• 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...

DAND said:
But what benefit does a 4 year old ad really have? Especially when the OP hasn't posted or even logged in since the ad was posted? Other then the occasional person replying to the ad thinking they are getting a deal due to the price being lower since it was from 4 years ago?
Click to expand...

I made a sale this year before my babies were even ready.... how did I do this when I wasn't even advertising. She found an old ad here on Fauna and contacted me about them and asked if I was gonna have more this year.

I am now a firm beliver of leaving old ads up.
 
It takes no more space to have an accompanying archives section that old posts can be sent to. Rules become that posting member must divert post to archive once sale has been made. Responsibility goes to member or they receive an infraction (similar method freecycle uses) Board retaisn knowledge of pricing and history, members gain a clean and up to date board that they know is watched by the seller and admin.


Once again, there is no difference between bumping an ad or deleteing it and reposting another. Very simple to cut and paste the info to a new post.
 
Last edited:
DAND said:
But what benefit does a 4 year old ad really have? Especially when the OP hasn't posted or even logged in since the ad was posted? Other then the occasional person replying to the ad thinking they are getting a deal due to the price being lower since it was from 4 years ago?
Click to expand...


What I do is lock the ads based on the date of the last reply (one year is the cut-off). I do this quarterly...I've already made two rounds maintaining the old ads and the next one is scheduled for December.

Currently, all ads in which the last reply was made in Aug 31st of 09 or earlier are locked. Yes, it'd be optimal to lock every ad that was posted over one year ago...however, the only way I'd be able to accomplish that is by checking every ad with more than one post, and doing this every 3 months. Maintaining the old ads already takes up a solid few days per sitting...so I won't be checking all the ads for when they were posted (again, I only focus on the last reply).

There are a few ancient ads still floating around. However, the number of such ads is negligible (On average I catch about 5-10 old bumped ad's per month which I then lock). So, no worries about the old ads, Sensei...we're on it.
 
suzuki4life said:
Once again, there is no difference between bumping an ad or deleteing it and reposting another. Very simple to cut and paste the info to a new post.
Click to expand...

There is a big difference, in my mind.
I'm on my way out the door - I'll have to address this later :ack2:.
 
polasian said:
What I do is lock the ads based on the date of the last reply (one year is the cut-off). I do this quarterly...I've already made two rounds maintaining the old ads and the next one is scheduled for December.

Currently, all ads in which the last reply was made in Aug 31st of 09 or earlier are locked. Yes, it'd be optimal to lock every ad that was posted over one year ago...however, the only way I'd be able to accomplish that is by checking every ad with more than one post, and doing this every 3 months. Maintaining the old ads already takes up a solid few days per sitting...so I won't be checking all the ads for when they were posted (again, I only focus on the last reply).

There are a few ancient ads still floating around. However, the number of such ads is negligible (On average I catch about 5-10 old bumped ad's per month which I then lock). So, no worries about the old ads, Sensei...we're on it.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the update, Nicholas.:)
 
Instead of manually checking if an old post hasn't been active for some predefined time period, wouldn't it be prudent to write a script to automatically check the date of the last post of an ad and to determine is it older than x amount of days.

Need a system that favors fewer ads per user. If you need to advertise 10 snakes, it will be easier to advertise all of them in 1 ad rather 10 even though they may be extremely different projects. There will be some people who will be interested in several of those projects and would consider a group deal. This would be beneficial to both the seller and buyer as the seller gets to move more volume and buyer should theoretically get better deals by buying in mass.

Perhaps 1 ad per non-paying and paying users up to 3 ads per classified section.

I am sure this could work as I have seen plenty of responsible users of this site do this already and they just remove the snakes they have sold by editing their original post.
By doing this at least we get rid of 10 posts being bumped up at the same time by individuals.

Sorry if any of these ideas were already brought up in the thread.
 
After looking through posts in this thread:

Bumps per ad won't work in my opinion as you can have 20 ads. 3 bumps per day for 20 ads is still 20 ads to the front 3 times a day. Limited posts per day hurts people with large volume of reptiles as well, but could be argued a better implementation of the private messaging system is required to alleviate such bump abuse.

Single ad per user is a recurring idea but doesn't completely fix the issue of excessive ad bumping but does cut down the number of individuals who bump all their posts, and fewer pages to look at total if one wants to search manually through the threads.

Eliminating/archiving older posts to a different section cuts down on total number of posts for people to surf through.

A few question to the administrators: Who is abusing the bumping system? Is it the community as a whole or specific individuals?

Will the rules target the community or specific individuals/extreme cases?
 
I don't know if this has been mentioned already but is there a way to pay the difference on a membership to boost a level? For example I just purchased the contributor membership the other day but im already thinking I want to go up to benefactor level. Is there a way to pay like the $75 difference to get that? Rather than paying the whole $100? If not this option would be great if easily made possible. I'd use it.
 
[email protected] said:
Instead of manually checking if an old post hasn't been active for some predefined time period, wouldn't it be prudent to write a script to automatically check the date of the last post of an ad and to determine is it older than x amount of days.

Need a system that favors fewer ads per user. If you need to advertise 10 snakes, it will be easier to advertise all of them in 1 ad rather 10 even though they may be extremely different projects. There will be some people who will be interested in several of those projects and would consider a group deal. This would be beneficial to both the seller and buyer as the seller gets to move more volume and buyer should theoretically get better deals by buying in mass.

Perhaps 1 ad per non-paying and paying users up to 3 ads per classified section.

I am sure this could work as I have seen plenty of responsible users of this site do this already and they just remove the snakes they have sold by editing their original post.
By doing this at least we get rid of 10 posts being bumped up at the same time by individuals.

Sorry if any of these ideas were already brought up in the thread.
Click to expand...


fewer ads=lower traffic=lower membership=lower income for the site.

archive old ads=organization=easy viewing=more traffic=more ads=more people=potential for more income.
 
RichsBallPythons said:
How does this affect those that delete their ads and repost them to become shown on the Main page?
Click to expand...

It doesn't. And won't, at least not in the foreseeable future. There is no possibility of making a system that can't be abused by someone inclined to do so.

And as I have previously mentioned, posting classified ads is for FREE here. If this site were pulling in a LOT more money than it is, maybe I would have incentive to spend all of my time working on trying to find a perfect solution to all the issues here that people can come up with. But it isn't, probably won't, and I'm not. I didn't retire my reptile business just to give me more time to spend here..... :rolleyes:
 
Adam Kirk said:
I don't know if this has been mentioned already but is there a way to pay the difference on a membership to boost a level? For example I just purchased the contributor membership the other day but im already thinking I want to go up to benefactor level. Is there a way to pay like the $75 difference to get that? Rather than paying the whole $100? If not this option would be great if easily made possible. I'd use it.
Click to expand...

Yes, that can be done. Generally the way I work it is that anyone with a current paid membership that is less than 6 months into that subscription can pay the difference for an upgrade. But we will need to do this manually, as there is no way to make the code in the paid subscription script do that automatically. What you would need to do is to PayPal my account the difference directly, and I would have to manually change your account settings. Just send me a private message and we can work out the details there.

Thanks.
 
RidgeTop Reptiles said:
Sure you did.... you love us... and you cant stand being apart from us :bolt01:
Click to expand...

In some respects, this site is like a sore tooth to me. I'm sure you know what I mean. Yeah it hurts, but for some reason you keep on messing with the tooth anyway. Perhaps it's just a touch of masochism..

I guess perhaps I was Ghenghis Khan or Jack the Ripper in a previous life, and this is my punishment...

BTW, I know members are already figuring out ways around my attempts to deal with the bumping issue........ :rolleyes: Do you all REALLY want limits on the number of posts and/or replies that anyone can make in the classifieds sections?
 
WebSlave said:
In some respects, this site is like a sore tooth to me. I'm sure you know what I mean. Yeah it hurts, but for some reason you keep on messing with the tooth anyway. Perhaps it's just a touch of masochism..

I guess perhaps I was Ghenghis Khan or Jack the Ripper in a previous life, and this is my punishment...

BTW, I know members are already figuring out ways around my attempts to deal with the bumping issue........ :rolleyes: Do you all REALLY want limits on the number of posts and/or replies that anyone can make in the classifieds sections?
Click to expand...

Just my honest opinion.. .and I know it wont be well liked by the masses.

If you limit the number of posts on a free site... your liable to kill it.
 
RidgeTop Reptiles said:
Just my honest opinion.. .and I know it wont be well liked by the masses.

If you limit the number of posts on a free site... your liable to kill it.
Click to expand...

On the other hand, if the people paying to support the system no longer see any benefit for it, because the non-contributers are taking up prime real estate and being "mean":rofl: by being inconsiderate then the freebies/non-contributors take over and the site dies anyway.

(talk about being between a rock and hard place!)

***I disagree with your conclusion. Take Genefreak's Ad, for example, he seems to have someone just coming in there making conversation, while the rest of us are TRYING to follow the rules. I think that limiting the number of posts in the CLASSIFIEDS will clean up the real estate and make information easier to find.
 
Fewer ads should probably do the trick altogether. Deleting and reposting can't really be stopped unless you want to stop people from posting ads, which seems to be counter intuitive for the website. You could give every user the ability to report bumping abuse. Then its an argument of what threshold of users are needed to report an abuse to moderators. Say 5 ppl see excessive bumping. No report...20 people see it, then its reported to a moderator. Depends on how many people are active on the channel, and makes the users feel like they have some sort of power to control their surroundings.
 
[email protected] said:
Fewer ads should probably do the trick altogether. Deleting and reposting can't really be stopped unless you want to stop people from posting ads, which seems to be counter intuitive for the website. You could give every user the ability to report bumping abuse. Then its an argument of what threshold of users are needed to report an abuse to moderators. Say 5 ppl see excessive bumping. No report...20 people see it, then its reported to a moderator. Depends on how many people are active on the channel, and makes the users feel like they have some sort of power to control their surroundings.
Click to expand...

We do have that. It's the little red and white exclamation point in the triangle there below our names and basic info with each post made. This one:
report.gif
Want to report that post? Click that icon, type in a short reason, and send.

Shows right up on the moderator boards so they can go take a look at it.
 
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