Proposed Rule Change: Deregulation

[fritzschlottman]

Having moderators injecting themselves into normal and customary business practices is for the birds. The market has a way of fixing common problems. It rewards transparency. If a seller posts a poorly written or worded advertisement, he/she will not attract as many buyers as a better worded advertisement. If a seller or buyer is abusing the system, the market will correct for that as well.

Locking threads because a seller responds to a question, qualifies a customer, or engages in normal business activity including communications with potential buyers is contrary to common sense and normal and customary business practices. Sellers and buyers should be communicating openly because the transaction becomes more transparent. There's no harm in an open and honest dialog between both parties in a transaction. Moderators should not be placing themselves into a transaction or business communication unless a seller or a buyer are engaging in abusive, offensive, fraudulent, or illegal business practices.

[blackspade]

Having moderators injecting themselves into normal and customary business practices is for the birds. The market has a way of fixing common problems. It rewards transparency. If a seller posts a poorly written or worded advertisement, he/she will not attract as many buyers as a better worded advertisement. If a seller or buyer is abusing the system, the market will correct for that as well.

Locking threads because a seller responds to a question, qualifies a customer, or engages in normal business activity including communications with potential buyers is contrary to common sense and normal and customary business practices. Sellers and buyers should be communicating openly because the transaction becomes more transparent. There's no harm in an open and honest dialog between both parties in a transaction. Moderators should not be placing themselves into a transaction or business communication unless a seller or a buyer are engaging in abusive, offensive, fraudulent, or illegal business practices.

Sorry, the 'market' does not autocorrect problems, either here or in the world at large. Bartertown rules are here for a reason, to protect and guide transactions for the protection and comfort of all involved.

[jason1977]

This is not another site. You wanna play by those rules go to that site or make your own. Everytime people respond to a trade add by saying 'pm sent' or 'responded to pm' it bumps another add down and legit rule following adds get pushed down.

[mdjones607]

I'm not sure why you're so up-in-arms about this. As others have stated, and the mods have shown you, bumping ads is an issue. Their means of correcting for this issue, as it most certainly would not correct itself, is thread locking. What does this do to harm your ad? Absolutely nothing. People can still see your ad, search for your ad, and reply via PM to your ad.

There is no reason to change their policy here and every reason to keep it in place.

[fritzschlottman]

I wholeheartedly disagree. Bumping ads is a minor issue at best. If you're not interested, you just skim past it. If I do a search on Ebay, Yahoo, Google, etc. am I really inconvenienced by having to scroll past an item for sale, an article, etc. that I'm not interested in? If I am, it's only for a brief second. Do I feel outraged to walk past the items for sale at the front of the grocery store to get to what I want at the back? No. I see it as I walk past and it's done with.

If you don't want something, that's fine. If you don't like someone's advertisement, don't open it. Posters that abuse the system will fail because they they're going to annoy buyers. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater and punish legitimate posters that are trying to respond to question asked in their thread by locking the thread. You should have latitude to conduct business in a reasonable manner in your own thread as long as you're operating in good faith.

[kturock]

I wholeheartedly disagree. Bumping ads is a minor issue at best. If you're not interested, you just skim past it. If I do a search on Ebay, Yahoo, Google, etc. am I really inconvenienced by having to scroll past an item for sale, an article, etc. that I'm not interested in? If I am, it's only for a brief second. Do I feel outraged to walk past the items for sale at the front of the grocery store to get to what I want at the back? No. I see it as I walk past and it's done with.

If you don't want something, that's fine. If you don't like someone's advertisement, don't open it. Posters that abuse the system will fail because they they're going to annoy buyers. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater and punish legitimate posters that are trying to respond to question asked in their thread by locking the thread. You should have latitude to conduct business in a reasonable manner in your own thread as long as you're operating in good faith.

You've been a member since 2008, yet you don't have many trades. Is that because there were no ads you were interested in?
I've been here since almost the beginning in 1996. Bumping got banned because the 'new posts' number skyrocketed and we ended up scrolling and rereading posts several times. What was worse was when people didn't describe or even list their item and I had to find their ad. Then send them a pm asking if they had a certain model or models; or what group of models they had.

Do you want to see the same ad over and over at ebay, because it was listed multiple times? Post bumping is the same thing.

[blackspade]

I wholeheartedly disagree. Bumping ads is a minor issue at best. If you're not interested, you just skim past it. If I do a search on Ebay, Yahoo, Google, etc. am I really inconvenienced by having to scroll past an item for sale, an article, etc. that I'm not interested in? If I am, it's only for a brief second. Do I feel outraged to walk past the items for sale at the front of the grocery store to get to what I want at the back? No. I see it as I walk past and it's done with.

If you don't want something, that's fine. If you don't like someone's advertisement, don't open it. Posters that abuse the system will fail because they they're going to annoy buyers. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater and punish legitimate posters that are trying to respond to question asked in their thread by locking the thread. You should have latitude to conduct business in a reasonable manner in your own thread as long as you're operating in good faith.

This the whole problem in a nutshell beyond your false analogies. It may be your thread, but it is a thread at Bartertown not on your own site or store. And what is good faith? Here at Bartertown that means understanding and following the rules. It is up to you to read and understand them as they are posted clearly. If not then you are not trading in 'good faith.'

[mdjones607]

Lets get this straight and marry two topics from different threads involving your desire to change the rules here:

1. You don't think that bumping ads is an issue
2. You don't think that it is important to provide a list of items for sale in your ads

I'm curious why you're using this site if two central tenants that are core to keeping the trading process running smoothly aren't important to you. Maybe you're just trolling right now? It seems like you're being serious.

Many of us find "bumping" to be irritating, and it certainly does waste our time. The same goes for ads with no description. When you bump an ad it highlights in red both the icon for your ad, and the icons for any of the parent forums that this ad belongs to. To see what's new users need to go into the forums; this is a waste of time for an ad that is simply being bumped. Some users even have the forums set to automatically show them the newest posts, which included any ad that has been bumped. This is also a waste of time. Likewise, users open up new ads to view their contents and read the ad. This is completely wasteful when there is not a list of items in even the simplest sense.

This kind of business isn't just poor on the part of the offender, it has an impact on the other users here. Without rules being in place to stop this kind of behavior, offenders would be free to spam the forums all day with useless bumps and terrible ads. That is a degradation in quality that most people would like to see this site avoid.

In short, willingness to waste time should not trump the desire of others to not have their time wasted.

[themailedfist]

I don't think this needs to be a debate, merely a vote.

I vote against any sort of deregulation that is proposed by fritzschlottman, and think that the Bartertown system works fine as is.

Thank you Bartertown mods for keeping the site a well-functioning place.

--Robert

[s_o_r_r_o_w]

Having moderators injecting themselves into normal and customary business practices is for the birds. The market has a way of fixing common problems. It rewards transparency. If a seller posts a poorly written or worded advertisement, he/she will not attract as many buyers as a better worded advertisement. If a seller or buyer is abusing the system, the market will correct for that as well.

Locking threads because a seller responds to a question, qualifies a customer, or engages in normal business activity including communications with potential buyers is contrary to common sense and normal and customary business practices. Sellers and buyers should be communicating openly because the transaction becomes more transparent. There's no harm in an open and honest dialog between both parties in a transaction. Moderators should not be placing themselves into a transaction or business communication unless a seller or a buyer are engaging in abusive, offensive, fraudulent, or illegal business practices.

If this were a free market, you might be right.

However, this is a trade forum for which you do not pay. That administrative staff have made a number of decisions regarding the smooth, open, and efficient operation of the boards, and since one of them does pay for the bandwidth, that matters.

The Trade Ads forum is for TRADE ADS, not discussion, including discussion of your transactions. You want to qualify a "customer"? Feel free--in PMs. That's what they're for.

The staff does not interfere--at all--in PMs, unless there are actual abuses/harassment. Otherwise, it's carte blanche to conduct your trade talks as the participants see fit.

We have 34000 users. It doesn't take many crappy posters spamming the boards with their crappy ads before the system itself breaks down and becomes unusable. Legit ads get forced down by crappy ones. No user is going to keep a list of ALL the crappy ad posters to skip their ads--though you might be interested to learn that many users DO take note of exceptional individuals on the boards.

I wholeheartedly disagree. Bumping ads is a minor issue at best.

You speak of that you do not know. Bumping is a problem--various forums handle it differently. Some poorly. Dakka has 40000 posts across all lines going back to 2006. We get that in a year, across all trade forums.

If you're not interested, you just skim past it.

How do you know if you're interested before you open the ad?

If you don't want something, that's fine. If you don't like someone's advertisement, don't open it.

Are you aware of the irony here?

But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater and punish legitimate posters that are trying to respond to question asked in their thread by locking the thread. You should have latitude to conduct business in a reasonable manner in your own thread as long as you're operating in good faith.

Legitimate posters follow the rules, rules which have evolved and responded to the needs and concerns of the users individually and as a group.

It's fine to question and challenge them--that's how they get better. You should be coming forward respectfully, though, since a lot of people have put a lot of work into managing this forum.

This board has a few minimal rules, some of which are a little sticky, true, but which together make this the best trading forum on the internet. A good staff with a clear mandate goes a long way to ensuring a smooth operation.

[NuWishA]

Deputy Pants does not approve of arguments made with little concerns for reality.

Unless it involves cake, because we all know the cake is a lie.

[MagickalMemories]

Fritz, here's the official ADMINISTRATIVE response. This is the long and short of it.
We have rules. Follow them or don't. Stay or don't.
If you want to stay, follow them. If you don't want to stay, then leave or continue to not follow them.

If you want a trade site that follows YOUR rules, feel free to go start one. The Internet is full of free web site hosting services. I'm sure you'll see in no time just how easy it is to start and run a reputable trade site and Moderate 30,000+ members. There's nothing to it. Really.

I'm locking the thread now, as it serves no purpose aside from being a forum for which you to complain and everyone else to tell you how wrong you are.
Let it die, man. Let it die.

tl;dr?
Our site, our rules.

Eric