It is easy for a retailer to say whether an item is available or not since they should have a running tally of how many items they have available for sale. However, for the community, trying to keep up with many retailers' stock levels and then trying to categorize whether a particular model is available (or to what degree a water blaster is available) is not such a simple problem.
Many older blasters are still available via eBay, but many almost never appear. Then there are odd online stores that say they have something available, but hard to confirm. Then, of course, there are private listings in places like Craigslist. Moreover, this isn't even including all the non-english websites that may or may not have items listed (or the same item listed under a different name).
On top of it all, since we have no way of determining how many units a retailer actually has, what is available one day may not be there the next.
As such, I plan on ditching the general "Availability" status I've been using on iSoaker.com.
However, that does not mean that some level of "availability" information isn't useful. My current working solution: instead of trying to figure out whether a blaster is or isn't available, just capture where a blaster was available on a given year. If we know that Target (US) is carrying WW Gorgons, then that info should be added. IF they ran out, that's unfortunate for those still wanting to buy them, but at least the entry would remain valid in the long run.
What do you guys think?
