• Responding to email notices you receive.
    **************************************************
    In short, DON'T! Email notices are to ONLY alert you of a reply to your private message or your ad on this site. Replying to the email just wastes your time as it goes NOWHERE, and probably pisses off the person you thought you replied to when they think you just ignored them. So instead of complaining to me about your messages not being replied to from this site via email, please READ that email notice that plainly states what you need to do in order to reply to who you are trying to converse with.

  • IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ!! About the Google Adsense ads being displayed

    =====================
    Posted 08/15/2025
    =====================


    Yeah, I know. They are a pain in the butt. But they pay the bills to keep my server running. Just a fact of life, I am afraid.

    Want to get rid of them? Simple. Just become a Contributor level member or above and they will be gone. -> Please click HERE."

    Is that too much for me to ask of you to keep this site running? Well, sorry about that. I too wish I could get everything for free. But alas.....

    =====================
    Addendum: 01/10/2026
    =====================


    Google Adsense ad revenue for December, 2025 was just $30 over the cost of the lease for the server running this site. So, in effect, the money providing the incentive for me to continue running this site is coming SOLELY from the paid memberships and sponsorships here. Which honestly ain't much....

Can't seem to reply in my own threads...

Forgot to say this was in the ball python classified section, is there a new rule over there because i can reply to this thread....
 
Adam Kirk said:
Can paid member "bump" there ad with no consequence?
Click to expand...

It doesn't look like that was said:


Abusive use of ad bumping in the classifieds...
We've all been hearing complaints about the rampant use of ad bumping in the classifieds sections, even to the extent where some members will bump all of their ads one or more times per day in order to keep them on the front page. Obviously this pisses off everyone else who gets pushed off that front page, and I've been tasked with trying to come up with a reasonable solution.

Of course, there are multiple concerns that need to be addressed here. I have run this by my programmer to see if he can come up with a solution that doesn't kill the utility of the Classifieds Control Panel that paid members can use to bump ads, as it certainly would not be in this site's best interests to lose paying members. But honestly, since so many non-paying members are bumping their ads manually anyway, I'm afraid that just ignoring this problem is going to wind up becoming a big mistake in real short order.

So as a temporary measure until my programmer can get back to me with hopefully an elegant solution, I am making a rather inelegant bandaid fix to this problem until something better can be implemented.

Effective immediately, non paying members can no long respond to their own ads that they start in the classifieds section. Unfortunately this cannot be limited only to blatant bumping, as the program has no way of having that sort of intelligence to determine the context of the reply in order to determine if it is a legitimate follow up reply, or simply a bump of the thread to the top of the forum. But in any event, I felt that SOMETHING needed to be done, even if it is by no stretch of the imagination even close to being a PERFECT solution to the problem.

Yes, other members can certainly bump someone else's thread, but to circumvent that problem, blatant ad bumping will be come an infraction for whoever does that sort of thing.

The whole idea of this is to try to keep as many members as possible able to keep their ads in prime real estate as long as possible without being bumped to the back pages by some people being overzealous about their bumping efforts for their own ads.

Please bear with this while we are working on a more rational method to deal with this problem. I certainly wish we didn't have to address something like this, but with it being evident that some people are simply abusing this bumping capability, there really isn't any choice in the matter of doing at least SOMETHING to address the problem rather than nothing at all and allowing it to become worse over time, and therefore frustrate at least the paying members who have to watch the non paying members circumvent the perk they have for being a paid member when others simply manually bump their ads for free.

Hopefully this is temporary, and I do apologize for any inconvenience this causes anyone.
__________________
 
Bumping

DAND said:
It doesn't look like that was said:


Abusive use of ad bumping in the classifieds...
Yes, other members can certainly bump someone else's thread, but to circumvent that problem, blatant ad bumping will be come an infraction for whoever does that sort of thing.

__________________
Click to expand...

In this area he says "whoever". Hard to tell if he means other members bumping say a friends ad or just anyone bumping any ad.
 
Fauna has been good to me and I have no problem purchasing a membership if I can bump my ads with no infraction by doing so.
 
Adam Kirk said:
Can paid member "bump" there ad with no consequence?
Click to expand...

Yes. As long as they utilize the Classifieds Control Panel to do so.

Unrestricted bumping of ads has gotten to the point where it has become rampant and a problem that needs to be dealt with. Some people are just abusing the hell out of that tactic to keep their ads on the front page within the classified forum, and getting people pissed off enough to complain to me about it.

In the past, I just shrugged it off, as traffic wasn't really all that great there anyway, so I just wasn't going to worry about it. However, NOW, things have picked up substantially on this site, and that particular practice needs to be HALTED in its' tracks.

My programmer is working on a solution to make this a bit more user friendly, but until he is done with the mod he is working on, I just put the brakes on HARD in the classifieds, the best way I could.

Paid members can still reply to their ads unrestricted, but obviously if they choose to not be limited by the restrictions in place via the Classifieds Control Panel, they too can simply bump their ads manually. At least for now, but that too will be coming to an end shortly.

When my programmer is done with the code modification, I will fill everyone in (well at least everyone who pays attention to the announcements and/or checks into this Feedback Forum... :rolleyes: ) about the changes.

Oh, and yes, there are still ways to circumvent what I am trying to do for the good of all here, but that will necessarily be treated as an infraction to try to curtail that sort of tactic.

Sorry about this, but I think most people can see that it was just getting way out of hand, and a few people left me no choice but to take steps to limit that abuse of the classifieds.

BTW, if anyone wants to check on that original thread I wrote up concerning the Classifieds Control Panel, you can do so here -> http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=86491
 
I know this doesn't stop blatant bumping, but on another classifieds forum I'm a member of there was a rule that you can only bump once every 6 hours and if you exceeded it you were temp banned then if it persisted banned for good. The traffic there was much more so maybe here it should be around 1 bump per day. The only bad thing is that since people can't bump something they will more than likely just make a new thread
 
I think it's a stupid rule, as the vast majority of of those ad bumps comes from paying members. And since only the paying members can bump their own ad, it will push the non-paying members ads to the back pages, therefore making it harder for them to sell their animals. :shrug01:
 
dustinntech said:
I know this doesn't stop blatant bumping, but on another classifieds forum I'm a member of there was a rule that you can only bump once every 6 hours and if you exceeded it you were temp banned then if it persisted banned for good. The traffic there was much more so maybe here it should be around 1 bump per day. The only bad thing is that since people can't bump something they will more than likely just make a new thread
Click to expand...

I totally agree with you....They will post their ad first, now becaue they can't bump it and the ad is now somewhere alllll the wayy on page 8-9 they may just start a new thread. It's hard to sell a lot of animals when nobody can see your ad. I think there should be some sort of limit on how many times a person can bump an ad, maybe around 7-8 times a month, or about 2 twice a week. Which should be perfect giving that Rich stated that traffic has picked up "substantially" on this site. And I think that anyone who goes over this limit should get a warning, then an infraction, and then a 3 day ban. And if it continues, a permenat vacation.
 
its probably been thought of, but cant you extend the "30 second" delay in between posts for just the classifieds?
 
i have been a member for many years here and now sense when did this site become a paying site? i always thought it was Donations that one was willingly able choose to grant to this site for the help of reptiles either in need of homes or for sales. I find it wrong that money is now an issue here in who does what they want. Restore my privileges please.
 
Adam Kirk said:
Can paid member "bump" there ad with no consequence?
Click to expand...

WebSlave said:
Yes. As long as they utilize the Classifieds Control Panel to do so.
Click to expand...

That still only lets you have bumped ads of 10 per month for the $25 level. If your posting in the BP section.... your ad will get burried on page 15 inside of two days.

Now I have been manually bumping my ads once they get off the first page...but as you put it the last time I asked about this.... thats just marketing and you have to work at it.

So if I cant bump my ads up... do I just place yet even more ads and add more size to the database :shrug01:
 
There are likely to be a few changes still to come with this. I'm not in a position to be more specific, because things aren't fully sorted out yet....but the majority of the comments are things that we've discussed.
Ad bumping (and highlighting) has always been a perk of paid memberships...recent abuses of the "free bump" have pretty much made this change necessary. It's hard to call something a perk when everybody is doing it for free, especially when they are doing it more often than a paid member can. The number of bumps allowed increases with the membership level, and the number assigned to the Contributor level IS one of the things we've been discussing. Clearly 10/month is not sufficient, nor is it in line with the other levels...so this is something that will be adjusted. (It isn't as simple as opening a magic menu and changing the option, so it won't be an instant change...but the information will be posted when all is said and done).

How many of you have clicked on an ad, only to scroll through 20+ "bump" posts. I have my posts/page set at 40, and have had to go to the second page of an ad because of all the bumps. (I'm grateful for the few people that have the sense to remove the extra bumps as they go, and for those that manage/delete their ads as they are updated or the animals are sold :thumbsup: )
 
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