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In Reply to: Could we seperate personal and commercial vendor ads in Classifieds? posted by darkmoebius on November 02, 2004 at 00:16:48:
Yeah, it seems that lately there have been a number of abuses. I've also noticed people listing the same item 5 or 6 times. We may need to limit the number of ads per month or per day as well. I'm not sure what the best solution is, but we'll try to get something done fairly soon.
Follow Ups:
I posted a message about this same problem back in September, and suggested then that there should be a separate Dealer Ads section. If that's too much trouble to police, then I would suggest making classifieds free only to Contributors ($25 minimum), and charging $1 or $2 per ad for everyone else, with a limit of five free ads per day, and no more than 10 "on the board" at any given time. This limit would apply to everyone, Contributor or not, private parties and dealers alike.Incidentally, I find it odd that you require people to be Contributors to post and view photos, which allows all participants to share information, but make ads free for everyone! This invites abuse, and DECREASES the value of the service for everyone else!
And yeah, I need to renew my Contributor status. Are my photos still on the server somewhere, or will I have to re-post them?
"Music is the medicine of a troubled mind." -- Walter Haddon, 1567
Yeah, we're going to make some changes eventually. Initially, we wanted to change it to be free to get more volume. Right now, we're porting to a new machine, so we need to be sure that's stable before we make any changes.On Galleries, yes, we never delete the images, at least thus far, we don't. Everything is still there, it's just not showing up as it checks for Contributor status before it shows stuff. As soon as you renew, everything will be as it was.
Every so often, there are instances where audiophiles get fed up (or divorced) and sell their entire system, which could have 20+ components (including cables). A low limit would be a hindrance.On the other hand, seperating personal from commercial vendor classifieds and charging a $1 filing fee would discourage the blanket spam-type practices. Perhaps, allow 3 free ads a day and after that, $1 per ad including the "free" ones.
I think that would discourage guys like "Mambo" from abusing the "free" privilege like he did on 11/03 by posting 30 ads in a row for two items.
I just looked at the abuses and you're right. It seems like Dealers should be able to list up to X a day and Y per month. A hard limit (Z) per month which could done in a day is fine for others.Does that sound about right? What would you sugesst for X, Y and Z?
Perhaps all advertisers should have click to accept a page listing all the rules before entering their first ad (cookies to remember whose seen it). Perhaps classifieds should also be restricted to registered members for the sake of rules enforcement.For personal "Audiophile" ads, I'd think that 15 free ads per month should be more than enough for those with most severe case audiophoolishness. From a quick perusal, the largest personal listing at one time was 10 while most average 3-5 ads in any single month.
Then, we need to force dealers to declare themselves as such - there are clearly a few who are not. Any dealer/vendor found posting as an "Audiophile" should be warned once(w/ ads deleted) and then barred from advertising for 3 months on the next offense.
And, all multiple listings for the same item (no matter how many available) should be banned and automatically deleted. Anyone found abusing this rule should be warned once and then barred from advertising for 3 months on the 2nd offense.
Lastly, commercial vendors should get 10 free ads per month(max.5 free per day), after that $3 per additional ad. That's a fair price considering that a quick look at the classifeds page shows most vendor ads to range from $300-$3,000. Another smaller block of ads range from $60-150. There are only a few ads for less than that (excluding Mambo's blitzkrieg of thirty $20 Mini Vacume ads). So, any vendor selling <$30 items can use their free ads for those.
Besides raising money for the Asylum, many people will seriously think twice before listing 30 items in a row with regularity. If someone really wants to spend that kind of money, let them - the Asylum could use it.
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