Have you guys given any thought to requiring the state code(IL/NY/TX etc..) to be in the title for items being sold in the Personal Classifieds? We had a nice thread going in our regional forum a while ago which allowed people to subscribe to it and then see everything that was being put up for sale locally by other EVOM members. I prefer to buy things locally so I kept a pretty close eye on it and I know many others did as well. Requiring the state code would at least give some indication of the location of where the item is located for those of us who like buying locally.

If that's not allowed would some of the Chicago guys be allowed to have a similar Chicagoland for sale thread in the Private Classifieds?

Thanks,
BH

 

For the millionth time, I will say this:

"That is a great idea. However, 99% of people would not do it and we'd have to have someone monitoring 24-7 to change every thread to meet that rule."

It's just a matter of fact - we can't force people to do things. We can't make them read, we can't make them follow the rules, etc. If we used your rule (which is a great idea), then I guarantee we'd have to make more mods just to police that. People are lazy. People forget. It's a good idea, but it just wouldn't work.

 

Yeah I know it sucks, if you made that a rule you'd have to enforce it about every other minute. . . it just sucks because there was IMO there was value in that thread for the locals.

How about the Chicago folk continuing their 'local for sale' thread in the Personal Classifieds forums?

Thanks,
Bh

 

I really do miss not having that thread, we were able to see whats for sale and not worry about shipping costs, and we could just meet up, a lot of us know each other so we know who we could trust..please bring it back.

 

I totally agree with Blacksheepdj.....it's almost impossible to enforce. As for your other ideas: it's just another version of that. If we allow Chicagoland to return, we would have to allow Denver, LA, Boston, etc, etc. to post their very own Regional FS threads. I do not think that is in the best interest of this site or our members. If somebody wants local attention, they can put their area in the title, or follow the Regional rules to posting FS threads. It may take a bit of work and require a bit more searching through the advertisements, but we really do want to keep scammers and other malcontents from posting here. I hope this helps; it's just my $0.02.

 

Ok, so we can't have a thread in regional and we can't have one in the private for sale forum. . . I can understand where you're coming from but understand that not everyone will go through the classifieds looking for members whose names they may recognize as being local, in addition to that it seems that only about 10% of the users here have their location field filled out correctly.

How about regional Private Classifieds forums like they have on NASIOC? That would be a good solution. Maybe even a sub forum of the classifieds for each region.


I know that thread was against the rules as I talked to you SASD209 about it being closed previously, but I really wish there was some way to replace its functionality while still adhering to rules put in place to protect members against scammers. It was just really nice to be able to look at something and know that most people posting in that thread were going to be within a short drive of your location and that you would be able to do a face to face transaction with them and be able to inspect the product before handing money over.


I realize that just about anything within the rules which could duplicate the functionality of that thread will be work on the Admins/Moderators side but if you can check out how many poeple were subscribed to the one that was deleted a little over a month ago, look at how many views it had. It was a local classifieds add which was a big plus to our region IMO.

 

We have discussed a regional for sale and the idea is still brewing with us. I do not think enforcing a statecode would be hard....just a lot of work for a while an would probably **** a lot of people off at the moment that already feel we are imposing too many rules at the moment. Both ideas are fair ideas, but will have to sit on the back burner for at least a little bit as we have some more pressing priorities at the moment. If nothing has come up about this in a few months, it would not be unreasonable to remind us again. Thanks

 

Every solution creates different problems, sadly. Having regional FS forums creates a lot of double posting from people who want to get a lot of eyes but prefer to sell it locally, and results in even more unclosed threads with FS items. There's also issues of regionality vs locality - a thread for Chicago is fine, but you'll find people from all over the tri-state area pawning things in it. If you go by states, you'll have problems with California, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, and other states with several large but geographically distant metropolitan areas. We'd probably need in the vicinity of 100 forums/threads for all the distinct areas in the US.

It'd be nice if we could have legitimate locations for everyone and use that as a searchable field, but we're at the mercy of people's willingness to share that (a zip code, for example) and/or their attempt at being funny. I don't think that's in our best interest, and frankly I suspect that many people would lie if we did require it.

As it stands, I think we're on our 4th or 5th iteration of the for sale section, and when I compare it to other sites I'm on or have visited, I think it's pretty good. Sites with more liberal FS policies have a lot of problems with 0 post scammers. Sites with tighter controls don't have much movement. If we can figure out a way to prevent our valuable members from getting scammed other than requiring users to actually be around and posting for a while, you'll see some significant loosening of the rules. But until then, FS/WTB will stay as it is.

Thanks again for your feedback and thoughts.

WSB