Anyone else getting tired of the abuse in the BP Classified

[tim8dena]

looks like we have more activity in the classifieds..starting to look better

tim

 

[HowlinGaleDragons]

Hello,
I so understand these feelings I am going threw heck with a women on the Bearded dragon section who posts 15+ ads and dose this as soon as I or other posts so our ads can not be seen I've reported to this staff hopefully something will be done, I need not say names just go look at the Bearded Dragon sections and you'll know who it is I will never buy anything nor recomend them to anyone it's just making them look bad.

 

[WebSlave]

Hello,
I so understand these feelings I am going threw heck with a women on the Bearded dragon section who posts 15+ ads and dose this as soon as I or other posts so our ads can not be seen I've reported to this staff hopefully something will be done, I need not say names just go look at the Bearded Dragon sections and you'll know who it is I will never buy anything nor recomend them to anyone it's just making them look bad.

Not sure exactly what you want me to do or why I would want to get into the middle of such things. I'm just glad it's being used, so I certainly am not inclined to slap someone around for using it a LOT.....

 

[HowlinGaleDragons]

They are using it in a abusive manor every time someone posts and one or two of her 15 ads comes down onto the 2nd page she will post all of them agian over ours this i find is abuse in its own it's similar to bumping I guess the only way a few of us can keep our ads viewable is to delete them and re post. [This is on the newer classifieds board]

 

[Lucille]

Nicole:

Why not partner with the others and form a block of ads. That way, when she does it to you, y'all can do it to her. Read about the old time millionnaire Rockefeller sometime when you have a few extra minutes. He was the nicest guy possible, but ruthless in his business tactics. Learn. You don't ever have to be evil, but turning someone else's biz tactics against them is something they can hardly complain about.
Make your blocks different colors so we can not only peruse frequently changing ads, but decorative ones as well.

 

[WebSlave]

They are using it in a abusive manor every time someone posts and one or two of her 15 ads comes down onto the 2nd page she will post all of them agian over ours this i find is abuse in its own it's similar to bumping I guess the only way a few of us can keep our ads viewable is to delete them and re post. [This is on the newer classifieds board]

Seems to me this puts you at an advantage. You only have to post one ad. They have to post 15 of them. Seems to me they are putting a whole lot more work into it than you are, so you should be able to burn them out faster than they could burn you out.

 

[deborahbroadus]

Seems to me this puts you at an advantage. You only have to post one ad. They have to post 15 of them. Seems to me they are putting a whole lot more work into it than you are, so you should be able to burn them out faster than they could burn you out.

A day late again...

Is it possible for everyone to have their own page (not website)? I stopped putting up ads because I actually have a day job and do not have the time to sit here and continually bump my ads (that will change once I retire). Then no one could be bumped (of course they would have to pay for the privilege). Perhaps a rotating basis that puts every ones name up there in alphabetical order?

forgive me if the idea has already been thought of. Just thought it might reduce the friction and bring in more revenue (this would be for those that were tried of their ads being bumped and were willing to pay for the privilege..

 

[WingedWolf]

I generally figure that 4 or 5 days is a reasonable wait before bumping an ad--it seems people start to assume the animal is gone if you don't bump it up again at all.

 

[WebSlave]

A day late again...

Is it possible for everyone to have their own page (not website)? I stopped putting up ads because I actually have a day job and do not have the time to sit here and continually bump my ads (that will change once I retire). Then no one could be bumped (of course they would have to pay for the privilege). Perhaps a rotating basis that puts every ones name up there in alphabetical order?

forgive me if the idea has already been thought of. Just thought it might reduce the friction and bring in more revenue (this would be for those that were tried of their ads being bumped and were willing to pay for the privilege..

At one time I offered personal forums to members on this site (for a fee, of course), but it was not well received and got discontinued. I was surprised. It has proven extremely well received over on my CornSnakes.com site and I thought a lot of people would want to take advantage of the traffic on this site for their own forum. Shows you how much I know about this stuff....

 

[GottaLuvHerps]

Not so much reposting ads but...

How about the bigger issue of people constantly responding to ads that are months, if not years, old? Yesterday I put up an ad in the bearded dragon section in the morning (I think morning). By afternoon, it had been kicked down to the middle of the page simply because 1 member decided to bring up ads from 2007 and early 2008 inquiring about female dragons. These were old ads, and some of them even mentioned the dragons being sold, but yet people constantly bring them back up to the top asking stupid questions like "is this female still available", pushing the new ads down. I guess I don't have so much of an issue with someone posting lots of individual ads for their animals every few days, but getting bumped down by someone who simply can't read a date drives me insane. This, of course, causes me to want to bump up my ad (which I actually had a legit reason to do so to inform people that 2 of my dragons were sold).

Rich, if you are not willing to put a limit on the amount of ads posted per day, then how about a way for the ads to expire/lock at least so we do not have to deal with old posts being bumped back up to the top and hurting those of us with current inventory? I am not a paid member yet, so I do not know if there is the ability to just "click and repost" ads available, but it is my choice if I do not pay for that feature and my ads expire and I have to retype the whole thing (if that feature is available to paid members). Maybe a somewhat similar form of posting ads could be used from KS, and just allow an expiration of ads after, say, 14 days, and if you want to repost, then give certain levels of membership the right to "click and repost," and others just have to retype. This does not stop people from using the free classified section, but if they run lots of ads, it may make them consider becoming a paid member if they post lots of ads that need to be re-run (kill 2 birds...?). And yes, I would say just delete the ads that expire, or at least find a way to lock them so they cannot be bumped up by people who don't take the time to read before the respond. And maybe we need a way as people who post ads to either delete/lock ads that are not longer needed, or at least to request that it be done so that we do not deal with that issue. Joe Blow who posted a snake for sale 2 years ago that sold probably does not want to deal with emails about this ad now because someone can't/won't read, and maybe that is why Joe has stopped advertising here and has headed to another advertising site? Just a thought.

I know the person (that I assume) Deborah is referring to, and she is a very good personal friend whom I compete with for business, but if she has things to sell, then she has every right, as I or anyone else has, to post her ads, whether it be in groups or each one separately. It's business, and something we have to deal with, and we have to figure out what form of ad posting we need to take to compete with that. But I am tired of being put to the bottom of the page by an ad 6 months or 2 years old because someone can't open their eyes and read a date posted or that animals were sold....

My 2 cents.

Kelly Kordek

 

[GottaLuvHerps]

Correction - Deborah did not post about the person posting many ads in the BD section, it was Nicole (HowlinGaleDragons, 6/5/08, post #22). My bad. But my statement still stands. Business is business....sorry for the mix-up.

 

[deborahbroadus]

At one time I offered personal forums to members on this site (for a fee, of course), but it was not well received and got discontinued. I was surprised. It has proven extremely well received over on my CornSnakes.com site and I thought a lot of people would want to take advantage of the traffic on this site for their own forum. Shows you how much I know about this stuff....

OH shucks!! A week late, and TWO dollars short.

I would think that it would be difficult to have a forum on here. IMHO, The BOI offers too much competition. However, I would think that a single webpage alone for posting all the animals you have for sale and projects going on (not a banner) might be well received? It would certainly do away with the "bumping."

(forgive me if forum is the same thing as webpage).

 

[hhmoore]

The personal forums were basically people's own private corner of Fauna - pretty much like having individual General BS, Sound Off, and Other Interests sections + plus a blog. (A whole different world from the BOI.) I don't believe that anybody ever used them for advertising purposes...and, I don't know how that would have been received. The basic concept of keeping advertising out of the discussion forums would seem to argue against it...but who knows

 

[deborahbroadus]

I'll try to be more clear. When I suggested that the BOI offers too much competition, I was referring to visitors. There's so much happening there.

To all, my apologies if I look as if I am referring to anyone. I am not. I am simply seeing a situation and thought ( it's probably not a new idea) of a possible solution. I, personally, do not have any issues with having ads bumped.

It would be like buying a one page ad in a newspaper (that's the concept I was going for).

 

[hhmoore]

Responding to Kelly:
There is a system in place to lock down old ads, though I don't know how many of the participants are still paying attention to it - it involved a number of the former WS mods & Forum mods that volunteered to go in and manually lock the ads (and remove attached files from them). The basic guideline that was set was that any thread (ad) over a year old would be locked...and the last post is the only thing we have to look at, so when somebody bumps an old ad, that moves it back on the hitlist. As you can probably imagine, it is very time consuming work & I suspect that some of the volunteers have forgotten about it or are no longer interested in devoting the time/effort.
Of course, if people managed their own ads, it wouldn't be an issue, either. It only takes a few seconds to delete an ad when the animal is sold. (It's just as fast to close/lock the thread, too, but I'm not positive if that feature is available to all members)

*one last thing - as far as adding an auto delete feature...there are three things that come to mind.
1) The Alternate Classifieds have that feature already
2) as has been discussed many times when the subject of old ads comes up, the search spiders pick up the ads and draw people to this site. That is part of the reason that it was decided to lock vs delete old ads. It was felt that removing them could negatively impact the search "hits" that bring new people here.
3) Another factor that has been identified is that this site is slated for a serious upgrade. It just doesn't make sense to spend the money/time on custom programming when it will either be included with, or have to be redone after, the upgrade.

 

[Mooing Tricycle]

Responding to Kelly:
There is a system in place to lock down old ads, though I don't know how many of the participants are still paying attention to it - it involved a number of the former WS mods & Forum mods that volunteered to go in and manually lock the ads (and remove attached files from them. The basic guideline that was set was that any thread (ad) over a year old would be locked...and the last post is the only thing we have to look at, so when somebody bumps an old ad, that moves it back on the hitlist. As you can probably imagine, it is very time consuming work & I suspect that some of the volunteers have forgotten about it or are no longer interested in devoting the time/effort.
Of course, if people managed their own ads, it wouldn't be an issue, either. It only takes a few seconds to delete an ad when the animal is sold. (It's just as fast to close/lock the thread, too, but I'm not positive if that feature is available to all members)

Heck, id be willing when i had time, to continue to go in and work on the 1yr old stuff.
It does get kind of irritating when people bump ads from four years ago, and you have to tell them, and then the next 10 people that post,that the ad is however old.


I dont really care about the bumping thing, but i suppose i may if i have one thing, that i just listed, and then 10 ball python ads pop up over top of it cause someone felt the need to be "first" i might get a little annoyed, but i dont think it would be worth making a fuss about. If someone is interested in what i would be selling, then im quite sure they might not be interested in the bumpers stuff, and just skip right over it. I know i do that all the time!

 

[GottaLuvHerps]

Harold,

Thank you for the lesson! I have only posted 3 ads here so far on Fauna, and honestly did not look into the idea of deleting my own ads. My failure to be proactive and informed before posting my response. It did, however, give me a reason to go look at the classifieds CP more closely, and sure enough, as a non-paying member, I have the ability to delete or lock my own ads (which I did delete my 2 old ads). I also have the ability to "bump and highlight" my ad according to the links, but I did not see how that works. Maybe I will take a look at that feature when the idiots put my ad back down to the bottom of page one again from asking about year old ads...

I agree, some people need to be more proactive in how they deal with their own ads, but seeing as the classified section has changed a few times, maybe it was not the same a year or more ago? I am not aware as I am fairly new to the site. Maybe people are just lazy (more likely), or maybe they are not aware of how the classifieds CP works really (from being too lazy to read it *cough cough me included*) or just thinking things work the same as always?

I also agree that having mods going in and deleting/locking old ads must be time consuming, as I know they have enough issues keeping up with the BOI and discussion forums as it is. I would not want their job, much less to mention Rich's job. I'll stick with breeding my dragons and dishing out whatever information I can on the discussion forums (as well as being overly addicted to reading the BOI and now the Hell forums ) I was just not sure if there was a certain programming that could be put into place to automate this process in any way. Granted, implementing a new programming feature into any site is usually very time consuming and costly, so it may not even be a viable solution. But it was a thought, and sometimes I relish in the idea that I get a few of those a couple of times a week that don't involve taking care of the kids or cleaning up dragon poop LOL

I think a lot of the responsibility on responding to ad an still falls on the responder however. This of course, would mean that people would actually have SENSE and READ, and god knows that can't happen in most cases. Call it the lack of progress in our education system, or just general lack of common sense in people these days, whichever. It just bothers me as both a buyer and a seller when I have to wade through the year old crap to find something, whether it be my ad to check the number of views, or trying to find an animal I would like to purchase, only to find out the ad is so old that it is probably useless to respond. Maybe the lack of sleep, aforementioned kids (5 of them) and all the dragon poop has made me more irritable in my old age, who knows?

Responding to Kelly:
There is a system in place to lock down old ads, though I don't know how many of the participants are still paying attention to it - it involved a number of the former WS mods & Forum mods that volunteered to go in and manually lock the ads (and remove attached files from them. The basic guideline that was set was that any thread (ad) over a year old would be locked...and the last post is the only thing we have to look at, so when somebody bumps an old ad, that moves it back on the hitlist. As you can probably imagine, it is very time consuming work & I suspect that some of the volunteers have forgotten about it or are no longer interested in devoting the time/effort.
Of course, if people managed their own ads, it wouldn't be an issue, either. It only takes a few seconds to delete an ad when the animal is sold. (It's just as fast to close/lock the thread, too, but I'm not positive if that feature is available to all members)

 

[hhmoore]

It does get kind of irritating when people bump ads from four years ago, and you have to tell them, and then the next 10 people that post,that the ad is however old.

When people could see who was covering the particular ad section, all that needed to be done was to PM that mod with the information so they could lock the ad. Now, the option is (instead of bumping the ad up yet again by chastising the person that dragged it up) to just report the post & note the age of the ad. The problem with that is that if the people that were put in position to deal with that section are no longer active, the report post will likely be ignored....and if nobody was put "in charge" of a given section, the report will go to Rich (who has enough other crap to deal with)

 

[TripleMoonsExotic]

Well, if we need more mods to lock old ads in the classifieds, I'm more the willing to spend my free time doing it.

I actually try to remember to automatically lock my ads when I place them because I hate them turning into discussions with unnecessary bumps. I can bump the ads without unlocking them in the UserCP, so what does it hurt?

 

[Gary O]

I look at it this way. Some feel they need 10 threads for 10 animals. Good for them. I will continue to try to put my groups of animals in one thread. No worries either way for me.

About old threads being bumped. people just need to read the date............