Regarding the statement “It is just a shame that he is also deleting clear and 100% variants that enrich the catalog”:

I deleted Pietro’s label by mistake, as I did not notice the difference in length between the two similar dark green labels. Your labels are removed due to poor scan quality and because nearly all the necessary label information was not completed. A certain minimum level of quality is necessary for inclusion.

I made an exact (!!) copy of the end of your sentence, Michael.

This is completely misquoted. My statement was different.

Please don’t upload near-identical labels just because they come from different printers or production dates. This catalog is intended to doument banana labels as they are typically found on fruit in supermarkets focusing only on differences that are clearly visible on the label itself.

By the way, some of the labels you mentiond where removed due to poor scan quality and largely incomplete description fields.

I do not delete the labels just for fun, but because I think they are redundant. And if I occasionally delete one variant too many or missed one, please bear with me.

Honestly, I don’t really want to have to keep an eye on the catalog to ensure it remains suitable for trading and collecting banana labels, both in content and structure, while gaining little or no benefit from most collectors.

Michael's statement:

"... most collectors get little or no benefit from the catalog."

No one can possibly agree with this! The catalog has one basic and decisive role, and that is first and foremost - TO INFORM ABOUT LABEL PRODUCTION ALL OVER THE WORLD!

I think that this is a very worthwhile activity and the catalog fulfills this function to a large extent. The other functions of the catalog are secondary. How one handles this catalog is up to each collector individually.

"Please don’t upload near-identical labels just because they come from different printers or production dates"...

I have no choice but to agree with this sentence! Nevertheless, Michael has released hundreds of subtle variants into the catalog. It is right that he is now deleting them. It is just a shame that he is also deleting clear and 100% variants that enrich the catalog.

The great astonishment is the fraudulent prints of an Indian collector who has defrauded dozens of collectors around the world!

Thank you for explaining your reasoning. I now also notice the difference in the height of the label, so these three labels are real variants.

I do remove quite a lot, but not hastily. I spend around 20 to 30 hours each month maintaining the catalog, reviewing 200 to 300 new labels individually. I also check correct assignment, hierarchy, completeness of fields, and possible duplicates - quite a lot of work, which, as you know, cuts my time to trade banana labels.

I’m trying to keep the catalog consistent and usable - once differences become too subtle, variants are difficult to distinguish reliably. By the way, some other collectors say I should delete even more of the tiny variants. As a side note, the two variants (Onkel Tuca, Abbar) from Peter you mentioned are, in my view, borderline in terms of whether they should be documented at all, but at least they have a comment explaining why they were added.

Please don’t take it personally if something is removed - it’s never meant to upset anyone. And as mentioned, please leave a comment whenever a difference isn’t clearly visible.

This is a big problem. It is clear that the renewed editions differ (according to today's technology) mostly only in color or the use of a different backing paper, or a different material of the label itself. There are many types of brands that have been published without change for decades. I have also published labels several times that were deleted because they were variants in color: Brown / green or black / purple, also deleted with large differences in the thickness of the frame, which in my opinion was very wrong to delete (I am going through the frames of the Chiquity series in the catalog!). There are hundreds of labels in the catalog that are released with a time gap and differ only in a slight shade. I personally am in favor of publishing all variants, but there is another question that I would rather not open. Piero certainly knows what I mean.
Michael is right about something, but sometimes he "misses" the deletion of clear variants and sometimes (and this of course happens) - he does not evaluate the problem correctly. I AM NOT SURPRISED! - there is a lot to Michael. Therefore, it is really necessary to include the correct notes for the added variant in the description.
In my opinion, it is also a mistake not to include labels from the box - for example, police checks for drugs, vacuum transport labels and many others. This is a decision of Michael, who (I firmly believe) spends a lot of time managing the catalog.

I have hundreds of labels that are not listed in the catalog. Since I am not the master of my free time, I do not publish them. We know that about 7 printers print labels in Ecuador. This is old information, but it is not visible in the catalog :-(. I will gradually publish them, but I have no idea how Michael will evaluate these completely clear variants.

It is also different in size from the one of the same dark green color

I'm sorry that labels uploaded by collectors who dedicate time to improving the catalog for the benefit of all are deleted. The reason is then judged differently from one label to another too hastily. The label that was deleted was a completely different color: pale green from deep green.
It's very clear from the documentation. How different is it from so many others added for little reasons. For example, Abbar's labels were uploaded just moments before mine. Personally, I've always been against small variations. Why do some useless ones remain in the catalog? I'll add mine back immediately. Thanks for your attention.

I would question whether such minimal differences really belong in the catalog. At this level, distinguishing between variants becomes increasingly difficult and risks creating more confusion than clarity. In my view, these are better suited for a personal collection rather than for formal catalog inclusion.

Edit: In the mean time I deleted on of the variants ...