Upcoming Classifieds Process and Rules Changes

[GunLawyer001]

Valid point, thank you. That said, is there someone in high up places in admin that can tell us how many scammers or how many sellers have been investigated by them because of people complaining about unscrupulous ads or dealings? This classifieds section is probably one of the largest around and I don't see a lot (unless the those posts are hidden) of people claiming scams/bad deals.

You know the vetting process that you had to endure to become a member here? Right. It was the same for everyone else. There's a small percentage of spies, scammers, nutbags, trolls, and phishers who got past our safeguards, but with 80,000 users, that adds up to too many. And since PAFOA charges nothing for ads, the budget for hiring PI's to investigate claims of abuse is zero. It's all volunteers. Caveat emptor. If you get ripped off, and tell the mods, the mods can look at the evidence and ask the other user for his story, and maybe ban that account.

There are tricks to spot some of the bad guys. Scammers are often banned within 24 hours, without ever posting anything. I won't explain how. You don't hear much about that. The banned list is enormous. You'll see the occasional complaint about an IP range that got banned, and that was to fight scammers. But there are no guarantees. When you buy from some guy who's been here 10 years and has thousands of posts and is not on your block list, odds are OK that he's not going to burn that account to steal your $50. But it can happen anyway, here or anywhere, if something gets lost in the mail, or damaged, or won't function with the buyer's reloads, or whatever. We're still, on average, less felonious than Congress.

[General Geoff]

You know the vetting process that you had to endure to become a member here? Right. It was the same for everyone else.

There was a vetting process? Forgive me but I don't recall anything other than filling out a form and opening an email link. Granted this was 14 years ago for me. Is it different now?

[RockIsland]

There was a vetting process? Forgive me but I don't recall anything other than filling out a form and opening an email link. Granted this was 14 years ago for me. Is it different now?

[free]

There was a vetting process? Forgive me but I don't recall anything other than filling out a form and opening an email link. Granted this was 14 years ago for me. Is it different now?

It was sarcasm man (:

When my 30 days is up, I'll post a classified ad so you can buy a sarcasm detector from me. I'll throw in some free, yet very valuable, VHS tapes.

[andrewjs18]

these rules seem pretty draconian, personally.

I run a popular forum with a busy b/s/t section like pafoa has, yet I was able to automate most of the moderation required in the b/s/t section on my forum. I have a script to automatically move threads that are older than 60 or 90 days (I forget without looking) as well as threads where their prefix was changed to 'sold' or 'closed'. the script runs once per hour.

in addition to that, I had a system built that prevents the bumping of a thread for 72 hours (configurable by me via a plugin setting), but not in a conventional way that most plugins would do it. I have it set up so that replies to threads are allowed, they just don't 'bump' threads whatsoever, except a post made by the OP once the 72 hour threshold has been met.

I don't see why pafoa can't invest some money in adding plugins and/or having a vbulletin dev write some code to do what needs to be done automatically..

[danp]

Apologies to everyone for the late replies, I was away over the long weekend for an Anniversary trip.

On AR-15.com people are held to no more than two listings in the same section on the first page. They also have a lot more categories as was suggested above.

I think one per month per section, especially with only a few sections, is too restrictive.

No matter what we do moving forward it seems like the classifieds would benefit from more sub-categories to help people find things better.

So what are we doing with any ads we already posted prior to the rule changes?

Do we just repost a new ad for them now?

The plan was to let the classifieds that were posted under the old system phase out as normal with the rules being enforced leniently, and after 30 days all the threads left would be in the new system.

Also am I supposed to bundle in WTBs with my WTS posts? If I decide I want to look for something like the 32 win spl I just had success in asking for, its definitely not getting seen buried at the bottom of the page with a 2 week old WTS.

This was 100% an oversight on my part and I will be looking at the setup to figure out how best to address this along with all the other feedback.

I'm not familiar with vbulletin at all but there has to be some way to run scripts against a subset of posts to make those changes. Even if it's a third party system that integrates with the forum I have to imagine that exists.

At the scale of PAFOA's forum, we have very few options for any sort of custom software or mods. We have to remove the few we did have years ago to keep the forum running. We are very limited in what we can do outside of the stock vBulletin 4 functionality.

Are the admins going to reply here or what?

Yes, when we can. Keep in mind this entire site is run on a volunteer basis. All staff, including myself have regular jobs and normal life responsibilities. PAFOA comes after those are handled, always has, always will.

We do our best to try to keep this ship running within all the constraints on us, and we'll continue to do that.

I am dropping this quick post to let everyone know that I have read through all the feedback in this thread and am going to try to sort it all out to figure what changes we need to make to serve everyone's (sometimes competing) interests.

As I said previously, we know the classifieds are a huge focal point for members, and we do genuinely want them to work for everyone with a set of rules that everyone can understand and can be applied objectively by staff.

[abner13]

Since I'm stuck using my phone for awhile , Im not reading every post , but what about eliminating the being able to post stuff for sale from the first & only post? With the spike in prices , lots of people joined just to sell stuff a skyjacked prices. Some forums have a minimum time or number of posts.

[danp]

Just wanted to provide a quick update: I have had a chance to review all the constructive feedback in this thread and chat with Eric on the phone for an hour tonight. A bunch of you have pointed out some really legitimate flaws in the new system that we didn't account for and we think we have some changes that will shift us back in the direction of the old system, but with some changes that preserve some of our original intent here.

The main issues we want to address are:

1. Bumping was useful because it caused old threads to be re-highlighted in bold and made it easier to see which posts have been updated. The new system really screwed up discoverability in this regard and that was just a total miss on my part.
2. The limitations of the current breakdown of subcategories in the forum. The buckets are too big and it seems everyone would like to see more granular categories of what is being sold making it easier to find things
3. The fact that a small subset of people are using PAFOA like a personal flea market. While this was never against the rules, it is against the spirit. The intention was not for PAFOA to become a place where people who don't participate in the community can use us to run a side business buying/selling items all day long for free.

We're still finalizing exactly what we want to do, but it probably looks a bit more like the old system with longer bump times and some new rules that will be much more strictly enforced, along with some changes in the categories of the classifieds to address items #1 and #2.

I still don't know exactly what to do about #3, but I do have a question for you all:

At what point does it cross from "I have some stuff I'd like to get rid of a couple times a year to my fellow forum mates" to "I am running a small business and PAFOA is a random place that lets me to dump stuff endlessly for free"?

I'm not sure where that line is, but I know its there ("I know it when I see it"), and it seems like once you cross it, there needs to be a cost associated with it while still allowing for casual buying/selling the way it's always been.

I am very interested in community thoughts on how to address this issue.

I want to thank everyone again for their constructive feedback and patience while we try to find a solution here, and my apologies that we missed some gaps in the plan. But as promised, we will adapt in the goal of getting it all to a point where it works well for everyone.

In the meantime, please continue to follow the spirit of the rules we put in place until we can get them updated again. As before we are going to be lenient in the enforcement, and trust that everyone can keep things to a dull roar while we plan the next set of changes.

[Walleye Hunter]

I only find the violators to be a minor annoyance but maybe an overall window to sell an item, like a month or two? I mean...I wouldn't mind having a gantry but the difference between what I would pay vs asking price is so wide that I don't even bother. Then if the items show up later at the same price, it could constitute a violation?

[RenoV8]

In to chime in rhat the new classified rules are super ghey. Your site, your choice I know. I think I'll post even less.

You mean, less than the 5 posts you have now...?