Thread: Charging NEW members for classifieds

Limiting it by post counts is silly... you can rack up several hundred posts in a day and they could all be drivel so it is not really a decent perimeter.

I remember that a year or so ago there was talk about a time limit before posting a for sale item say like 3 months membership, but allowing "wtb" ads in that time that method if the software can auto-magically manage it would be ok.

so would an honor system of 1% per item donation system for everyone when they sell on the classifieds. the fee would be less than than ebay/paypal rape and while not generating a lot of cash (so far the total sales there is ~300k so the take would have been 3k)

But really this brings us back to the paying member issue... many are willing to contribute to help grow and maintain the site even if they are unwilling to subsidize things like blogs and emails.

perhaps adds form newer members could go up as "pending" and then needing a mod or admin to look at it and allow it through... more work for the unpaid staff but they all claim it is a labor of love anyhow

that is my plug nickel on it.

I guess I'm just a quiet kinda guy. I've been here since Feb. of "07" and this is my 100th post!
How's that for timing? Now all I have to do is sell something.
Ken.

Well I actually thought about this before answering...

I think charging would have the exact opposite effect, make this seem more like e-bay, since then they really would not have to even try to participate to sell things..

It seems to me that the INTENT of this thread is to discuss how to prevent unscrupulous sellers and to prevent unaware newbie buyers from purchasing a product that is "no good" and or way too expensive for what it is. The pay to sell concept might keep low money items out but if a seller is going to offer a $200-$300 item and has to pay a % it still may be way profitable for them to pay the fee. How about instead of pay to sell or post to sell a feature that comes up when ever you go to the classified section. After you hit the classified section a new page automatically appears and says something to the effect: BUYER BEWARE!!!!!!! SOME ITEMS OFFERED HERE MAY BE OVER PRICED OR MAY BE SOLD BY MEMBERS OF LESSER CHARACTER. I YOU ARE NOT SURE OF THE ITEM OR THE SELLER PLEASE ASK A SENIOR MEMBER FOR THEIR ADVICE.

I think that in the world of gentlemanly participation in forums like these we as gentleman and members would be willing to offer new members our input into such matters.

Originally Posted by syslight

Limiting it by post counts is silly... you can rack up several hundred posts in a day and they could all be drivel so it is not really a decent perimeter.
...
perhaps adds form newer members could go up as "pending" and then needing a mod or admin to look at it and allow it through... more work for the unpaid staff but they all claim it is a labor of love anyhow

that is my plug nickel on it.

As a new member (I think this is post 3) I would have to say I agree with the above. Now of course, being new, I don't really don't have anything to sell and don't care to post any ads but I feel charging for the ads takes away from the "private community" atmosphere that seems to exist here now. If asking the staff to approve new ads is too much to ask then perhaps a group of experienced users could vote on posts. If 3 vote no then the post is gone. I have seen this work very well in other forums.

As for requiring 100 posts... I could do that in a day but the truth is simply that I don't have 100 posts worth of information to contribute yet. I am more of a reader right now. The quanity is easy but what about the quality? I could ask 100 questions but the wiki is such a great source of information that there really isn't that much that hasn't been covered.

I do agree that someone who doesn't post and participate should not be able to post ads but maybe setting the limit at 100 will simply increase the amount of junk posts. There has to be a better way but I am not quite sure what that better way is.

I would really hate to see the ads filled with the ebay junk razors. Right now I feel that there is a certain credibility to the ads posted here, even if that is a false sense of security.

Money is obviously an issue. Why not just put a paypal donate button on the home page? I think you would be surprised how many would donate. This site has saved me a lot of money and I would be willing to give some of that back. Others would too.

Im a very new, new member, but i was thinking that instead of charging for classifieds, maybe set up a senior member rating system, where possibley 10 or so review the the new product/add and give it a 1-10 as to its value/quality-price...?
I know, from what ive read so far, these older members know there stuff.

Thanks,
Mac

Even though the tide of opinion seems to be going against it, I am in favor of doing this or something else to prevent sales by people just out to make a buck off of this forum. A while ago, I raised not too subtle objections to one new member dumping yard sale crap in the classifieds. Though he claimed the razors were honed and shave ready, it became obvious very quickly that he did not know what he was talking about. Such sales are most likely to victimize new members. Unless new members can do something to demonstrate a level of actual competence, I don't think they should be trusted to make such claims.

It's an overused phrase, but I think selling in the classifieds should be considered a privilege, not a right. That privilege should be earned by some reasonable level of participation within the rest of the forum. If you contribute nothing, then there is no reason for you to be allowed to gain anything by being allowed to sell in the classifieds.

Well I gotta give credit where it is due and Ron/Utopian just told it like it is...
We always seem to be trying to compensate for the few that want to take advantage of the trusted selling available here on SRP...

They don't help Newbies with all their problems, they don't help in the honing or restoration forums and if they do post it is normally a negative post...

Perhaps Ron is right and until somebody proves themselves they should not be allowed selling "Privileges"

Keep in mind I am looking at this as a total bystander, as I have not bought or sold anything in the Classifieds I do look in there, as part of my Mod duties but thankfully Old-School, Gugi, and Sicboater keep most of the problem ads cleaned up...

Hello everyone. I am a long term straight user and have been reading these forums for over a year. I never signed up until I saw a razor in the classifieds that I wanted. I tend to read more threads than I have time to participate in them.

When I watch the classifieds I take three things into consideration:

1. Location: just because I want to stay within the states. (not all members show this information btw)

2. Post count: taken with a grain of salt because stats can be raised quickly. Plus there are good people out there without high post counts.

3. Post quality: I will search by member name to get a feel for the member by his/her thread contributions.

In the end I do tend to feel more comfortable with a member meeting these considerations. In the end it is to the seller's benefit to have a decent post count or at least a membership date that has some months to it.

Unless you have user ratings or some other trust level meter... it is a matter of good faith between men. A better way would be nice, not all men are worth our good faith.

No matter the suggested solution, you can never make all the people happy all the time.

IMHO, I would think it would work better to limit it to post count vs paying.

If you permit anyone to sell stuff, so long as they pay to list, it almost seems like you are inviting and permitting people to sell crap here, so long as they pay to list it. Kind of like ebay. It seems to me that once they pay to list, they are welcome to list whatever they choose, and it seems harder to make them take it down then, because in that case you "have" to refund them, and potentially work with people who might have bought it while the posting was live, etc, etc.

I know if I were some guy trying to unload some junk, and I was considering posting it here, a couple bucks wouldn't deter me as much as having to post 100 posts in the community.

You guys act as if it's easy to rack up your post counts, and I guess if you literally keep posting useless posts over and over, but it would probably be tough to do it in a short time without the mods or someone else getting suspicious. And if someone seriously has the time and puts in the effort to just post 100 posts such as "good job", "looks nice", etc, etc, or even to legitimately pretend to be contributing by helping other members out, just to build up their post count so that they can unload some junk, then IMO, that's pretty determined, and there's probably nothing reasonable we could have done to stop them.

Also, I know when I'm viewing the classifieds, my own rules are to not really buy anything from anyone with fewer than around 100 posts anyway. Especially if it's marked as shave ready and I want it to "definitely" be that way when it arrives. I also tend to think that there's some chance that a very new person may not be able to properly evaluate a razor. Maybe they don't think to see if it centers straight or if the pins are tight, or if the blade is warped, etc. Not that there aren't people with < 100 posts who can properly evaluate a razor and make it shave ready, because there certainly are!!, it's just that I don't view it as being as reliable as a user with 1000+ posts telling me it's shave ready and in great condition I will definitely make exceptions, but if I'm on the fence about something anyway, the post count usually pushes me over. Call me paranoid, I guess.

All this being said, if a main draw of having new users pay to list is actually the money/income for SRP, then I think a simple "SRP would really appreciate donations!" thread with a paypal donate link would do the trick...

And just to add one more thing... someone mentioned the "new users need to be approved" thing, and I think that could work great, if it's possible. If it could be set up where any time a member with less than 100 posts starts a for sale thread, it does not immediately go live, but instead it fires an email or PM to all the mods to review it. Then, if whichever mod gets the chance to approve it first thinks it's kosher, they click approve and it becomes visible to everyone. This would probably be as close to "perfect" as we could hope for. In some cases it may mean that the newbie has to wait a couple days for the listing to go live, but most of the legitimate sales, this shouldn't be a big deal, I wouldn't think?