Oh yes - Set my people Free! Read First - Long

Vexorg

This is a bit of a long post but worth reading I hope

This is your opportunity to shape a little part of boards.ie maybe.

Its frustrating trying to apply the rules in the for sale forum when you constantly have wave after wave of newbie, who have no idea of the culture here complain about the forum rules.

However it’s not only the newbie whiners that have gotten me thinking, I know that many of more established appreciate some parts of the rules and not others. So maybe we can make it easier or more acceptable to enforce the rules and have a greater understanding of where the rules came from. I mean they are not just there for the good of the mods health,

some are common sense - eg nothing illegal,

some are as a result of member requests for tighter moderation from posters to stop thread spoilers, you know they guy who posts - "you're mad of you think you can get that much for it"!

Some are a mix of things, One active thread per member... A) it means more items on every page, some monkey doesn’t post 5 threads to sell his mobo, cpu, hsf, case and modem b) means the mods only have to read and follow the one thread.

and so on....

Anyhow, like in any fine borgism, benevolent dictatorship, DeVorement, Vexorganism, Regicide, Cloudism, Ecksorism, u sukism... whatever you want to call it; gets to a point where we should be able to stand back and say that stands up to scrutiny, or what I prefer, is that the rules makes sense.

However what makes sense today, can grow old and stale pretty quickly on the "intarweb". I also feel that as the core base of members matures, it also looks for more stability in what it sees on boards.

So this is your opportunity to shape a little part of Boards.ie. If it’s a success who is to say that it wont be spread to other forums and even to the fabled boards constitution.

SO over the next six months or so I think we should start a discussion about rules that people want .. and not about the unwanted rules.. I must stress that. If we start by attacking the simple rules that people don’t want to see we get off on the wrong foot.

The basis for the rules can be the existing rules or any rules you feel like, the mods of course will have a say in certain rules. Initially they can veto or add up to 50% rounded up + 1 of the rules, the next vote 33% rounded up +1 and finally 15% of the vote +1. The reason for this is they are the primary source of moderation of the forums, they invest more time than anyone else, have more experience and deserve the respect to be best able to use their discretion.

In order to vote you must be an established member of the forums, so you will have been a member of the forum for 12 months and have 100 posts, the reason for this thinking is at this point you will have a good idea how the forums are run, and will be less likely to have a knee jerk reaction to any existing rule and will have some ideas on new or replacement rules that will suit the community as a whole. If you have less 12 months or more active membership and have less than 100 posts and feel that you can make a worthwhile contribution, please contact me directly and let me know why your opinion or thoughts should be included.

I am pretty clear on the 12 months membership as it will stop people registering fake names, and the 100 posts will cramp the style of many would be alias' not all but most. So the question is 100 posts enough should this number be greater 250 or 500 even.

So what we need to start is a frame work around which we can build this charter for the people.

A set of rules you would like to protect both the buyer and seller, in so far as that is possible.

A set of criteria to allow people to vote length of membership and number of posts, so with some experience of the forums and have made a contribution and also must reduce the risk of people creating alias's just to vote.

So new forum in Admin, called the peoples front - fight the power looking for thoughts on

- how to run this properly, anyone out there good at doing up policy papers or documents?
- what members can vote, minimum number of votes (1000 maybe or more?)
- frequency of rules changes, first peoples rules in 6 months, first change 6 months later and 12 months there after?
- What rules would you like to see.


Some piss-taking allowed, verbal abuse only permitted by the mod, Too much piss taking is a banable offence. I like to ban.

So let’s give it 2 weeks of thought to see if there is enough interest and see where that brings us. If it’s not going anywhere it gets shut down, if its gathering momentum well let it run for longer.

Kramer

So here we go

OK, I honestly think this is all getting a little out of hand.

What have we got? A free for "sale forum" within Boards. Not many rules IMO, basically common sense....no illegal stuff, one thread at a time, only on thread dealing for transparency etc....

They all make sense & are for the benefit of both buyer & seller. They're certainly not for the benefit of Boards or admin/mods - all they do is create work - unpaid & sometimes unappreciated

So some peeps get banned for deliberately or inadvertently breaking the rules - so what? If it takes a ban(s) to get the message across, so be it - they'll learn eventually.

As if being banned from a free public forum (more precisely, a tiny subsection thereof) for breaking the rules is a major life incident - come on, everyone can live without access to FS for a week now can't they??

I bet when they come back they'll either not re-offend (or at least be discrete about it ).

Most of the stuff sold is low(ish) in value - <€100 mostly - not like peeps are sending thousands to unknowns with gear for sale (if they are, more fools them).

I think the FS forum is OK as it is (geees, enough of the Eminem tickets please ).

Less work is required by (unpaid) forum admin & mods. Should be no work at all IMO if everyone played the game & respected what they have - access to a pretty comprehensive resource - Boards.

So the odd newbie throws a fit & slags a mod - ignore 'em or ban 'em if they persist. The last thing a mod needs to do is justify themselves.

Let common sense prevail - less work for all involved & a decent level of protection for the users of the for sale forum.

Some got great mileage from the recent thread - this should not happen again IMO. It just encourages more of the same. If a mod bans someone - that should be it. You broke the rules & got banned - tough. Mods/admins decision is final & if you persist you'll be permanently banned. That's the line I'd take (can I be a mod, can I? Please? Promise I'll vigorously enforce this policy..... anything for me to kill Vex? :ninja: ).

Other options are either to scrap the FS forum or open it up without rules - free for all. I'm sure either option would result in plenty asking for it back - rules 'n' all.

You obviously know this will attract all manner of poster (me for example :cool: ) & hopefully will result in a few good ideas, but IMO it's unnecessary - fine as it is - just another few weeks required before everyone will learn to obey the rules - then bobs yer uncle, kate's yer aunt.

Will try for bed again now..............probably find I've written this in my sleep tomorrow.

My €0.02.

daveg

I would love to see 2 additions to the for sale forum.

1/ A rating for sellers/buyers - May be difficult to setup.

2/ A name and shame section for sellers/buyers who fúck people over.

Perhaps 1 & 2 are pretty much the same thing.

hussey

I think the mods could be a bit less harsh on certain rules.

some of teh rules are great (as in teh new guidline price etc.)

But some of them seem to tight.

E.g. No Multiple threads

if things are of completly different nature (but in fairness most of goods sold are computer equipment) then they should be allowed.

e.g. if someone is selling tickets and a CPU, it probably be best to have them seperate

No Thread spoiling...
Are we allowed say "I can get X from y.com for €Z" if we seriously intend to buy the item?

Also not everyone reads the rules, no matter how much you see
"READ THIS RULES OR YOU WILL BE BANNED" .. I mean how many e-mail have people got with headings "READ THIS .. BLAH" and it turns out to be spam etc.

how about a 3 strike rule? or something similar?

irishgeo

How about using the function in boards where each post has to be approved by a mod before it gets posted to the For Sale Board.

bombidol

My biggest problem with the board is the combined thread issue. I was selling a vocal effects unit and a dreamcast and they were combined into one thread without my knowledge. The title read vocal effects unit, and about half way down the thread there was a post about a dreamcast.
If i was selling some computer gear or even a few musical bits and bobs id usually have them in one thread anyway. but objects of an even remotely different nature should have different threads.
If i was selling a distortion pedal and a DVD, what would the thread title be? "Stuff for sale" ? thats not goin to catch anyones eye thats after a distortion pedal or a dvd title.
All the other rules seems to be ok though

patch

The problem I have, and bearing in mind I've bought and sold a fair bit in my time here, is where people agree to sell me something, then don't bother to follow through.

If I agree a price with somebody, I at least expect to sent a follow-up PM to say 'feck off, I've decided to not bother dealing with you'.

Perhaps a rule could be put in place where you HAVE to get back to the other person within a week, at risk of a name and shame if not complying.

daveg

Also I think those folks who are selling phones (or other items) all the time should be given a bit more slack. Perphaps some of them work in phone shops and "could" be classified as dealers. At the end of the day if the good folks on boards are getting a good deal what's the harm? So long as it's not taken too far.

BKtje

Very quickly.

1)No multiple threads is a bit of a pain and i can see why it should be gotten rid off for the reasons posted above imo.

2)A rating system of some kinda would be great.
It would give people some kind of idea about what they are dealing with, tho im not sure if all the extra coding is worth the hastle. Guess it depends on how popular the idea is.

Maybe create a checkbox so that once a deal is completed a little icon appears beside the thread to show that the deals within are completed.
Once the checkbox is set, the seller specifies who he sold the item(s) too and then each are asked for a rating.

Buyer gets how easy it was to sell the stuff to, kept their word etc etc (probably need to be filled out after deal is completed)
Seller gets the same but in relation to the buyer.

This can then perhaps be shown under post counts on the for sale forum stating their buyers/sellers rating and amount of deals done for each.
Perhaps somewhere where people cans ee what was bought/sold as well? Simple database thingy would suffice.

Not sure how much work that would be tho.

Blade

but objects of an even remotely different nature should have different threads

The rule was just put there originally to keep the board tidy and to allow us to be better able to spot commercial traders. I agree items of a completely different nature should be on different threads but otherwise sellers should still use one thread for similar items like all PC components in one thread etc.

Are we allowed say "I can get X from y.com for €Z" if we seriously intend to buy the item?

This rule was only put there to stop people making unfair comparisons like ' you can get this cheaper if you buy it from Singapore and claim the VAT back through your daddy's company ' or the one I'm sure you're all familiar with by now of comparing prepaid phones to billed phones etc.

If your comparisons are fair however then you are perfectly entitled to comment, especially if you're the one interested in it and you need to haggle. Non interested parties are also allowed to comment if the asking price is way OTT and the seller appears to be a total chancer. However that doesn't mean they can jump down everyone's throat whos asking price is a tenner more than komplett's. Anyone being totally unfair and spoiling someone's thread like this will be either warned or banned depending on the comment and it's intent.

As regards any new idea that involves coding, I think they'd be best pust aside for now because I think Devore and the lads are thinking of a whole new idea for the for sale area. Rating systems etc. have all been discussed already. Best check with them if they are willing to made any code changes first before throwing any more ideas at them. They may just want to change the whole thing.

davej

2)A rating system of some kinda would be great.
It would give people some kind of idea about what they are dealing with, tho im not sure if all the extra coding is worth the hastle. Guess it depends on how popular the idea is.

Ok I'm of the opinion that things should be either really simple or really complicated. This might sound like an oxymoronic sentence but either you have a simple set of straight forward rules and leave it at that or you build a fully fledged ebay-like system. The middle ground will just end up being a horrible messy quagmire with too many rules to follow and disputes every other day.

The simple fact of the matter is that if you are attempting to create a proper model for buying and selling goods online, using a system, namely VBB, that doesn't support it - it won't work. Maybe in the long term this might be a project worth looking into, but right now it is not possible to do it.

The mentality of "let's add more rules to fix the problem" won't work without a system to enforce those rules. Human intervention will be patchy and inconsistent no matter how hard a mod tries.

Unless of course they are simple and unambigious.

I would suggest a maximum of 7 simple rules (of course with some sub-detail). This is about as many ideas people can hold in their heads at once anyway.
It also means you can have a slogan such as "Remember the 7 Commandments" at the top of the forum. You need something like this, a catch phrase, so people will always have this in the back of their heads when posting.

Laying down rules that simply cannot be enforced seems a little odd to me. Also imho it seems to go against the spirit of Boards, which is so good at cutting through the bullshít in many areas.

davej

Blade

Dave yes I think there will be some basic commandments probably as sticky's, I've been thinking about that for a while now. See what the others say.

shepthedog

Obviously the for sale/wanted section etc is very popular and trading is not allowed. To save all the hassle, allow ppl with small business to pay a fee say €50 or 100 a year for the right to put their stuff on a for sale board and have like a little online store for them. Keep the trading rules the same. Many ppl with a small business in addition to their day job are not making huge profits and cannot afford to take a board like Elara etc.

Why not encourage business and entrepreneurship not hinder it like the Govt.

RicardoSmith

Is anything requiring a code change likely to happen? Probably not I reckon.

Anything that requires the mod to do something is unlikely to happen since the primary objective is to have the mods to do less not more work.

If you have multiple items post it under a tile of "Misc Knickers" or something. Far more likely to get interest than "my old socks" etc. The title no longer is accurate for multiple items so why not get creative?

Personally I think its dumb not to give some feedback to someone who has been banned or had their thread modified by the mods. Any system that involves user interaction has some form of user feedback in it. Just to ignore them is stupid IMO.

Theres only two choices. Prevent users from doing stuff against the rules so it requires as little as possible monitoring. Or allow them to do wrong stuff and then correct/discipline them. Which obviously creates work. You can't have it both ways.

Theres a ton of forums like this on the web. Why don't people just suggest the good ideas they've seen on other sites. For example the user ratings/trust system at hexus.co.uk which overclockers.co.uk refined further in their own forums. You could require users to post a link to their trust account.

Keeks

COmmercial Selling: I don't see why anybody should profit using boards and let boards.ie get nothing. I don't know what Elara or Komplett pay boards for the privillega of a board, but it isn't that much. I don't even know if other companies have even inquired. The problem we have is that it is actually illegal for a company to seel anythin without discloing that it is a companying selling it.

As for the multiple threads. I don't really see what the prolem is. There are several threads on the boards at the moment that have a LOT of items for sell, yet those users aren't complaing. So what if the two (or thre or four) items u have are completly differnet. Having all in one thread leaves it more managable. You can see at a glance what is what. What really need to happen is people nee to make their post more clearer.

Blade

Originally posted by shepthedog
Obviously the for sale/wanted section etc is very popular and trading is not allowed. To save all the hassle, allow ppl with small business to pay a fee say €50 or 100 a year for the right to put their stuff on a for sale board and have like a little online store for them. Keep the trading rules the same. Many ppl with a small business in addition to their day job are not making huge profits and cannot afford to take a board like Elara etc.

Why not encourage business and entrepreneurship not hinder it like the Govt.

This has already been discussed with the admins:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=87507&highlight=small+traders
I don't think it's going to happen unless it can be fully automated which will require a lot of work to set up.

Blade

Just been thinking. If it's possible with the current code (or a slight mod) to have a board where only a mod or selected people can start a thread but where anyone can post a reply, then there would be a very simple way to accommodate small traders. Prison board works like this no?

They send a cheque/postal order to boards and they are either made a mod of the board or given access to start threads on it. I realise that making a trader a mod has been a touchy subject in the past (re:komplett) but if that's the only way it can be done I still think it's worth doing it. They could be under strict rules not to edit anyones post but to instead report it to a mod or admin who will decide what action to take. They are unlikely to break the rules (you can see who edits a post).

Also there would be no need for regular mods like us to even check the board as the only threads will be from traders who have paid up and they will be responsible for reporting any muppetry to us. It's in their own interest to keep their threads clean anyway.

They would have to pay up for at least 6 months I think. Any less would create far too much work for boards.

Just a thought, it's up to the lads though if they think it's worth their while.

BTW: Vex is away till Wed.

seamus

Originally posted by shepthedog
Obviously the for sale/wanted section etc is very popular and trading is not allowed. To save all the hassle, allow ppl with small business to pay a fee say €50 or 100 a year for the right to put their stuff on a for sale board and have like a little online store for them. Keep the trading rules the same. Many ppl with a small business in addition to their day job are not making huge profits and cannot afford to take a board like Elara etc.

Why not encourage business and entrepreneurship not hinder it like the Govt.

I think Keeks has pretty much answered this. €50 or €100 a year would be pittance for any company. And it would clog up the For Sale board.
IIRC, commercial interaction boards cost very little, certainly well within the reach of any serious entrepreneur. To have loads of "trotter's independent traders" style chancers posting up their latest cheap bulk offers on the For Sale board would alienate the current user base, and cause more hassle for mods.
That kind of thing may exist on Buy and Sell and other such free classifieds (and even then they're still highly annoying), but boards.ie is both interactive and instant, which would make such a system annoying, and probably clog up the boards to the point on unviability.

(Have I used the words 'annoying' and 'clog' enough? )

Blade

I was talking about a whole different board for them, they wouldn't be clogging up the for sale.

Vexorg

Thanks for taking the time to reply to this thread.

There is clearly not enough interest in having a say to sustain having this forum open any longer.


The rules will therefore continue as they are for the time being , until the revolution that is.....

I have to say, I expected little or no response, but a big thanks to those who did take the time to reply.


Thread closed


Vex.