Wanted/Offered section rules

I really like this site and hope it succeeds and have some ideas re the rules for this section (after reading @anon5422159 responses to other ads).

1 - I can’t immediately find a link to the rules (this page About the Wanted/Offered category). Perhaps it could be pinned in the section.

2 - As a future user I think I will find the 1 post per week limit frustrating. When I decide to advertise some stuff I tend to offer a few different items at once. The current rules mean I have to draw out the process, or make some kind of combined ad (“offered: trainers, lawnmower and vase”). Possible solutions could be:

• allowing users to select/deselect this section feeding into homepage
• prevent this section feeding into the homepage
• feeding only the original post date into the homepage for this section (ie responses do not result in a ‘bump’)
• not worrying about it (since other interesting topics may maintain homepage position through their activity)
  I think the latter two are best. Actually I think the third is neatest, but probably requires coding work.

3 - in this thread Two brand new boxed baby pens £20 each the OP was asked to only post once per week but the rules state “For cash exchange items, max 1 item per week per poster”. She had actually offered one item free and one for sale, so seems like she may have been observing the rules. This rule could be clarified if it includes free items.

Just trying to provide some constructive feedback, the site is excellent, particularly on mobile devices.

Appreciate the feedback and the thoughtful points, @beige.

Regarding the first point, the “about” topic is pinned for new visitors to the category, who should see this:

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But the site keeps an eye on what you’ve read, and for anyone’s that has clicked through and read this “about” topic, it will be automatically unpinned. This is why you may not see it at the top of your page.

Still, IMO the rules aren’t made clear enough to posters, and I will think about ways to make this clearer.

Regarding your second point you make some interesting suggestions and they’re all technically possible today except for the “no bump replies” mode. I won’t comment in detail yet, as I’m interested to hear what others have to say before I influence any possible solutions.

But I will say (as a general point) that there are other apps and sites that specialise in local sales / free items. We ought to consider the niche we inhabit with this particular forum format, and work to its strengths, perhaps conceding that some types of listing are better served elsewhere? But I don’t want to rule anything out. And I am willing and able to develop technical features.

Regarding your third point, you’re quite right - my mistake - @Morduee hadn’t done anything wrong by listing a free and a cash exchange item. Sorry, Erica, my bad.

Although there are other sites for buying and selling, I’ve always used local forums like this because I like to deal with people I ‘know’. I’ve used Freecycle and similar before and it’s not always a nice experience. Using local forums, I’ve found people tend to be polite and reliable, show up when they say they will, don’t try to strike a new deal on the doorstep. I’m happy to open the door to someone I’ve made contact with on a local forum, less so other sites.

QUALITY exchange / selling activity on a forum will drive traffic to it. A site that makes such activity difficult will lose some users. It’s something people look for. Don’t assume ‘for sale’ threads will put people off. As long as they are genuine sales and drop naturally down the front page as new posts come in, I think they’re a good thing.

On the issue of limiting items posted - I think one a week is too restrictive. Like most people, I’ll do a clear out and post several items at once. Getting around to taking photos, checking whether I’d be better selling on eBay etc is something I put off, so once I’m ready to get things sold I’ll do it all at once. Eeking it out over several weeks would be a serious pain and I would mostly likely go to another local forum where I’ve traded very successfully before rather than put the items up here.

Edited to add: the sort of items for sale are usually a good indication of genuine sales, and those are most often the items people want to buy too. In my many years doing this, I’d say be suspicious of people only selling clothing. Items best sold on local forums are bulky items in good nick, too good to dump but difficult to shift otherwise: furniture, baby stuff, pet stuff, spare car roof boxes, gardening kit, even sheds!

Yes I am a reluctant to use Freecycle any more because people are so unreliable, and also if it’s a large item and they need to come in the house to move it, I am wary of letting a total stranger into my home. However with this forum I have a better idea who people are.

On the other hand it will be a bit tedious if the forum is just filled with threads offering stuff!

Thanks @RachaelDunlop and @Daffodil. I think I understand this better, and agree that we should have wanted/offered listings on the forum.

My main interest is preserving the “kerb appeal” of SE23.life. So the quality of wanted/offered listings is really important. If we get the right listings, they’ll draw people to the forum. @Morduee’s John Lewis sofas (offered for free) are exactly the kind of listing we want.

How about some form of curation so that high quality listings make it to the front page, but others don’t?

This is just one idea, and it has drawbacks, but we could create an opt-in category called “Marketplace.” Items are first listed here with minimal restrictions (as it’s a willing audience). The owner(s) of this opt-in category could optionally promote some items to a wider audience in the main forum if they’re appealing and listed well (with a proper title and picture etc). That way we could control the quality and the rate at which marketplace items hit everyone’s screens.

We do similar curation in the opt-in “cycling” category - detailed chat is only visible to those who’ve opted in, but selected topics (e.g. Starting to commute to work by bike) are visible to the wider forum by being categorised as “fitness/health.”

The drawback is that new users would list items on the main forum without spotting the marketplace category, so moderators would have to step in and re-categorise (and opt new users into the “marketplace” category).

But it would save moderators having to remind users of the rules of the “wanted/offered” category.

The benefit of having an opt-in category is that we could subtly reduce the visibility of low-quality listings without offending the author…

Pondering further - we could have a “marketplace” category which is suppressed from homepages and has liberal rules. Doesn’t have to be opt-in - I think suppression from homepage would be sufficient.

Then additionally we could have a “boutique” category which is visible on homepages, and which moderators can move high quality items into?

I think you’re over-thinking this. Restrict listings to verified users. You’ll get a handful a week at the most (have a look at other forums to see this in action). As they don’t generate a lot of replies they will fall down the page fairly quickly. Allow posters to bump once a week for a few weeks to say the item is still available or price reduced.

If it’s only verified users you won’t get people using the forum as a car boot sale and if you do, you can challenge them. Getting fixated on the ‘quality’ of items is a dangerous path to go down. Smacks of elitism.

I do have a tendency to do that

Let’s hear from a few more people on this topic, and then run a poll to reach a conclusion. In the meantime I’ll change the guideline limit to 5 per month (basically the same as one per week, but more flexible for posters).

KISS is great Chris. A section for sales under £20, as section over and then a freecycle swap section?

Yes I think moderating by quality would be a bit of a minefield…

If we manually select items to promote to a wider audience, I’d see it more as “showcasing” good listings (those that follow the guidance on titling, including pics etc - and also those that are interesting). It would help encourage people to follow the guidelines - using a carrot rather than stick approach.

As an analogy, Jumping Bean sells a wide range of stuff, but they only have a finite amount of window space. So they choose their most interesting items to go in the window. They’re not being elitist, they’re just keeping their shop appealing in order that people choose to walk inside and see more.

Websites without a kindly “shopkeeper” turn into unappealing free-for-alls. Look at Craigslist/Gumtree - they’re a nightmare!

I want to minimise moderator workload here, and I’d be nervous about adding extra levels of granularity. Why? Well, it probably hasn’t been apparent, but most of the “offered” topics were added without a category at all, and I had to recategorise them myself. As an OCD moderator, I don’t mind doing this, but I do want moderation to be low-touch so other moderators (who have lives) aren’t overwhelmed

I replied via email but it hasn’t appeared here. This is what I wrote:

I would strongly oppose showcasing. Arbitrary and unfair to other sellers. Also, as I said earlier, these sort of listings are really not that frequent. How many have we had since starting? How many does even a very active forum like EDF get?

These issues are arising because of the free-flowing of the home page, without sections. If you’re really worried (unnecessarily IMO) about the brand, make it a discrete section. I wouldn’t though. Can we wait and see how many and what sort of listings we get with verified users only?

Surely if people don’t like to see for sale stuff they can opt out of viewing that section? That’s the beauty of this forum vs facebook or others.

That is true - logged-in users can opt out of a category. The limitations are:

• we’d rely on people posting to the right category
• non-logged-in users (60% of visitors) will always see the category
• we’d rely on people discovering they can mute categories (it’s not obvious)
• I would mute the category if it turned into gumtree, but that would be a shame because I still want to see the most interesting items

Regarding the first point, I’ve just checked, and I had to step in and categorise 8 out of 10 recent items into the “wanted/offered” category (they were submitted without a category).

Unfortunately, this means our “only verified users” rule on the “wanted/offered” category can be very easily side-stepped, and we’re going to need moderator input.

The question is - what’s the best moderator workflow here? Do moderators post a reminder about the rules, and “hide” (AKA unlist) an item until it’s been edited and categorised? Or do moderators shuffle the item aside into a category that’s less visible until it’s been sorted out? We need a standard way to approach this, whether it’s a carrot or stick approach (I prefer carrot).

Any way to make the category unset by default when creating a new post, and require the poster to select a category from the list? If you can then move the ‘Uncategorized’ option to the end, you’re more likely to encourage more appropriate self categorisation.

I think then as long as Wanted/Offered listings remain limited to verified users, then it shouldn’t be too intrusive.

This is an option, yes. However, I think the “wanted/offered” category would be absent from the list for non-verified users, so they might just file their item as “other”?

I’m about to post something let’s hope I don’t break any rules!

I would strongly oppose showcasing. Arbitrary and unfair to other sellers. Also, as I said earlier, these sort of listings are really not that frequent. How many have we had since starting? How many does even a very active forum like EDF get?

These issues are arising because of the free-flowing of the home page, without sections. If you’re really worried (unnecessarily IMO) about the brand, make it a discrete section. I wouldn’t though. Can we wait and see how many and what sort of listings we get with verified users only?

I would suggest you do this anyway. People are very lazy and often will select that as it’s first without thinking what category it should be in.

looks like your post by email did turn up, @RachaelDunlop … just delayed! I have changed the settings so emails are checked every minute rather than every five mins - this should reduce the delay. Unsure why it took an hour in this case, though!

I’m not a big fan of hiding or moving posts until they are fixed. As long as it’s done fairly promptly I think it’s better to leave it alone. People get very touchy about their posts being arbitrarily (as it might seem) moved around.

I like the idea of people not being able to post without selecting a category for ALL posts. I’ve been lax about checking people have properly categorised their posts and wil do better, boss! Also ‘uncategorised’ should be a last resort so definitely move it to the end of the list.

I’m hogging the debate now so will step out and see what y’all come up with.

A post was split to a new topic: “For Sale” items posted by unverified members