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Thread: "For Sale" Forum available for new members

  1. #21
    8x10, 5x7, 4x5, et al Leigh's Avatar
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    Re: "For Sale" Forum available for new members

    Quote Originally Posted by Lachlan 717 View Post
    Perhaps we could also petition eBay to start up a LF forum on their site?
    What would be the value or benefit of a zero-accuracy LF forum?

    - Leigh
    If you believe you can, or you believe you can't... you're right.

  2. #22

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    Re: "For Sale" Forum available for new members

    Quote Originally Posted by Ken Lee View Post
    This is a forum for discussion and image sharing which happens to have a "For Sale" section, not the other way around.

    I for one wish we could limit the frequency with which people "bump" their For Sale posts - there's already too much clutter from bumps - but it might create work for administrators.
    I'll agree with that. And the supposed rule about the For Sale not being for dealers isn't adhered to. I've found several that have ONLY posted for sale items, usually in large amounts of listings, every week, for months and years. Often small items, they don't seem to be on the radar like the one or two LF photographers that occasionally (2-5 times a year) sell an expensive lens.

  3. #23
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    Re: "For Sale" Forum available for new members

    All: see the button that says "Usage Guidelines" at the top of your screen? New members can click that, and in fact are required to on joining. Those usage guidelines tell all about the for-sale forum. It's no secret. If a newbie doesn't know about it, then they have only themselves to blame.

    Rick "calling it like he sees it" Denney

  4. #24
    Guilherme Maranhão coisasdavida's Avatar
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    Re: "For Sale" Forum available for new members

    IMHO the for-sale forum is so useful, good and interesting because it is how it is.

  5. #25

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    Re: "For Sale" Forum available for new members

    If I see a very new member with a relatively high post count wanting to buy or sell, I usually check their profile to take a look at what they've posted. If they're active participants actually engaging in discussion, then I'll feel better about selling or buying from such a member. Post count doesn't mean much if they're just driving it up with simple posts that don't contribute anything to the conversation. ymmv
    notch codes ? I only use one film...

  6. #26

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    Re: "For Sale" Forum available for new members

    My post count was 39 when I started this response, so maybe I shouldn't comment at all.

    But imagine if the entire market for LF consumables was only the members of this forum. I don't know how many members there are, but I think you'd be lucky to have 1 film from 1 manufacturer in 1 size. That's my clumsy way of saying that it's in our best interest to encourage new LF users. The most important way to do that is to give them access to the knowledge and experience on this forum - which they have (and it's helped me). Second is to give them access to the tools they need to get started.

    So I would suggest that allowing new members to see For Sale ads (and respond to them) is in our best interest. Tightening posting rights would be fine (how about a post count of 40 )

  7. #27
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    Re: "For Sale" Forum available for new members

    Quote Originally Posted by HMG View Post
    My post count was 39 when I started this response, so maybe I shouldn't comment at all.

    But imagine if the entire market for LF consumables was only the members of this forum. I don't know how many members there are, but I think you'd be lucky to have 1 film from 1 manufacturer in 1 size. That's my clumsy way of saying that it's in our best interest to encourage new LF users. The most important way to do that is to give them access to the knowledge and experience on this forum - which they have (and it's helped me). Second is to give them access to the tools they need to get started.

    So I would suggest that allowing new members to see For Sale ads (and respond to them) is in our best interest. Tightening posting rights would be fine (how about a post count of 40 )
    As I said, we are sympathetic in principle. But consider the reason that the sale forum exists at all is a service to our regular participants. There are already many avenues for general sales, but we provided this one simply because we had become a community of acquaintances, and that mutual knowledge created an opportunity for mutually beneficial trading.

    It is not a service to drive-by participants. Some people on this forum have a tight orbit--they are posting and reading all the time, never very far from the center. Some are like comets on an elliptical orbit, swinging through at infrequent intervals, but still a known quantity. And some wander in from deep space, gain momentum, and then let themselves sling around the center only to be thrown back out into deep space looking for the next star. The sales forum is for those who have established a regular orbit, not for random deep-space objects, however well-intentioned. Again, there are many other avenues to feed their acquisitions. Yes, it is intended to be exclusionary, but it is not intented to be a hazing ritual.

    Consider also this: A new person to large format is in a discovery stage. They can immediately buy stuff and learn the hard way what they need for their approach to photography, or even whether large format is for them at all, or they can spend a little time reading and thinking and make a better choice. Some people (including me) see every new activity as an opportunity to jump in with both feet and credit card at the ready, but really that is a bad strategy for large-format work. By the time a person has joined, read all the articles on the home page, gotten used to the Usage Guidelines, and had a chance to get suitable responses to a "what should I buy?" thread, a month will have gone by and they can start shopping. They will make far better choices because of that extra breathing space, and might even avoid a big early mistake that drives them out of large-format work before they've had a chance to really explore it.

    And from the perspective of regular participants who sell things, a buyer inexperienced in large format has perhaps expectations that are not realistic. They get a lightweight field camera because they "may hike with it someday", and struggle with the controls. They blame the camera and its seller, rather than realizing they made a choice inappropriate to their needs. Or, they buy the first vintage Calumet beast they can get for a C-note, discover that it won't fit in their backpack or the hatch space of their Fiat 500, and they blame the seller for not disclosing the bulk and weight of the camera. These are common outcomes, but they undermine the service the sales forum provides to regular participants, who would prefer the buyers to have had at least a little opportunity to read about and discuss what they need before buying it.

    Again, the purpose of the sales forum is not to ease the entry of newbies into large-format work by making good deals available to them immediately. The purpose of the sales forum is to provide a service to regular participants.

    Some will see that as condescending and decide to be offended by it. But, believe me, there are just as many and maybe many more who would rather the for-sale forum be removed altogether, and have expressed that opinion every bit as vigorously as any in this thread at many times in the past. What we have is a time-tested balance that requires, in the grand scheme of things, a tiny amount of patience to help filter out those who drive by and disrupt the forum (maybe even unintentionally). If a month is really that important, then there's KEH and many others who can scratch the immediate itch, with better warranties and often prices that are better than what might be available from regular participants here on any given day. That hundred-buck Calumet from KEH can be returned (albeit with the impatience penalty of shipping costs) when the buyer discovers that it is solid, dense metal through and through.

    In my own experience, I've never grown as a photorapher because I bought a new camera. I've grown as a photographer and then realized I needed a more powerful or more appropriate tool, which I then explored. One of the first threads I started here was what 4x5 camera would support very short lenses (particularly 47mm) for use with roll-film backs. I was told of several that would support that length, what accessories were needed with them, and what limitations I would face with those choices. I took some of that advice and skipped over other advice. And then I bought the camera from KEH--my fourth large-format view camera in 30+ years. My question was not a beginner question--I already knew my Cambo would not support lenses that short because I'd tried to make it do that. I already knew from experience that I didn't want the weight of a gear-driven view camera, even though that makes it much easier to work with short lenses where movements are smaller and require more precision. I had the experience to know how to strike that balance, but still I thought about it for at least a month after joining this forum before making a purchase (from KEH) of a Sinar F. Were I a newbie to large format in 2009 when I joined, I might have jumped on the first Chamonix 45N2 that came up for sale, because they were described in such reverent tones, and then found myself fighting it with short lenses and fine movements, and not benefitting from its compact size and lightness when my photography rarely ventures more than 100 feet from the car anyway. My experience is not really exceptional here, and regular participants want to sell to people who have had at least some time to become educated buyers.

    While we appreciate and listen to all feedback, and have made many changes to the forum as a result of feedback (even during my tenure as the newest moderator), this one has been discussed several times and there's no will to make a change at this time.

    Rick "let's move on" Denney

  8. #28
    8x10, 5x7, 4x5, et al Leigh's Avatar
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    Re: "For Sale" Forum available for new members

    Good post, Rick, if a tad long.

    People need to understand what they're buying, not just what it is, but how it's used.

    - Leigh
    If you believe you can, or you believe you can't... you're right.

  9. #29
    Moderator Ralph Barker's Avatar
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    Re: "For Sale" Forum available for new members

    We appreciate the comments and opinions on the issue. However, there are good reasons that we block access to both the FS/WTB sub-forum and member profiles for the first 30 days for new members. Those reasons are a bit more complicated than they might appear on the surface, though.

    As has been noted, the primary purpose of this forum is to facilitate discussion of LF topics among the LF community, and to do so within a non-commercial environment. The LFPF is a free resource, run by volunteers on system and network resources that are donated to us. As such, we also have to operate within the confines of the standard features of the vBulletin software we use for the forum.

    The FS/WTB sub-forum, intended for the use of regular forum participants, is the one compromise we make to maintaining the non-commercial environment. For it to work, however, there needs to be a certain level of trust between buyers and sellers. The 30-day wait allows participants to get a sense of a person they might be dealing with through that person's other posts. This is particularly important since the vBulletin software is designed for discussions, not point-of-sale purposes, and doesn't include features that would allow for sales-oriented enforcement or redress mechanisms. Thus, our use of the discussion software for sales purposes among members is, at best, a kludge. This is also the reason that the FS/WTB section must remain as an "at-your-own risk" feature. The risks, however, would be far greater without the 30-day wait period, essentially rendering the FS/WTB feature useless if it were more "open". Buying and selling here is attractive because there are no fees involved. Imagine the volume of questionable or nefarious for-sale posts if the feature was open to anyone who could get past the registration restrictions.

    Also, the access-control features of the software are fairly limited. By creative use of the tiered membership features, we can completely block access to a sub-forum or feature, or grant full access. This all-or-nothing aspect of the software is also why new members don't have access to their own profiles within the first 30 days. Establishing finer-grained controls, however, would generally require custom coding modifications to the software - something we simply don't have the resources to do or maintain. Custom coding often conflicts with updates and bug fixes from vBulletin, so modifications often have to be re-coded when upgrades are installed, further complicating the issue of available "staff" resources.

    So, while the 30-day wait may seem overly-restrictive, or even elitist, to some, it is an essential part of our overall administrative design to keep the forum running reasonably well, given the compromise of allowing any sales at all.

  10. #30
    Moderator Ralph Barker's Avatar
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    Re: "For Sale" Forum available for new members

    Ah-hah. It appears that Rick and I were composing our posts at the same time. The fact that they are consistent is a tribute to Rick's brilliance.

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