If you buy into the whole “the classifieds were out of control” arguement maybe. But most of us didn’t see a big problem with how they were being run.
From what I saw it all started when a certain sponsor cried that people would compare his for sale item to some ebay knockoffs saying they could get his item cheaper. Boo fucking hoo. If your item really is better than the ebay knockoff you are welcome to respond saying that in the thread, as will most of the members here. If it’s not any better than the cheaper alternative on ebay the forum members should let others know. Like I said when this first came up; a community forum is not a form of one way advertising like TV, Radio, or print. When you post something here you should expect discussion. Really want to protect your sponsors? Give them a classifieds section where only they can post. I think this was done, but this was the start of certain mods feeling classifieds were out of control.
Then the other “big problem” was people posting crap in FS threads. This fell into a few categories:
- Tire kickers with no money saying “I wish I could afford it”.
- Lowballers
- Drama starters
- Off topic posters
The first 3 take care of themselves. I welcome tire kickers in any FS thread I have. The more people saying, “I wish I could afford it” the better my item looks and the longer it stays on the new posts link without me wasting a bump. Lowballers get bashed by the community pretty quick, so that’s several free bumps that it takes me 2 seconds to skim past and reply to the lowball with a simple “no thanks”.
Drama starters is a little more interesting, and a real plus for the idea of a community based classifieds system IMO. Take my recent BMW FS post. If some flamer came in and said, “that car is an underpower POS and will constantly break down” just trying to start shit, what would have happened other than Rubicant’s panties getting bunched? I’m willing to bet at least of a page of knowledgable people like ColdAccord and MPD posting the virtues of BMW’s. Now what if it was MPD that said the car was a POS? Well, if he did that it probably is a POS and it protects the members of the community from being scammed. It’s hard for a seller to rip an NYSpeed community member off when we’re allowed to police our own classifieds.
So finally you have the off topic posters. It’s a very small percentage. Maybe instead of punishing the 90% of the users that think this new system is a horrible idea you punish the <1% who consistantly go off topic in classifieds. Hit them with a week ban, followed by a 6 month ban, followed by a permaban. Not sure if vbulletin allows it, but maybe just permaban their rights to the classifieds section.