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Classified bump abuse..opinions

DThomas

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I can already see it happening. Royal Prop has been bumping this ad to the top the past two days. Heck, he only posted the ad on the 21st. To me this is abuse and away of getting around the high visibility ad option of keeping ads to the top.

Maybe set a rule that ads can not be bumped until they are off of the first page. What are everyone else's opinions?
 
WAAAAA you big crybaby ... lol

just kidding Dennis ....

I agree that if some are bumping to just bang them uptop everyday they shouldnt , i myself have found it that myself will bump once a week i will admit that i dont ALWAYS look to see where the add is as i usally goto the cp first to check things like "who is online" i like to see where people are viewing and what they are viewing. then i will bump my adds placed since you mentioned it i might even be guilty ofthis myself *shrug* but dont think so as i only bump once a week but since you mentioned this i will have to check to see wherethey are on the scale of things.
 
Once a week does not seem unreasonable to me even if they are still on the first page. It just irks me to see someone abusing the system like this.

And Alan....:raspberry
 
Heck, you would think someone would spend $5 per month and not have to worry about bumping an ad, wouldn't you?

Is it really that much of a problem at this point?
 
WebSlave said:
Is it really that much of a problem at this point?

I don't think it is at this point. That was the first instance I have noticed. I just thought I would bring it up before it became a problem. The potential for abuse is there and there will always be that 10%.
 
I think I will be more "reactive" on this, rather than "proactive".

Quite honestly, unless I actively monitor the classified ad sections on a daily basis, I just won't know someone it bumping their ads abusively. I had considered this as a possible problem in the design specs I sent my programmer, but I figured there was little difference if someone bumped an ad via the control panel, bumped it via adding a reply to the thread, or just copied the ad and reposted it. Just degrees of effort needed to do the bumping.

If it gets to be a severe problem, I can ask my programmer put a bump counter in each ad, then I could just institute a warning category called "Bumping Abuse" that will be associated with the fine and suspension automatically when a certain number of bumps take place in a given timeframe. A couple of those and sooner or later the abuser will get the hint about paying the $5 for the highighted ad, I think. ;)

But honestly, right now I would rather see traffic in the classifieds section pick up before I need to worry about anything like this.
 
Re: $5 for a yellow ad!!!!???? why george i think thats a brilliant idea lol

JungleHabitats said:
and ill renew mine to rich lol

And I just sent the money for my two Rich. The links are in the Paypal email.
 
WebSlave said:
Thanks, Dennis.

Heck, don't thank me. Thank you for the site and all the work you do. I just wish I could send more. If all my Boa morphs pan out next breeding, (or I hit the power ball..lol ), you WILL be getting more....;)
 
well all i can say is im not sure ....

About the other classifieds sections .... but i know that the caging & hsubandry section is goingto be "Yellow" with envy lol

Rich you have Mail my good sir ...
 
i agree that the bump feature is already being abused... i see a seller (naming no names) that every day and i have seen it sometimes twice a day bump his ads up in several catagories.... like 4-5 now while the bump feature is great and not abused is greater peole who are bumping everyday or twice aday is a bit ridicul;uos..... now if they paid the five they wouldnt have to pump and us broke asses might just get a shot at someone seeing our ads that like me might bump once a week.
 
Ad Bumping Abuse Huuuum

Hi, All

I have seen ad bumping abuse and it does not seem like a real problem as of yet but might start to be abused more. and might warant some kind of attention later, but i think Rich will do what is best for the site as far as that goes. althoe i do think Rich that a 5 or 7 day counter for ad bumping would be in order but i wouldn't think a warning system would be need if the bump clock for bumping ad's just only allows you to bump the ad every 5 or 7 days then it would be less work for Rich. and ad's would only be allowed to be bumped every 5-7 day's and no one could abuse it.
only speaking of future problem abuse.

I my self out of respect for other posters bump my ad's every few day's and hope that it is viewed in that way by others and i would also pay the 5 dollars for the highlighted ad's if i had a special that i could aford to run so the options are their for us to use and is up to us who use it to respect it.

Hey Rich maybe a note on the option box saying something about common courtesy of ad bumping might do.

Just my thought's but what ever save's money and time or future problems is alway's a plus.
 
I too have noticed some bump abuse in the Ball Python classifieds. The party has been bringing thier ad to the top atleast 3 times a day. I'm sure others have seen it, and I would be a little bothered if I had ads up in that section.
 
I think that the yellow ads in the classifieds section would get more attention if they were not yellow and they were locked 1st in the classifieds below all Announcements and notices with the look of a normal ad. The reasoning behind this would be that I have noticed myself blowing over them like the announcements in any section, being that I read them once and then I think I have conditioned myself to start looking below them because I know that I have read them already. As an example of this in the boa classifieds, srsnakes and redtailboas ads are above the High visibility ads now being offered notice. all three are highlighted and it kind of gives the impression of the ending of announcements and the beginning of the ads. If that was were the normal looking high visibility ads would begin, your intrest would start there by default if you go there on any kind of regular basis. Maybe you would also get more people paying for the normal looking high vis ads because they could not bump above them and default to 3rd or more regardless of how often they bump. Just an observation with some thoughts, am I totally off?
 
Well, I guess that is certainly possible....

What do you think I should do? Make it a three level option? (1) Pinned to the top of the forum, no highlighting, (2) Highlighted but NOT pinned to the top of the forum, and (3) Both pinned at top AND highlighted. ?

The problem will come in trying to figure out what and how to charge for this.
 
You could pin to the top and give the option of highlighting or no highlighting at the same price you are charging now.
I don't know, it is something that could be tossed around and see what others think.
 
I think if highlighted and regular looking ads are options, the highlighted ads should be above the regular looking pinned ads for the previously stated reasons.

Maybe if you moved the notice of highlighted ads above the highlighted ads and the word notice was removed from the subject line of the ad, that may be enough to seperate them from the annoucements. just some thoughts.

I truly think you are doing an excellent job with this site and it is a valuable tool and resource in the herp community. I don't want you (Webslave) to take any of these suggestions the wrong way. Keep up the good work, it is appreciated.
 
Heck, Jeff. If I didn't want suggestions I wouldn't ask for them. And I would just delete any that people sent me unsolicited. :)

But I want to know what people think about how I should run this site. Can't say I can please everyone, and some suggestions just cannot be implemented for technical reasons, but I will at least consider them.

For instance, your suggestion about keeping the highlighted and pinned ads above the unhighlighted, pinned ads. That sounds easy on the surface, but in practice it will be a problem to do. The reason for that is because the pinning works by a method whereby the last pinned message will be at the top of the heap. So to try to do what you suggested, depending on how many people used this feature and the options they wanted, it could take me quite a bit of time and effort to do the arrangement in this fashion. Yes, it is logical in the way it should be, but it would be quite a problem actually doing it.

Another thing is that many options on this site are global in scope. In other words, the changes I would want to implement in the classifieds sections would also change the way things happen all throughout this site. Removing the "Notice:" prefix would make sense in the classifieds, but there are situations where I would want that to be visible within some of the other forums. So I would have to choose one method or the other for the entire site.

But heck, doesn't appear that anyone else is willing to express an opinion on this, so perhaps this is all moot anyway.
 
Heck Rich, he only posted this fours hours ago..lol Some of us have day jobs and just jump in when we can....:p It's only just now 3:45pm on the west coast here.

I think Jeff has made some valid observations. But like you said, easier said than done. Is it possible to select the color for individual announcements? Is so, make the pinned ads a different color.
 
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