Well, there really isn't any overwhelming choice being made in the poll concerning any of the options, but the desire to re-open the classifieds to replies does appear to be more popular than the alternatives.
Quite frankly, it's disconcerting to me to see nearly 3,000 registered members logging in here every day, yet not even 10 percent of them will bother to post anything anywhere. What is lacking in incentive for the remaining 90+ percent to post a reply to something? Surely they have enough interest to have registered here and then come back to visit. Surely there must be SOMETHING they would like to talk about?
So my suspicion is that many are coming here strictly to view the classifieds sections. So perhaps it would be conducive to breaking the ice with them if they COULD reply to ads, and maybe that would lead to more participation elsewhere on this site once that ice has been fractured. The longer they are here, the more they might look around, and decide to just get involved in a discussion that they stumble on.
Will there be problems? Of course! But maybe it would be best if I just stay out of the way of what people want to DO here. After all, this really is a discussion forum site, is it not? So maybe I need to encourage DISCUSSIONS whenever, and where ever people may want to engage in them.
Thread (ad) starters will still have the capability to lock their ads if they prefer to NOT have replies, which can be easily done from their Classifieds Control Panel. So with this in mind, each author of every classified ad can manage the discussion themselves within their own ad. If a particular member is just being a gadfly with a generally annoying presence in the classifieds, then that person can be dealt with specifically.
Of course, no decision like this has to be permanent. If it appears to be causing more problems than it is solving, then I can always try another direction to try to make it better, overall. Wouldn't be the first time that I've had to flip flop from one decision to the other just to see which one seems better TODAY.
Oh yeah, as best I can recall, there is still code in place whereby the thread starter of a classified ad cannot reply to their own ad till someone else replies to it. This was done to try to limit the amount of rampant bumping taking place, and for now I don't see any reason to remove that code. Truth be known, has it really been much better with people just creating new identical ads instead of bumping old ones? Even though they will delete those ads, they are really only soft deletes, so they are still taking up a tremendous amount of space in the database. But I'll leave the anti-bumping code in place for now and just evaluate that when it appears I need to.
Will this remove the incentive for some advertisers becoming paying members so they can bump their ads easily from the Classifieds Control Panel? Maybe so. But I'm hoping the increase in traffic and just general interest in CONVERSATIONS in and about the classifieds will make up for it on the bottom line.
So there it is. Yeah, I know... Some people will hate the change and others will like it. Pretty much par for the course, but it's my job to try to look at the long term and try to do what I THINK may make things better overall for the majority of the people here. I am sorry there are no perfect answers for anything. Never have been, and probably never will be. But like it or not, let's just see what happens, OK?
