Effective Immediately!!

[shuRe]

what about doing is democratically, rather than paternalistic, and do a vote?

[Ackbar]

I didn't think there was necessarily a problem with the old system. I guess if this is better I won't complain though, but I've always liked the idea about gauging buyer interest before making an offer. It helps to get an idea what the going price is.

[bachus_anonym]

what about doing is democratically, rather than paternalistic, and do a vote?

Not everything has to be up for democratic vote Sometimes, decissions need to be made within Staff members only. We needed to make changes somewhere so we could concentrate our efforts in more sensitive areas. In the eyes of the Staff, For Sale needed to be reformed, therefore decission was made to go ahead with new Rules.
I hope you guys understand. I don't think it's gonna make anyone's life harder. We wouldn't try to make your stay on XS painful. I bet, this is gonna work and make moderating Forums more streamlined as before.

[MUCHO]

Not everything has to be up for democratic vote Sometimes, decissions need to be made within Staff members only. We needed to make changes somewhere so we could concentrate our efforts in more sensitive areas. In the eyes of the Staff, For Sale needed to be reformed, therefore decission was made to go ahead with new Rules.
I hope you guys understand. I don't think it's gonna make anyone's life harder. We wouldn't try to make your stay on XS painful. I bet, this is gonna work and make moderating Forums more streamlined as before.

Its not my forum - if the staff members want to effectively kill this area then they should just kill it. Adopting these new rules is just a slow painful death anyways.

[bachus_anonym]

Adopting these new rules is just a slow painful death anyways.

Why do you think so? I do not share that impression at all. Can you elaborate more than what you said few posts above, please?
Also, you need to understand that we do not really have and never had as much traffic in For Sale section as on e.g. [H], looking at number of threads. Also, some items are a lot more difficult to sell here than anywhere else and some will sell here quicker than anywhere else. It will be OK and i don't think it will be a disaster.

[MUCHO]

Why do you think so? I do not share that impression at all. Can you elaborate more than what you said few posts above, please?

The reason it will kill the area is pretty simple – but unless you understand the mentality of people you may not believe it. Buyers many times are on the fence. Buy – don’t buy – buy – don’t buy. They go back and forth in their head. It is often the commentary of the fellow forum members that will push them over the edge into “buy”. Questions, comments, someone vouching for the seller ect. The opposite is true – less positive commentary or even questions answered will help people stay in the “don’t buy” category. Sellers will find it an ineffective place to sell – and over a period of time less and less will bother posting FS items here, effectively killing the marketplace.

Extremeoverclockers is a perfect example. They too found it too difficult to police the FS section, and adopted the same rules. In a few months, it was effectively a dead marketplace. Before the rule change, it was a thriving marketplace – much more activity than this forum. Bottom line its impossible to sell anything there – so why bother?

I personally would be happy to volunteer to moderate this section if you need someone to help with the workload.

Well 60 heat refs doesn't get you much for "experience", lol. I don't see anything wrong with this new rule, it's certainly worth trying. As to what works well over at [H]..... you have to be kidding, that's one of the worst fs forums for thread crapping and trolling there is. The only thing I would do differently is to make a link to your heatware mandatory for all sellers.

I brought up [H] Forum because they were having difficulty policing the thread crapping. (Bear in mind they have no 100 post rule) About a month ago they adopted a zero tolerance rule, banning for 3 days on the first offence. There has been a 100% change in the amount of threadcrapping. I see that as the perfect solution if this forum is taking up too much time.

Also - I didn't list my 60 heat ref to say - oooh look at my amazing heat reccord. I only used it as a point of reference to point out I have a small idea of what I'm talking about. When you add in my 30+ Ebay and the 30-40 positive transactions that never got feedback you start to see I have bigger idea what I'm talking about. Add in the real world experience - I have been in sales for over 10 years. If there were heatware for my successful transactions for happy customers it would be in the thousands. Currently I manage a retail operation with monthly revenue of over 5 million dealing with with 200+ transactions a month. So you tell me - do I get much credit for "experience"?

Bottom line is - this is going to effectively kill xtremesystems as a marketplace, just as it was gaining momentum.

You heard it here first.