The BOI will be coming to an end on 02-02-2020

Originally Posted by RGMinc

This doesn’t make us very happy we use the BOI we are always sure to report on good guys and use it to watch out for bad operators. This is disappointing

Yes it is. And in hindsight, predictable.

Originally Posted by Helenthereef

Nope, I think no replies at all to threads since 2005 is pretty conclusive...

THey are not in order. Mine is there from 2010. Granted not much better, but they are not showing in order by date I guess??

Originally Posted by dragonlvr64

THey are not in order. Mine is there from 2010. Granted not much better, but they are not showing in order by date I guess??

That section is sorted in order of certificate number.

The point of my comment was all the yellow highlighted entries. That indicates people who have dropped support for the program and this site, and in most cases have not even visited this site for a year or more. One caveat here is that when my programmer put in the code to mark those entries upon expired paying membership, I'm not sure he put in code to remove the yellow highlighting if they renewed their paid membership at a later date. Some spot checking I did had found at least one member where that seems to be the case.

But still, just something else I tried to implement that turns out to be wasted effort.

No, the BOI, from all indications I am seeing, is a couple years past due to retire.

To be perfectly honest, I am beginning to get comfortable with the idea. It IS time to move on.

I am.not a contributing.member but I have used the BOI to find out how honest a vendor was before turning over my hard earned money to them and who was.flipping what and who was scamming. Yes I almost got scammed by someone and the person actually stole some photos of my own animals from a site I sold them on and posted them as his.

Thank you. I am glad to hear that it did help some people.

I'm not here to beg for the BOI, but I thought that you might find my experience with Fauna useful as you move forward and consider your monetization options. I have read the entirety of this thread thus far.

I'm a single herp owner, not a breeder or a collector. I occasionally have daydreams of a reptile room and breeding, but I don't have the space to provide proper husbandry. I went to my local, privately owned pet store to source a rhino rat snake. The owner referred me to Fauna and another big classifieds site. I was exceptionally leery of both sites, they look a lot, visually, like a cheaper Craigslist on a basic bulletin board chassis. But I trust my pet store guy, so I got over my initial impression and looked through the classifieds. I did use the BOI as part of my research into breeders, but not exclusively.

In addition to asking my pet store guy, I googled rhino rat snake for sale. Fauna did not come up. Stores across the country did. I would not have found Fauna without word of mouth referral. When I created an account here to contact a seller who had advertised here, I noted that a person could become a contributing member, pay $25 for a year, though no useful benefits were conferred. I chose not to do so. Too many online spaces are on a subscription model already and why would I want to pay money to Fauna for a subscription I would not use? I'm not in the business of selling animals and I'm not going to volunteer extra money to subsidize the costs of doing business for people who are in the business of selling animals. I can't write this off on taxes but sellers can.

I ultimately selected a breeder that I found on Fauna, completed the transaction, and noted my positive experience with the breeder on the BOI. I have returned to the site since, mostly to look at a few pretty pictures in the classifieds and pretend that I might have a reptile room, and read the drama on the BOI.

I'm not going to purchase a subscription to support the site. I understand that you'll find this attitude a kick in the teeth, but my use of the site is too minimal to justify a subscription. My primary interaction with the herp community is through pro-bioactive husbandry groups on Facebook.

Maybe my experience will be useful to you, maybe it will not. I would hate to see Fauna itself go the way of the BOI, but running a marketplace isn't free.

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Nope, I don't feel that your post is a "kick in the teeth" at all. I am way past that stage about all this. Now such posts just reinforce my believe that my decision was based on sound reasoning and accurate interpretation of the facts and perceived trends.

If FaunaClassifieds necessarily follows in the path of the Board of Inquiry down the toilet, then so be it. I never expected this to last forever. I'm actually surprised that it got as big as it once did anyway. Certainly wasn't because I knew what the hell I was doing. Heck, I remember being VERY surprised when the site hit 2,000 registered members!

So no harm done by your post on my end. Thanks for your input.

Originally Posted by Helenthereef

I agree with that in part - could it be set up so that although only contributing members could post, it would still be visible to all to view (even if only via the BOI link on classified ads)?

If not, it seems a shame that newer members, who may be more vulnerable to the scammers, might not see the warnings.

I agree to a larger extent with this. Newer members who've not become familiar with who's who on the site are far more prone to scammers than are the regulars and seasoned veterans and are the usually the greatest benefactors. Them coupled with those who spend big bucks. Real unfortunate it has to go but perhaps there'll be a 143% in contributors before the deadline, who knows.

Originally Posted by TheGoatFairy

Real unfortunate it has to go but perhaps there'll be a 143% in contributors before the deadline, who knows.

I really wouldn't recommend you holding your breath for that to happen. Unless you like seeing yourself in a nice shade of blue, of course.

We gained something like 70 new paid Contributor level memberships since February. Sounds promising till I make note that we also lost 44 during the same time period.

I also set up an additional display in the FaunaClassifieds Statistics section on the main page.

Active Members: 19,488

The above is the current figure I am seeing. This shows the number of registered members who have logged into and visited this site within the past year.

I didn't make note of the date I set this up, but it wasn't all that long ago. And at that time the figure was showing 19,722. Bear in mind that this is in spite of the number of new memberships we are getting here every day.

I really like Helenthereefs idea. Only contributing members can post but it's visible to all because it does seem very sad to lose that information for new members coming on board