Posting on a "For Sale" thread?

[Candy]

I thought that we weren't allowed to post on "For Sale" threads so how did Tom post on this one? I tried to post on it myself to ask this question, but it wouldn't let me. I'm confused.

http://tortoiseforum.org/Thread-Six-Year-Old-SULCATA-For-Sale

 

[Yvonne G]

I was wondering the same thing, Candy.

 

[Tom]

Me too. I saw the reply box on the bottom, so I just gave it a go since my question was directly related to the sale.

I was going to do a post about this anyway. Now that I'm actually trying to sell something, I can see that the 7 day reposting rule and the no comments rule make it really hard on the seller. I posted my South African Leopards for sale at 8:26pm Pacific time and by the next morning it had pretty much dropped off the radar. Since no one can comment or ask questions, it just stayed gone and won't come back until I can repost in a week. This makes it really hard to reach potential customers. It just seems counter-productive to hinder the selling of tortoises to tortoise lovers on a tortoise forum so much.

What I'm trying to say is: I see why we shouldn't have people bumping up their "for sale" threads every five minutes, but it seems like 7 days is an eternity in the internet sales world. Also, I don't understand what the problem was with comments on the for sale threads. Admittedly, I needed a reminder or two about the rules on what to post on that particular section, but that didn't seem such a bad thing. Is it too much work for the mods to police it all day? I just don't remember it being all that much of a problem, but maybe thats just my perception and there really was more of a problem than what I understood.

 

[jackrat]

I have to agree with Tom on this.

 

[Candy]

Maybe Josh can come in and make a comment because Tom brings up something that I never thought about when trying to sell on a thread. If your thread isn't bumped with posts then it would not stay for long would it and that might pose a problem when trying to sell a specific tortoise. Anyway thanks for responding I was just confused because I know that Josh just posted this about two weeks or so ago.

 

[dmmj]

can you bump your own posts?

 

[Az tortoise compound]

+1 for Tom

 

[Tom]

can you bump your own posts?

It is my understanding that we can only repost once every seven days. Also, since the ability to reply has been shut down in the for sale threads, no you can't bump your own post and neither can anyone else.

 

[dmmj]

I am pretty sure the seven day rule is only for reposted ads, like I saw this on craigslist or the adoption ones, also I think people can still post on for sale ads I see the box there all the time, they are just usually removed by mods,

 

[Yvonne G]

I spend a lot of time looking around at the different places on the forum, and one of the places I look at shows a list of EVERYONE who is on the forum at that time...even people who don't belong. It shows that there are "GOOGLE" folks reading the forum, and "Bing" folks, and Baidu and YAHOO. And it also shows what thread each person is reading at that moment. Quite often those folks are reading the "for sale" thread.

So, even though your "for sale" ad doesn't keep coming up when you ask to "view today's posts," folks DO go directly to the "for sale" section and read the ads.

In my opinion, if everyone has read the posts on "view today's posts" then those folks have seen your ad and are not interested in the item. If someone is looking to buy something, he is going to go to "for sale," and not "view today's posts." Those GOOGLE, etc. folks don't have the "view today's posts" option anyway.

So, if someone is interested in buying something, he is going to view the "for sale" ads, and your ad will be there at the top of the list.

 

[DeanS]

I spend a lot of time looking around at the different places on the forum, and one of the places I look at shows a list of EVERYONE who is on the forum at that time...even people who don't belong. It shows that there are "GOOGLE" folks reading the forum, and "Bing" folks, and Baidu and YAHOO. And it also shows what thread each person is reading at that moment. Quite often those folks are reading the "for sale" thread.

So, even though your "for sale" ad doesn't keep coming up when you ask to "view today's posts," folks DO go directly to the "for sale" section and read the ads.

In my opinion, if everyone has read the posts on "view today's posts" then those folks have seen your ad and are not interested in the item. If someone is looking to buy something, he is going to go to "for sale," and not "view today's posts." Those GOOGLE, etc. folks don't have the "view today's posts" option anyway.

So, if someone is interested in buying something, he is going to view the "for sale" ads, and your ad will be there at the top of the list.

This is what I read into it...plus it cuts down on the unscrupulous seller trying to hijack the legitimate seller's thread!

 

[Josh]

Thank you all for the feedback. This stuff is good to hear!
A couple of our veteran members have graciously volunteered to help moderate. With these additions to the moderator team, I'm willing to turn replies back on and see how it works out. All moderators will be given a specific set of instructions on what is not acceptable and they will be directed to issue warnings for repeat offenders.

 

[Candy]

Well I kind of hope Tom is one of those because I don't know how he posted again on a for sale thread but he did it. I tried to post after him and couldn't do it so maybe he has a trick up his sleeve that he can share with the rest of us.

http://tortoiseforum.org/Thread-Geochelone-pardalis-pardalis

 

[Josh]

Tom was able to post a reply because he's part of the developer group and their permissions were (accidentally) not turned off like everyone else. This has been fixed so that all registered members have the exact same permissions.