Thread: Update to the Classifieds policy

Hello All,

We have just made a small update to our policies with regards to selling in the classifieds. We have always seen it as a marketplace for the community, so we want those who advertise stuff for sale there to be active forum members. We have set the barrier for activity fairly low, so if somebody has been away for a while it is not too hard to re-qualify, if they are interested in becoming again part of the community.

Here's the change that we are making - highlighted in red:

Members wishing to post a 'For Sale' (FS) or 'For Trade' (WTT) ad must have a minimum of three (3) months of membership and no less than 100 posts or six (6) months of membership and no fewer than 50 posts. They also must have at minimum two (2) posts per every two (2) weeks over the latest 6 weeks. Exceptions to this rule may be made by the senior moderator team.

Hello,

I need to close my ad. Do I need to contact you in order to do so?

Thanks for the info!

Originally Posted by Xury

Hello,

I need to close my ad. Do I need to contact you in order to do so?

Thanks for the info!

Yes, but since I saw your post I became aware and it's gone If you want it reinstated after you re-qualify let me or any other moderator know and we can do that. Or you can place a new one.

Sounds good. Thanks for the help!

Will the two post policy also count for the duration of the ad running.
As an aside does the forum monitor the content of the posts if someone is running close to the minimum, as with the giveaways, if we are encouraging a community spirit, at least some posts should contain something of use to the community and not just be padding or flippant answers to attain the minimum levels required to meet the criteria.

Originally Posted by edhewitt

Will the two post policy also count for the duration of the ad running.
As an aside does the forum monitor the content of the posts if someone is running close to the minimum, as with the giveaways, if we are encouraging a community spirit, at least some posts should contain something of use to the community and not just be padding or flippant answers to attain the minimum levels required to meet the criteria.

Ed, we have technology in place to monitor that:

Well, these are 'minimums' and we really think that just doing the bare minimum isn't what our members should strive for. My hope is to see that nobody has to be concerned whether they have met the minimum requirements. The idea is that we want people to participate in the forum and this requirement is just a way to quantify some really low bar.
It's not a transactional 'I'll post X and get to save Y in selling fees', even though we have to quantify it in some way to make our life easy.

The software doesn't monitor the content - that's why we have moderators Usually if somebody is trying to game the system it gets noticed and it doesn't quite work out for them as they expect.
For example, some time ago we had a registrant who didn't make a single post for 6 months, and suddenly started posting a lot, and not particularly useful posts. As soon as they reached 50 posts they listed a bunch of stuff for sale in the classifieds. Needless to say that we didn't allow those ads and reset the qualification period, so that all this time that they were registered but not participating didn't count as being a member.

To us membership is not simply registration on the site. It's membership of the community, and that means participation.

But the bottom line is that these policies and requirements and automatic enforcements are just to make our job a little bit easier. Exceptions that may not be handled correctly by the policy or the software are reviewed by us so that we can take into account the proper context.

Sorry wasn't trying to sound like an arse. It just came to mind originally with the give aways. When the policy was first introduced I was going to ask if the winners posts were reviewed to ensure they werent just criteria meeting.

I didn't think you sound like an arse, and I think it's helpful that you guys have some idea how the site is run. We're trying to do the best job we can to foster community and promote straight shaving, all the rules we have are just tools to achieve the goal and minimize various kinds of abuse.

Nice thread!

James.