keep Ebay and Craigslist sales off a board (any board)

[coachgeo]

RE: changes made to the classifieds area on this board (moving of Craigslist/Ebay ads to a sticky) prompts me to ask some general questions about boards and classifieds

No offense to Mustang deciding to separate out craigs list and ebay referrals by putting them into a sticky.  This is a far better solution than removing or encouraging members to NOT post them at all.

Ok onto the subject. It's a common practice to restrict referral ads on boards or not allow them at all and can understand why many see it a logical path to follow.

Would like to present an opposing view on this though. Would be interested to know your the members thoughts.


1. removing referral ads  protects the members who are selling things.   (this is most common reason for referral adds said to be removed/restricted) IMHO this "protection thought" is FALSE  for several reasons.

... only 1 to 2% of members are usually selling an item related to the subject of the board on any given day. For example.. here the stuff is Tiger related.  On Pirate4x4 its offroad stuff.... a Snowmobile board it would be Snowmobile stuff etc.

This small % means the Classifieds area..... will be not that active. It does not encourage membership body to go.... "hmmmm... I'm curious what is in the classifieds today"..  rather it encourages the thought of...  "been the same couple of things in there for months"  "Why should I go check classifieds".   Less traffic means slower sells for members and sells for less money because less show interest in the item(s) they are selling which lowers their value.

... Allowing Referrals but separating them away from member classifieds is better than removing them butt.. it still reduces traffic in the member sells area creating issues as described above.

2. removing referrals protects the members from having to wade thru so much clutter.  IMHO this is FALSE.  for several reasons.

... Only 1 to 2% of members are selling things on any given day but if the classifieds were active with stuff related to the board, it would encourage participation by lots of curious members.  My assumption is 50-70% of the members are served by an active classifieds because they like to breeze the forum even if it is just out of curiosity of what new stuff is in there on any given day.  

....... Boards that remove/not allowing referral ads ... is the 1 or 2% selling members more important that the 50-70%  members who would like to be cruising the classified checking out the days interesting finds ?

..... Boards that separate out referral ads.... this would potentially reduce traffic flow in the member sells area which has conceivably smaller amount of post than the Referral area. As described above...lower traffic flow.... brings up a hoard of issues to member sellers. Just not as much as not allowing referrals at all.

... IMHO members could care less if a new item is from Ebay, craigs list or a from a member. They don't consider it CLUTTER at all.   Yes some would rather PURCHASE from a member... but curious members  (the majority of users) could care less where the ad is from.

3. American Democrats -vs- Republicans, Free Market -vs- Moderated/Controlled Market etc etc.  Thats a whole long discussion of economics... but IMHO.. free market works best.  

4. Seeing an ad,; be it one from Craigs List, Ebay or a member's ad, at  times prompts a question... a general question even... which prompts dialog and we do enjoy discussion things related to the board.



well... maybe I'm just a wet towel and have no clue.. so tell me how stupid (or not) I am by answering the Polls and posting your input.  Mustang, Moderators, Webmasters of other boards may find the results interesting too.

Poll questions; while they refer to this site directly they are intended soley to get a general sampling of what folk feel about referrals contained in classifieds on bulletin boards


Again, Mustang's solution of a sticky for referral sales is a good in between solution.  :D Glad it appears he is not intended to eliminate them entirely as is commonly done.

[Mustang]

dude you are way off base

just post your finds to the stickys

[coachgeo]

honestly Mustang this polls intent is not specifically about this board or you. Recent change here just opened the opportunity to address this Practice is all.   Tried to make that as clear as possible but will reword it to try to make it more clear.

Like mentioned in the post.... its common practice on bulletin boards to limit or not allow referrals. A practice that never made since to me (for reasons described in opening post)

Your sticky is a brilliant solution to separate member sells and referral sells.  Little harder for you as a mod to moderate... but only marginally harder.

[coachgeo]

as promised... edited my opening post to make it more clear that my poll is GENERAL about boards and how they handle referral ads and not a complaint about this board. Glad  you and the Admin. is allowing referral ads.

[coachgeo]

... post your finds to the stickys

Speaking of the new sticky.  Originally went to the classifieds earlier today cause I realized I should delete my ebay referral thread and instead post the link in the other thread I started on the same bike a few days ago.   Since they were cut, pasted and moved... could not do that.  

If you want to clean up that post of cut and pastes- Feel free to remove my ebay referral portion , just  add the link to the  portion of that post about the same diesel bike.  

Thanks

[Nick Calne]

This is my favourite thread.  It's equivalent to drinking 10 pints of cider through a straw.  

[oxnsox]

Couldn't possibly do this or we'd have to do it all ourselves instead of having the likes of EB do a great job for us.... thou I'm too far away to take advantage of his finds damn it!!