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Remove the 100 post limit on sales threads


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Just a suggestion:

 

I think restricting the sales threads to users with 100 posts was a good idea when the site was at it peaks of new members. 

 

However more recently the forums just aren't as active as they used to be - I expect because facebook is a bit more accessible for those which don't normally fiddle about on bb boards. With talk of facebook restricting sales on guns and related that may change, but I think that, dare I say it, zeroin might have a better system for sales threads. Zeroin also seems to be more active then here - but quality over quantity I guess ;)

 

Case in point this guy: http://arniesairsoft.co.uk/forums/index.php?/topic/212438-is-there-a-forsale-section-here/ has come here to sell. There's no way of knowing whether he might of stayed and contributed to the community after he sold his bits, but you never know. 

 

I suggest that you adopt the zeroin- style of posting up a picture with date time and username. Making it easier to trade will attract more people the site and hopefully contribute more to the forums as well.

 

just my 2p

 

 

 

 

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Not fond of that, I like the 100 posts rule, a million times less likely to be a scammer or an asshat. Never had a bad deal on Arnies but had many on Zin even with their system.   A lot of people co

If someone doesn't want to hang around long enough just because they can't sell anything, I wonder just how valuable the content of their conversations are? Traffic slows down, sure, but wanting voice

Unknown newb buys rif on here, say an AEG.   Pays on time, receives RIF.   Guts said RIF and puts chinese bits back in.   Claims refund by PayPal   PayPal sides with buyer.   Seller is out

Not fond of that, I like the 100 posts rule, a million times less likely to be a scammer or an asshat. Never had a bad deal on Arnies but had many on Zin even with their system.

 

A lot of people come on just to boost stuff they may have nicked, found, broke etc... leave them to sell on Zin and keep the more honest desirable folk on Arnies.

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It was a system we brought in for the obvious reasons. I'm happy to run it however the majority would like it run. Obviously there's issues either way.

 

As has been mentioned there's a million ways people can buy/sell things elsewhere.

 

If we do remove the block then we'd have to have some pretty obvious buyer/seller warnings up as we can't really assist with much if it all goes wrong.

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I would say stick to the present rules.

 

Some people are here to sell, others here to chat.

 

Some of course do both but I would personally rather buy a £100+ RIF from someone that actually contributes to the forum rather than someone that doesn't, just personal preference.

 

Also I more see Arnies as a place to chat openly than a place to sell. We do have FB and Z1 for other things (laughing at the stupidity of Z1 is a good one and trying to speak sense to the idiots too) and that is really the best way I would say.

 

Not to sound elitist but if we make the system easier or more like Zero In then I can see people starting to migrate here and treat it like Zero In, something I would not want. As it stands it seems fine enough.

 

'FireKnife'

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I think keep it as it is, for now at least, there have been times where people have drawn attention to themselves by trying to spam to 100 posts and got themselves suspended/banned who've later turned out to have scammed people on other forums. It's not a perfect system and will put some people off staying here but realistically it's the only way Arnies can offer any real form of protection from scammers.

 

One thing I did suggest to Marlowe was to lower the minimum post count to say, 50, but then require every sales thread to have a photo of the items for sale with the photo including a piece of paper with the user name of the seller written on it.

 

The issue with that system would be enforcement, the current post count system is entirely automatic so doesn't take up mods time or require members to do anything, to require a photo in the post in the correct format would mean members would need to report any sales topics which don't comply so the moderators don't miss them.

 

As Marlowe would say though, this is a forum with a sales area added on for those who contribute, not a sales website with a forum attatched.

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Yup agreed - although on the flip side you can spot "young" posters quite easily.

 

One option that kinda tempts is to trial an insecure sales area on here - it'd be a completely separate section. That way everyone could see the new sellers/buyers and treat it for what it was.

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Plus (as the moronic weirdos on Zero In have proved) that whole picture with a piece of paper thing then leads to (thankfully something Arnies doesn't have mind you) mods just removing posts when they feel like it even if it is all of a £5 item.

 

It sounds like just complaining against the system but with the way it is handled on Zero In it clearly shows that it is nowhere near flawless. It still helps but the post count idea is better in my mind.

 

'FireKnife'

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just me then :D

 

Nope, not just you  :D !

 

As a prolific seller (down to impulse buys) I wished Arnies did have a greater audience for the classified sections.

There is a high degree of difficulty to sell stuff on Arnies and most times, I have to discount to way below  what I paid for, sometimes 60% below, even for brand new, never been used gear.

I noticed that prices achieved in "lesser"  :P  forums are generally 15-20% better than here. 

 

ACM/replica stuff is pretty easy to shift but higher end gear and RS stuff is pretty slow going. 

 

But the overriding question, for me at least, was always:

 

Was Arnies conceived as a community forum with trade as a side function? if the answer is yes, then leave the rules are as they stand. 

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Just going by my experience of being here for about 7.5 years I would say Arnies was originally about 60/40 or 70/30 in favour of chat than sales and then post VCRA that has dropped drastically down to the near 95/5 that it seems to be now.

 

I do recall though that Arnies was and still is thought of as a place to chat, talk about events, see the new toys coming out and (according to a poster on another forum) be elitist / moan about Systemas. :P

 

Thinking about it I would, given the choice, have Arnies stay as a place to chat and not worry about being a place to sell. It is not like there aren't other options and Arnie gets a comission for every sale.

 

'FireKnife'

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I think its always been community first - but the two need not be exclusive.
 
As its sung;

 

Don't remind me of that film. Did it as part of my list of '200 to see' and I wanted to kill myself half way through, only just realising it had another hour to go <_<.

 

But while it does, to me discussion in one place and sale in another feels fine to me :).

 

'FireKnife'

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Pictures with user names don't always stop the scamming. Bought an AEG off Z-in with a fairly decent picture.
What it didn't show (due to the angle) was that the outer barrel (and thus inner) was bent - significantly enough that I struggled to get the inner barrel out and it was useless - I couldn't even bend it back with a plumbers torch on it for 5 mins.

It then took a few months or so, plus an official "court proceedings" letter to his parents home address before I got any contribution to the replacement outer barrel.

 

What might be worth doing (and I'm not sure what you see with less than 100 posts?), is having the classifieds section showing, but if you click on the link with less than 100 posts, it takes you to a message saying "you need 100" or something similar.

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The 100 post goal is great method.

 

Probably in the 100 posts leading up to the sale the seller would post something like; "fell on my gun today", then they'd post "BBs always flying to the right", and finally "how to bend barrel straight".

 

That 100 post count lets a buyer check out the seller and see if the item may be dodgy. It even lets a seller check out the buyer and decide if they pass the bar or if selling will lead to massive drama.

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fireknife havn't seen the film but saw it saw it on the stage in the west end it was fantastic

 

You lucky b-star-d. It was just awful and Liza Minelli made it one hundred times worse. Still the Nazi bits were ok.

 

I'm for keeping it, keeps the riff raff at bay, what!

 

Harsh but true.

 

Plus a lot of places have in built site forums now (like Zero In did back in the day when it was tiny) and those can be used to sell face to face which is easier.

 

All in all it doesn't seemed to have failed as a system and we are a discussion forum more than most others (Zero In, Airsofters, local site forums) so I would say stick with it.

 

'FireKnife'

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I think the 100 post rule is the best we have available, even if it's not perfect. I think the only "better" method would be to restrict the sales forums to verified members, but something more than a username in the picture would be required, possibly UKARA membership or a token payment with a method that has age verification and an address attatched eg a credit card, but both of those have financial overheads and I'm not sure how folk would feel about essentially paying for access to the sales boards(or how Arn would feel about taking responsibility for such a system), so i doubt either of those are really viable.

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What's nice about the 100 posts is that when done right, you forget about trying to get your post count up, and instead just immerse yourself into the community. As this happens you get a sense of those in the community, and they get a sense of you.

 

That sort of thing is invaluable when sending expensive products around the world, particularly where money is ridiculously hard to get out of people if anything went wrong.

 

I do see the point Skarclaw is making - does that put people off becoming a member of the community? I don't think so. Personally, from all the forums I'm on, I think that it's just the way it is...forums are dying (said in best '2012' voice :D). People seem to be favouring the more instant methods of communication as opposed to the more in-line side of the forum. Tis a shame, but things like IM groups are drastically making smaller forums redundant. I think places like this still have their merit, but it just means that traffic will reduce.

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I like the current limit, as it does protect us as it's supposed to. However, it must be said that the crew behind ArniesAwesomeSoft support that. If we were to remove the restriction and do sales a different way, I'm sure the Arnies crew would continue to support the new version and it would still be great.

 

Maybe I'm naive... OK so I'm naive, but I'd be open to the change, and hope it would bring some numbers back to this website.

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Please note that at the time of writing this I'm only on a post count in the 60s or 70s of 70 (woot)

 

I like the limit, for me as a relatively new player there's the temptation to get carried away with second hand sections.  Here I'm forced to wait and learn patience (and also hopefully decide I have everything I need until the new shiny shows up).  Having said that the fact that a lot of areas do not count towards the post count is frustrating and at first confusing.  Still it delays temptation for me so is not all bad.

Edited by dapprman
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Me personaly, like that kind of restriction. Kind of looking forward to hit them golden 100 posts. Took me nearly 4 years to get to the midleish. I know there is few things I would love to buy from somebody here, but hard luck. Have to wait few more years. :-))

I don't like to spam, to be able to rich 100 posts, but if you lower the limit a bit, few of us mait buy/sell something which we are looking for a long time. ;-)

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Got to agree with those opposing any change. This forum is indeed a hard place to sell things, because there's a smaller audience here. I always crosspost my requests and my sales to both here and ZeroIn, and 100% of the time the sale's eventually gone to a ZeroIn user, if I remember correctly. That's a bit irritating, but on the whole I think Arnie's is a much, much better forum for requiring users to 'earn' their privileges rather than the ZeroIn style of just handing them out. For a start, your average Arnie's post is legible and coherent, whereas your average ZeroIn post has either all capital letters and punctation, or none, plus an innovative approach to punctuation, spelling and grammar.

 

I say better to keep Arnie's as a great forum, even if it eventually runs its course, than water down its high standards in the hope of attracting more visitors.

Edited by PureSilver
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