shitty usability but is the only source of information, people hit more pages and spend more time there. When you fix your UI mistakes, they're in and out quicker because they actually get what they need efficiently. Because you're optimizing for engagement by measuring time on site or something like that, you end up making sure never to make your site easy to use. Thi…

Because you're optimizing for engagement by measuring time on site or something like that Oh good, nobody actually told you how they measured but you already know! Bravo.

I can tell you from first-hand experience that they know what they're doing. They measure almost everything, nicely put together in dashboards with all the KPI's for the appropriate managers.

I think it's unlikely they used a suboptimal performance indicator to judge the site's new design, and would say the same thing about craigslist.

Re: Bye Bye Craigslist

#270

Post by djt »

jamiequint wrote: post #29

This is just offensive. It would be one thing if Craigslist was doing their best to satisfy their customers and they wanted to shut down others who were scraping their site and leeching off their business. However, Craigslist puts absolutely no effort into making their product usable. The continued existence of Craigslist is just a testimony to the enormous strength of network effect lock in.

They created a product that was against their TOS. It's pretty simple really.

If they are doing a great job and are so much better than CL then no doubt everyone will come back and use their site now they have the realtors on board.

I dislike people hating on another company for having a crappy product, just make a better one and compete against them, if they really are that bad then whatever network lock-in they have wont last. You can't argue they are crap, then try and use them to monetise your own product.

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