Classifieds?

[Tom Westbrook]

No, classifieds are not allowed. See the posting guidelines:

http://largeformatphotography.info/l...lp.html#guidel

It just results in dated material cluttering up what's intended to be an place for more enduring info.

[David A. Goldfarb]

Here's another idea--How about just devoting a few threads to classifieds? Rather than having a new thread for each item for sale or want-to-buy or commercial workshop announcement, we could have one "For Sale" thread, one "Want to Buy" thread, and one "Workshop Announcements" thread, so they wouldn't clutter up the board, and yet would be easy to find and would require no new programming.

Perhaps there might be a note about this on the "Ask a New Question" page with links to the three or however many threads to be devoted to classifieds.

[QT Luong]

David, your idea addresses cluttering of the board, but those threads would still need maintainance. The problem is that the maintainance has to be done by the users, since only they know whether the item has already sold, and currently the software has no provision for that. That's what I meant by need for new software features. I recognize that the case of workshop announcements might be different, since those have a set date.

[David A. Goldfarb]

Fair enough. Is it possible to time limit posts, so that old posts in a thread would expire after six months, say, and then if the items were still unsold the poster could repost? I'm not that enthusiastic myself about having classifieds on the list, but I'm not too bothered by them either, if they can be contained.

[Mark Muse]

I like the idea of having them "expire", can the software handle that as an automatic action without deleting other types of posts that have expired? I think 6 months is far too long though. I think more like 1 month. It can always be reposted by the owner if it is still for sale or wanted.

[Christopher Condit]

Who amongst us looking to buy or sell, potentially here, would not also check out eBay? What is the advantage in having to look in two places? Ebay does their job just fine, and the high volume is the best guarantee to everyone of fair prices. Let's leave the job to them.

CXC

[Sal Santamaura]

Ditto Christopher Condit.

[Kirk Gittings]

Ron, This belongs in the For/Sale WTB section

[Kevin J. Kolosky]

Although I accept it because I have to, I think that the rule barring people from asking for offers on their for sale items is ridiculous. I think that because based on my experience almost 100% of the time when I have posted an article for sale both here and on many other sites I get numerous "offers" by personal mail, or PM, or whatever you want to call it. Why hide what is actually going on with a rule? Why hide the truth. To look good? To allow moderators to exercise some power by deleting a post?
The so called rules here state that people use the classified at their own risk. There should be no interference in private commerce between people that want to buy and people that want to sell.

[Darin Boville]

The so called rules here state that people use the classified at their own risk. There should be no interference in private commerce between people that want to buy and people that want to sell.

The rule is a good one--keeps things a little more honest and wastes a little less time. If you are looking for a free market system you'd better buy an economic textbook--that's the only place they exist.

btw, reading this thread from LFF's earlier days was fun.

--Darin