Changes to B&S discussion - SOLD BUMPS ARE BANNED - Page 16

Want to see if my sig is active. EDIT: Yes!

I'm not sure I follow. My "Purge" threads are a mix of items I've bought for myself that didn't work and items I bought to sell. From a buyer's perspective, why should they care which is which? I can't imagine many people are selling NWT stuff for a whole lot less than they think they could get out of it, regardless of why the item was purchased initially. (See the recent spate of $69-$79 Yoox shoes for $150-$250.) In that regard, NWT stuff that didn't work is no different than stuff that's been bought specifically to sell.

I can guess which camp I belong in, and speaking for myself only, I'd be happy to pay a price to sell my stuff here and not have to deal with the headache of ebay.

alright /thread. Does nobody find this thread ironic?

so lets get this pinned or move it somewhere else.

What's the deal with the bump stigma here,

It's really not a big deal with a time limit,
I think y'all have been in SF too long

I agree. I think it is ridiculous that you have to price cut your item in order to bump it. I agree 100% that I dont want it look like SuperFuture, but a reasonable bump every now and then should be allowed. It could get out of order though, and make it harder to mod, so I guess it might be better to keep it the way it is. Who knows.

Any suggestions that will require more moderation are just not going to be implemented. It's really that simple, so there is no need to make these suggestions. The new system is going to be implemented so that we essentially have to do no moderation except to kill blatant spam. There is going to be a fee for bumps. There is a 99.99999% chance of this happening. The fee for bumps will make the original discussion of the thread - i.e. abuse of the system, moot. We will simply use the market to sort that out. If you have prices considerably higher than that of the competition, you can bump 100x, and it still won't sell, and you'll be out however much 100 bumps is worth.

There will also be no additional subfora, so please don't suggest any of those either. There will be a tag system. If you are too lazy to use it, well...

ICs will be the same as a sales thread, so you better be sure you want to sell something. There is already a subforum for WTB. In the future, if you post a WTB in the FS subforum, you'll probably just get banned. Yes, the WTB forum gets many fewer views, but other people have to deal with that too, and you are not a special flower.

There will be no segregation of B&S users. Whether you want to use the premium services (bumps, pinned threads, larger PM boxes, etc...) would depend on what they are worth to you.

The discussion here is how to make the forum useful for big and small sellers alike, and of course, to make the forum easier to use for buyers.

Not unless you feel like paying for it.

Bad news for small sellers (like I was planning to be when I got around to listing all the stuff I've bought that doesn't fit), but not a huge surprise. It'll be the first paid bump system I've ever seen on a B&S forum. I'm interested to see how it works out.

I'm a software developer but unfortunately not in php. It should be feasible to prevent replies from bumping threads (I think it's quite important that people can post comments in fs threads as sometimes people have useful info with regards to their experience with last shapes and sizes etc). I'm wondering if it's possible to attach items for sale to a post with prices. When a poster wants to bump a post, they can choose to reduce the price of the item(s) by at least 10% (which would be free) or to bump the post without price drops (for which they would be charged a fee). If it's a question of money and revenue for the forum - I'm sure a lot of sellers would be happy to donate some kind of percentage of sales to the forum - I know I would. Just a few thoughts.

Thanks for your thoughts. You bring up some interesting and cogent points.


Yes, I'm pretty sure that this can be done. We have no desire to kill interactions in threads, which is one of the main benefits of a forum based marketplace. On the other hand, threads like this get tiresome, and the pay to bump system has the dual benefit of getting rid of such discussions, and allows us to derive some revenue from a marketplace that is clearly financially benefiting many sellers.


The first is clearly doable (if you want to see an example, on a much less popular forum, google "honestmall"). However, the problem is that we would like to encourage sellers to use a single thread for multiple items. We are not trying to replicate Ebay. For the same reason, the
if 10% price drop then free bump
else bump = $1
algorithm isn't going to work.


I toyed with the idea of doing Ebay lite at one point - i.e. no listing fees, but a final value sale fee that would be paid automatically (we would have our own checkout system.) Apart from the legal thorniness of this, it would get rid of the free form, rambling listings which I really see as part of the advantage of the current system. I find Ebay a PITA to use, besides being expensive.

And unfortunately, relying on people to pay for services out of the goodness of their hearts is only going to work when someone sprinkles fairy dust on Ed Morel.

Hopefully, not a bad surprise, especially for small sellers with a bunch of stuff to sell. The number of threads per page would be greater, so... if you have just one item to sell, and at a low, low, price, you will probably not have to bump. If you want to command a higher asking price, well, then you'd probably have to consider the the tradeoff between price and associated costs. If you have a bunch of stuff to sell, bumping for a buck ever so often is not going to cut into your profits much. This us unless what you have sucks or is priced too high for the market, in which case, your item will rightfully be relegated to page 100.

I think that there will be a net benefit to both sellers (by allowing them to keep the best items on the first couple of pages, without having to contend with general stupidity and people gaming the rules) and to buyers, who will reap the benefit of sellers being more aware of what a reasonable selling price might be, rather than starting with a high price, and bringing it down only very gradually.