Thread: Brilliant Idea for Addition to Classifieds Section!

So..basically stuff that would fall under the misc. section? Lol
It might be a good idea but usually someone looking for certain things in particular just seem to post a thread of what they're looking for.

Originally Posted by Catrentshaving

So..basically stuff that would fall under the misc. section? Lol
It might be a good idea but usually someone looking for certain things in particular just seem to post a thread of what they're looking for.

Right, but my suggestion was that the misc. section was too vague - it says soaps, creams, brushes, and whatever doesn't fit elsewhere...

I was thinking maybe there should be a "soaps, creams, brushes" category and a "tools and materials" category, instead of bunching all of it into "miscellaneous."

And then people do usually post a thread asking for where to find something - and they get sent in 10 different directions. Wouldn't it be easier to say "see classifieds?"

Well, we had multiple more narrowed sections, but they had nothing listed, or occasionally 1-3 listings in them. It makes absolutely no sense to be greeted with a list of categories when almost all of them are empty.

The only way for more targeted sections to happen is if there is enough volume of listings of specific type, that splitting them off in a separate category would actually make sense. I would say something like about 5-10/week is the minimum.

And yes, the original brilliant idea to get rid of the cobweb sections by consolidating them, as well as making it happen, was mine

Originally Posted by gugi

Well, we had multiple more narrowed sections, but they had nothing listed, or occasionally 1-3 listings in them. It makes absolutely no sense to be greeted with a list of categories when almost all of them are empty.
The only way for more targeted sections to happen is if there is enough volume of listings of specific type, that splitting them off in a separate category would actually make sense. I would say something like about 5-10/week is the minimum.
And yes, the original brilliant idea to get rid of the cobweb sections by consolidating them, as well as making it happen, was mine

First I want to say congrats on your 11,000th post today - on my thread no doubt!

I can see that you guys already tried something like this in the past, and have come to the conclusion that new sections will only be made if there is a volume of posts for certain things.

I wonder, though, now that this forum has grown so significantly, and there are so many more try-it-at-home restorers out there, if people would post things if there was a section for it. The old, "if you build it, they will come" mentality.

Nope, that's not how it works.

People post stuff that they want to sell, when they have it for sale, when they want to sell it and they simply find the most appropriate place to do so. I've never seen anybody start selling things only because we have a special section for them.

I've simply given up of doing stuff that are great ideas before others have shown a commitment to them. I'm happy to add any infrastructure which facilitates things people are interested in, but only after they have proven to me such interest with deeds not words.

This is an excellent example of the case - nothing is preventing people to post such listings in our existing infrastructure, yet there is zero such listings at this moment and only 5 total listings in the Miscellaneous section. This means that section is not too small, but if anything it is too big for the stuff that goes there.

There are also other features of this site that nobody used, so they ended up in the graveyard, and there are few more that are destined that way in the very near future. I think it's complete wast of time for the few people like me to support things which nobody from the thousands of active members bothers to use. The whole point of the site is to be useful, and since it's a community, it ought to reflect exactly what the community wants.

Thanks gugi..I would not want to add more work or make anything more complicated than it has to be. I guess maybe I was hoping that if there were say a hardware section so too speak that more people would list in it.
It would be nice if more members started using the miscellaneous section more often for things like scales blanks and Pins/washers but one can only hope.
Thanks for clarifying why there won't be one until the need arises.

I am not sure adding sub-sections to the Classifieds is more work - it is reasonably trivial actually. I think it is just unwarranted. I understand the "field of dreams" argument (if you build it they will come), but I am not sure I agree with its logic in this particular case. From what I have seen of the "restorer" types, they are the kind of guys who keep bits and bobs on the off chance they'll come in handy one day, but are more than happy to gift little bits to people if and when they need them.

James.

Originally Posted by gugi

Nope, that's not how it works.
People post stuff that they want to sell, when they have it for sale, when they want to sell it and they simply find the most appropriate place to do so. I've never seen anybody start selling things only because we have a special section for them.
I've simply given up of doing stuff that are great ideas before others have shown a commitment to them. I'm happy to add any infrastructure which facilitates things people are interested in, but only after they have proven to me such interest with deeds not words.
This is an excellent example of the case - nothing is preventing people to post such listings in our existing infrastructure, yet there is zero such listings at this moment and only 5 total listings in the Miscellaneous section. This means that section is not too small, but if anything it is too big for the stuff that goes there.
There are also other features of this site that nobody used, so they ended up in the graveyard, and there are few more that are destined that way in the very near future. I think it's complete wast of time for the few people like me to support things which nobody from the thousands of active members bothers to use. The whole point of the site is to be useful, and since it's a community, it ought to reflect exactly what the community wants.

Well, Gugi, its hard to argue with your logic. I guess it'd just be nice then if people sold that stuff on here, all in one place. As soon as some key pieces of wood ship into me I'm going to kick it off by listing a bunch of primo scale blanks. We'll see if others catch on.

Have you ever thought of installing heat map analytic software into your back end, so you could see exactly what gets heavy use and what doesn't, and where people are hovering their mouse and looking the most, etc? Because I'm thinking that some of the features, which I'm sure are useful, but that nobody uses, might not be being used simply because the eye is not drawn to them, or they are difficult to find.

A couple years ago I remember seevolution.com being a free software for that, but I don't work in SEO anymore and have no idea if its changed.

No, I haven't looked at the map of where people's mouses are to large extent because the site layout is pretty much set by the software we use with very little room for variation, but also because the only thing you can do is set priorities. Every now and then we get posts and threads from people saying that something needs to be made really prominent, but they don't understand that this means something else that is more prominent now would need to go down. When asked what less important thing should be taken away to make the space, they never have a good answer.

However, I know the traffic flow and what are the popular places on the site.

The razor section in the classifieds is one of the most popular ones, even if it takes more clicks to navigate to it from the main page than it takes to go to say one of the popular forum sections. The hones/strops section in the classifieds which is right next to the razor section gets 4 times less visits, just a little less than the number that the second page of the razor section gets and about twice as much as the third page of the razor section. To me this says that the layout or the categorization is a negligible factor compared to what people already have in their mind to do. Which makes sense because the site isn't really a random field to look for treasures.

As far as how to make other people to do something I think it's good for the forum, that's a question I'm still trying to answer