a52-830
Well-known member
the Hot Deals area seems to be a problem child.
this manifests itself in several ways. currently, on the amazon warehouse deals permathread, there is discussion about combining posts with individual items into one large post.
the basic idea is reasonable. a proliferation of posts creates management issues, especially when it appears that the posts are only being created to allow one to post to the classifieds section, which requires 100 posts for access, and lots of "nice job" and "great deal" posts clutters things up tremendously.
now, cutting down on the "me too" postings is admirable. i am old enough, and have been around long enough, to remember the swamp that USENET became every september, when college students used to flood the internet for the first time, and thought that publicly agreeing with everything they saw was desirable. we are fortunate that initial access to the internet now does not happen in these kinds of waves anymore.
i will ignore the fact that if someone wants to post to the classifieds section badly enough that they race to 100 posts, the real judgement is in what they post to the classifieds list, right? i mean, if they have a load of tools, and are offering reasonable prices, they are contributing to the community, even if they did cut some corners to get there, and we will likely be glad to have them there.
but i am ignoring that.
the issue with the [amazon, ebay] threads particularly is that they both are listings of things that tend to go stale pretty quickly. often, usually, there is only one item available at that price. wanting people to collect several listings before posting, which might take several hours, will likely backfire when the deals are gone before the posting is made.
now, the abuse to be looking for is people posting "deals" that are not really deals, per say, in order to up their post count. but, to be honest, there are easier ways to do that than wandering all over ebay looking for things that people might be interested in, and doing several cut and pastes to get all the information over into a post. i know, i post on both of these forums regularly, and each post requires significant effort and editing. a lot of individuals are getting substantial deals due to the efforts of a relatively small number of members who seem to get some delight in sharing incredible deals that they find hiding there in plain sight, if we knew where to look.
the other issue that seems to be endemic to forums in this area is, for lack of a better word, "drift". these forums tend to attract discussions that are not technically deals themselves. i dont know what happened over on the home depot thread, i didnt follow it before it got replaced, and i haven't followed it since. both the ebay and amazon threads do include "drift", but it stays pretty focused on the deals. they discuss things like seeing deals from certain sellers on ebay before, or discussion about price fluctuations on amazon, or their opinion on the relative value of a "deal".
things are pretty well settled on this web site. that is likely part of the reason for the site's popularity. policies you have created, like only letting the initial poster reply to classifieds, but also requiring them to, basically, keep it all to one thread, makes the classifieds section much more user friendly. specific policies like that are great because they balance the poster's needs against the reader's needs.
the amazon and ebay threads are active, and relatively well "policed" by the regular posters. while they stress some of the general rules, like the classified thread, they likely deserve special treatment to keep what is desirable about them allowable.
hopefully, this adds some context to any discussions that are happening at the moderator level.
this manifests itself in several ways. currently, on the amazon warehouse deals permathread, there is discussion about combining posts with individual items into one large post.
the basic idea is reasonable. a proliferation of posts creates management issues, especially when it appears that the posts are only being created to allow one to post to the classifieds section, which requires 100 posts for access, and lots of "nice job" and "great deal" posts clutters things up tremendously.
now, cutting down on the "me too" postings is admirable. i am old enough, and have been around long enough, to remember the swamp that USENET became every september, when college students used to flood the internet for the first time, and thought that publicly agreeing with everything they saw was desirable. we are fortunate that initial access to the internet now does not happen in these kinds of waves anymore.
i will ignore the fact that if someone wants to post to the classifieds section badly enough that they race to 100 posts, the real judgement is in what they post to the classifieds list, right? i mean, if they have a load of tools, and are offering reasonable prices, they are contributing to the community, even if they did cut some corners to get there, and we will likely be glad to have them there.
but i am ignoring that.
the issue with the [amazon, ebay] threads particularly is that they both are listings of things that tend to go stale pretty quickly. often, usually, there is only one item available at that price. wanting people to collect several listings before posting, which might take several hours, will likely backfire when the deals are gone before the posting is made.
now, the abuse to be looking for is people posting "deals" that are not really deals, per say, in order to up their post count. but, to be honest, there are easier ways to do that than wandering all over ebay looking for things that people might be interested in, and doing several cut and pastes to get all the information over into a post. i know, i post on both of these forums regularly, and each post requires significant effort and editing. a lot of individuals are getting substantial deals due to the efforts of a relatively small number of members who seem to get some delight in sharing incredible deals that they find hiding there in plain sight, if we knew where to look.
the other issue that seems to be endemic to forums in this area is, for lack of a better word, "drift". these forums tend to attract discussions that are not technically deals themselves. i dont know what happened over on the home depot thread, i didnt follow it before it got replaced, and i haven't followed it since. both the ebay and amazon threads do include "drift", but it stays pretty focused on the deals. they discuss things like seeing deals from certain sellers on ebay before, or discussion about price fluctuations on amazon, or their opinion on the relative value of a "deal".
things are pretty well settled on this web site. that is likely part of the reason for the site's popularity. policies you have created, like only letting the initial poster reply to classifieds, but also requiring them to, basically, keep it all to one thread, makes the classifieds section much more user friendly. specific policies like that are great because they balance the poster's needs against the reader's needs.
the amazon and ebay threads are active, and relatively well "policed" by the regular posters. while they stress some of the general rules, like the classified thread, they likely deserve special treatment to keep what is desirable about them allowable.
hopefully, this adds some context to any discussions that are happening at the moderator level.