Effective 3/5/2017: Ad posting limits in Parts & Collectibles

TBH, hadn't considered the case of WTB ads and the possibly lengthy search for rare parts. The problem with rare parts being that you could also be bumping for the next few years, which seems kind of excessive.

I see that you've had 5 exposures of your WTB since 2/22. The original ad, 3 bumps and a forum post under the special user exemption. So at least for the time being, it seems you've had pretty decent exposure for 3 weeks.

So seeing a few or many posts all together doesn't mean that the new rules are being violated. Ad creation is limited to 1 per day. If you see a 0 on the reply count and they are all together, it means that they were all created together. Otherwise, if replies are greater than 0, you have to check the date of posting on post #1 for each thread to see if there is a violation. Also, if there are simultaneous replies by the OP, you have to check the content of the last post to see if it is a gratuitous bump or a substantive post, such as a price reduction.

 

Your situation sounds like what I'm calling a storefront thread. You have one item for sale, but continuously sell it. It seems to me that you have natural opportunities to refresh your thread (not gratuitously bump) due to the ongoing conduct of business. In the case of the multi-item storefront, adding new items of stock, answering questions, taking orders, deleting sold items from stock lists, and repricing stagnant items on stock lists provides an informative series of updates as to what's going on in your store. In the case of the single-item storefront, taking orders and posting fulfillment would also be reasonable opportunities to refresh your thread. Remember, a major reason advertisers were bumping all the time was because everyone else was doing it and an advertiser fell off the first few pages very quickly because of that. With fewer threads and bump restrictions, a moderately active thread should persist for much longer.

Also, the advertisers that are trying to argue for more bandwidth may be missing the fact that the site is trying to balance competing interests throughout the forum, including the users of the site that are interested in few or perhaps even none of the items in the classified ads. Some advertisers may not realize it, but classified ads do leak through into the forums because many users use "Get New Posts" to see what's going on throughout the forum. Those users that do so frequently got blasted with tens of ads at a time for parts & collectibles that drowned out the content threads. The site routinely advises sponsors, despite their ad privileges, not to do advertising blasts because it ruins the browsing experience for a significant portion of users.

 

The advertiser with this "bright" idea would probably find their ban would be the reciprocal of the price change.

 

See:

 

Yes, it would be possible for someone to feed 30 ads into the classifieds, 1 per day, over the course of a month then refresh them all at the same time on the 31'st day. That is an additional reason for the "substantive post" requirement. If they're going to do that they're going to have to work for it (add content) or give something up (reduce price). We'll also be on the lookout for shills.

Users should also remember that these changes are intended to restore the degraded browsing experience of the vast majority of users. The message is "enough is enough". If some advertisers remain intent on "gaming" the system, the moderation will adapt.

I agree. If users title threads "360 interior parts" or "Ferrari Owner's Manuals for most models" or "Ferrari literature and memorabilia", it would be instantly obvious what's in that thread and would draw people in that were interested to check out the items and the uninterested just move on. Users that have to read through 30 thread titles quickly transition to checking the thread starter name and skipping over any thread with that name without even reading the thread title. All it serves to do is to annoy a lot of users.

 

Those aren't the new rules, that was a simple algorithm as to the indicators to check if you wanted to assist a moderator by sending a /!\. It actually took me just 2 minutes to review this morning's main page and delete 1 thread and 2 posts as violations. Longer than it took to compose this post.

The rules advertisers have to observe are:

 

Please read what has been posted before:

 

They're not allowed. But you have to give a moderator time to see to it. Sheesh.