21 replies to this topic

[Sinner]

After much thought and debate we've decided to clamp down on regular posters in the Buy, Sell, Trade and Finds forum. It seems to me that some members have joined EB to just sell there and avoid EBay fees, as opposed to what I've always seen as the purpose of the forum, which is a place for members to sell to people they trust, to discuss with the same people deals and news... Thus from now on no member will be allowed to sell or try to buy in the BSTF forum regularly.

Way harsh? Yeah it is, but don't worry there's a silver lining to this rule.  

A new subforum has been created, called The Bazaar. (EBay was taken.) In there we're going to have a more relaxed area where buyers and sellers can go responsibly wild... if that makes any sense. Let me explain;

Buy, Sell, Trade and Finds new rules

• LEGO only, 100 posts to create topics and new joiners can't post.
  
• Topics about general selling belong here. That is, topics like regional availability and sales.
  
• Occasional sales topics are allowed. The general rule is once a year. The idea here is you should restrict it to incredible offers; such as an Airport Monorail.
  
• Bumping sales topics is 100% banned. That is if no one posts in you aren't allowed to "reply".
  
• You are allowed to talk about the BSTF forum.

The Bazaar rules

• Same base rules; LEGO only, 100 posts to create topics and new joiners can't post.
  
• The old rule of sales bumping is relaxed. Bumping is still discouraged, but responsible bumping is now allowed.
  
• The quasi rule of too many topics is relaxed. Be responsible.
  
• This is an AFOL forum. You should understand what responsible posting is.
  
• No posts are counted in the forum. You will never be promoted again if all you do is post in The Bazaar.
  
• No topics in the forum will appear in Active Topics or New Posts.

Anyone who breaks the rules of the BSTF forum will have all their recent sales topics moved to The Bazaar and repeat offenders will be banned from selling on EB... or worse.

Overall, the intention of this change is to make everyone happy. The rules as they were didn't make much sense and I generally felt stupid "enforcing" them; to avoid bumping members create multiple topics, which is probably worse. Thus we end up nagging members which nobody likes. This way it's a lot freer, yet there still is the capacity to use EB to make that once-in-a-lifetime sale and get good exposure. Now if people want to look for sales they can, and if they don't they aren't bothered by them. Everybody is happy....?  

This is an experiment. If it all goes bad it'll be "undone", but I'm hopefull that it'll go well. Please feel free to share any thoughts on this change.


N.B. The rules in the topic were correct at the time of posting. I won't be maintaining this topic long term. Anyone who quotes these rules later on will be showered with defective M%g! Bl@ks.

[Buckshot]

Sounds like a lot of extra work for you guys (the admins), but as someone who checks the BSTF forum daily, I thank you.

[Darkdragon]

The new subforum sounds like perfect solution for this issue. Having posts not count toward ranks is brilliant and not showing up on "new posts" link is going to be great too.

[Big Cam]

darkdragon, on 14 August 2012 - 05:42 PM, said:

The new subforum sounds like perfect solution for this issue. Having posts not count toward ranks is brilliant and not showing up on "new posts" link is going to be great too.

Agreed.

Good work Sinner!

[purpleparadox]

darkdragon, on 14 August 2012 - 05:42 PM, said:

The new subforum sounds like perfect solution for this issue. Having posts not count toward ranks is brilliant and not showing up on "new posts" link is going to be great too.

Absolutely. It'll help clean up the BSTF forum. Thanks Sinner!

[I Scream Clone]

You rock Sinner

[Shadows]

Great job, Sinner!

Buckshot, on 14 August 2012 - 05:41 PM, said:

Sounds like a lot of extra work for you guys (the admins)

What? We might have to rethink this idea!

darkdragon, on 14 August 2012 - 05:42 PM, said:

Having posts not count toward ranks is brilliant

Thanks, that one was mine!

[Darkdragon]

Shadows, on 15 August 2012 - 12:26 AM, said:

Thanks, that one was mine!

Hmm. I might have to rethink my opinion.  

[Ferrik]

The Bazaar seems like an interesting alternative to the Buy, Trade and Sell forum. I just might take a peek.

[fred67]

So... I had a sale topic that I eventually just removed everything a few days ago.

I recreated a new sales thread in the Bazaar (some same, many other new items).  I don't know why I put it there; I guess because I bumped my last thread (although I doubt it could be considered abusive in context), and figured I might bump it some day (*).

My problem is that I think a lot of casual EB users won't bother looking, but might very well be interested if they see something interesting.  It would be cool if the initial post was shown in New Posts, but not Active Posts, and replies wouldn't put it back in New Posts (although I realize what a pain that would be to program, being a programmer and all).

So now I don't know if I should post in Bazaar or BSTF - I don't intend to bump my threads abusively, and this is the first new thread I've made in a year.

(*) I do think it's fair to bump if you add items or change prices as long as it doesn't happen that often... I mean, I could see someone bumping their thread by changing the price of one item by $0.01 every hour - I would never do that.  I'm talking about like a week after the first post when I drop prices or add items.

I see you moved a ton of threads to the Bazaar... were these threads or users you considered, for lack of a better word, abusive?

[Sinner]

fred67, on 16 August 2012 - 02:20 AM, said:

So... I had a sale topic that I eventually just removed everything a few days ago.

I recreated a new sales thread in the Bazaar (some same, many other new items).  I don't know why I put it there; I guess because I bumped my last thread (although I doubt it could be considered abusive in context), and figured I might bump it some day (*).

My problem is that I think a lot of casual EB users won't bother looking, but might very well be interested if they see something interesting.  It would be cool if the initial post was shown in New Posts, but not Active Posts, and replies wouldn't put it back in New Posts (although I realize what a pain that would be to program, being a programmer and all).

So now I don't know if I should post in Bazaar or BSTF - I don't intend to bump my threads abusively, and this is the first new thread I've made in a year.

(*) I do think it's fair to bump if you add items or change prices as long as it doesn't happen that often... I mean, I could see someone bumping their thread by changing the price of one item by $0.01 every hour - I would never do that.  I'm talking about like a week after the first post when I drop prices or add items.

I see you moved a ton of threads to the Bazaar... were these threads or users you considered, for lack of a better word, abusive?

Good post and fair questions! I'll try to answer them all.

1. You have three active sales topics. I can merge them all and put them in the BSTF if you want.

2. Yes, it's a problem that members won't see these sales if they are not looking for them... but honestly we don't really want EB to become a sales forum. We have too much work keeping the current volume under control. So if this discourages people from posting every bit of LEGO they sell then that's a price we can accept. However it hasn't been fair to the long term members who want to sell something amazing yet their topic is bumped down by the people who sell every week. I think with the Bazaar people who are looking for a deal will find it and due to less staff nagging needed people should be happier. Do remember that many people who sell are really targeting only a small section of the EB population due to postage costs so selling here isn't really that efficient anyway. (Maybe I need multiple Bazaars; one for each major area.... Hmmmmm....)

3. Yeah I agree that bumping has a purpose. That's why responsible bumping is allowed in the Bazaar. Do note that if the BSTF forum is less active there will be no need to bump....

4. I moved topics that were created by people who had made more than one in the last few months. Some were abusive, some were not.

[Shadows]

darkdragon, on 15 August 2012 - 12:40 AM, said:

Hmm. I might have to rethink my opinion.  

There's a scum position if I ever heard one ...

[Darkdragon]

Shadows, on 18 August 2012 - 02:59 AM, said:

There's a scum position if I ever heard one ...

Hey! I didn't hear a rule saying you could play in other threads. Plus roles aren't out yet, scummy.  

Sinner, on 18 August 2012 - 02:44 AM, said:

(Maybe I need multiple Bazaars; one for each major area.... Hmmmmm....)

I don't think that would be necessary. Could just askk people to put location in the title or subtitle of the post. That's how most forums I've been on deal with it. Otherwise it's the neverending subforums.

[Shadows]

darkdragon, on 18 August 2012 - 03:07 AM, said:

Hey! I didn't hear a rule saying you could play in other threads. Plus roles aren't out yet, scummy.  

Rules aren't for allowing things, they're for disallowing things. You'd know that if you were town.

[fred67]

Sinner, on 18 August 2012 - 02:44 AM, said:

Good post and fair questions! I'll try to answer them all.

1. You have three active sales topics. I can merge them all and put them in the BSTF if you want.

2. Yes, it's a problem that members won't see these sales if they are not looking for them... but honestly we don't really want EB to become a sales forum. We have too much work keeping the current volume under control. So if this discourages people from posting every bit of LEGO they sell then that's a price we can accept. However it hasn't been fair to the long term members who want to sell something amazing yet their topic is bumped down by the people who sell every week. I think with the Bazaar people who are looking for a deal will find it and due to less staff nagging needed people should be happier. Do remember that many people who sell are really targeting only a small section of the EB population due to postage costs so selling here isn't really that efficient anyway. (Maybe I need multiple Bazaars; one for each major area.... Hmmmmm....)

3. Yeah I agree that bumping has a purpose. That's why responsible bumping is allowed in the Bazaar. Do note that if the BSTF forum is less active there will be no need to bump....

4. I moved topics that were created by people who had made more than one in the last few months. Some were abusive, some were not.

Thanks for the answers...

For 1: I think my sales thread doesn't violate BSTF, so I emptied out my bazaar thread (wouldn't want duplicates in both forums) and created a new one in BSTF... I will not bump it.  As far as I'm concerned, you can close any of my others.  I only do this maybe once a year anyway, so I think BSTF is better.

For 2: Completely understood... FWIW, when visit I always just use "view new content," as my interests are so varied it's just easier that way, and the sales threads never really bothered me; I usually not looking to buy things from people here, so I liked seeing the occasional thread where a member was selling stuff I might be able to get for a good price, but I understand that people do abuse privileges.  So... it bothers me I'll have to proactively seek bargains out if the topic doesn't fit in BSTF, but I completely understand, too.

I hope it's not annoying that I recreated my thread in BSTF.  It's my once a year thing and I won't bump it, and I'd only make a new topic if I really had something interesting to sell.

[Sinner]

fred67, on 18 August 2012 - 03:14 AM, said:

I hope it's not annoying that I recreated my thread in BSTF.  It's my once a year thing and I won't bump it, and I'd only make a new topic if I really had something interesting to sell.

Not annoying, just confusing; I had already thrown it into the Bazaar!   But I just put it back.

[purpleparadox]

Sinner, on 18 August 2012 - 02:44 AM, said:

(Maybe I need multiple Bazaars; one for each major area.... Hmmmmm....)

Do you mean a Bazaar for Licensed, Star Wars, Historic, etc? I really like that idea! It'd be neat to just browse through certain "categories".

[Sinner]

purpleparadox, on 18 August 2012 - 04:21 AM, said:

Do you mean a Bazaar for Licensed, Star Wars, Historic, etc? I really like that idea! It'd be neat to just browse through certain "categories".

Well that isn't a bad idea, but what I more meant was localities. Most people sell from a specific location only, for example the USA, and postage makes the purchases difficult.

[Ignited_Impulse]

So, any way I could get around needing 100 posts to be able to start a new topic in the Bazaar? Haven't been active around here for a long time due to the fact I haven't really been in to Lego lately. That being said I'm looking to sell off most, if not all, of my (small) collection and vanish in to dark age obscurity. Figured I'd see if anyone was interested on Eurobricks before throwing them up on eBay. Done a few sales and trades before on here if that means anything.

[RaincloudDustbin]

Yeah I'd definitely be interested.   Obviously depending on what you have.

[I Scream Clone]

You now have permission to post in the Bazaar, use it wisely.

[Ignited_Impulse]

Thanks!