New Classifieds Forum

[OVAS-Webmaster]

The Classifieds add-on mod for this forum has stopped working properly so I have created new sub forums for the Classifieds. 

These new Classified sub forums are now part of the main forum and will be easier to maintain and moderate.  Since these new Classified sub forums are part of the main forum, you will see them appear under the Recent Posts and you will get notifications using Tapatalk.

Sellers will have the ability to lock, delete and modify their own ads.  The same Classified Rules applies as before.

PM's will be sent to all current sellers who have listed in the previous Classifieds to post their ads in the new sub forums.

[OVAS-Webmaster]

So the new classifieds have been up and running for two months now and all seems to be running well for the most part.  Unlike the previous classifieds, these new classifieds were left open so that potential buyers/sellers could ask questions publicly and not have to play PM tag.  As I was told in high school, if one person has a question chances are, someone else has the same question.  This also encourages forum activity and interaction between us. 

However, now ad bumping is an issue.  This is a good definition of bumping.  <a href="http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/wp_threadbumping">Thread Bumping[/url]

So with that being said, what do OVAS forum users think?  Leave the classifieds as is or lock them down like they were previously so no one can reply to them publicly?

Please vote in the poll.  Voting is confidential and will be open until the April meeting.

Thank you.

[Al]

I have cast a vote which supports the new model and the ability for buyers to ask Q's, etc. In regards ad bumping, I think it can be useful in a heavy traffic site - i.e some busy sites where you might post an ad, in a couple of days you may be on page 3 , 4 or 5 of the classifieds , which isn't very helpful to your cause. Where I have seen ad bumping and used it myself, it never has become an issue nor has it been abused.
If we can and do allow moving an auction item up for immediate sale, for example, what's the real difference then with ad bumping.
Having said all of the above, I don't think our classifieds are ever really more than 1 page in total for both the member and non-member listings, so bumping should be less of a necessity. The member section has 28 ads and the non-member 13 as it stands today - not much need for bumping? 

[OVAS-Webmaster]

There really is no need to bump ads.

The software used by this forum has a nice little feature in which modified posts become marked as New.  Once someone goes into the Classifieds, they will see New beside the title.  From there, it's up to the forum user to go into the thread and read it.  Unfortunately I haven't been able to carry this over to the left side under Recent Posts as Recent Posts appears to be an add-on mod for the forum.

If you have a smartphone, you can access the OVAS forum using Tapatalk.  Tapatalk will alert you of all the current posts and recent changes as well.  Take Al's ads for example, every few days I get notifications on Tapatalk and I see his ads come up so I know he's been modifying his ads.