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Hi all,

I have notcied the Ebay threads seem to be taking up more than a fair share of forum page space in Swap Shop.

Would it be possible that they have their own sub-forum?

This would mean that those not using Ebay links would remain on the first 3 pages until 4 days pass for a bump.

Not sure why you think there should be a distinction? At the moment, the Swap Shop offers equal airtime to all users regardless of their chosen medium for selling their items, hence why we have the 4 day bump rule and why we try to enforce it fairly rigorously. To a certain extent, the Swap Shop is a bit of a victim of its own success; I think the traffic has grown exponentially in recent months. The downside to this, of course, is that we have a fairly high churn rate of posts slipping off the front page, which is why I have been keen to enforce the compulsory title layout strictly since my tenure began and why the other Swap Shop Mods brought the title layout guidelines into force in the first place- this way, people can search and skim through posts easily and find what they want and where they want it.

If we go down the route of setting out sub-forums, it quickly adds a layer of complexity that I think isn't needed at this stage. But who's to say what may happen in future, if Swap Shop traffic grows further? I expect it is something that Yakface and Legoburner have already discussed and have appropriate plans in place.

Agreed; it would also be a lot of work to maintain, we people would likely often post in the wrong section. Some users (for better or worse) only really pop on Dakka to post up about trades or auctions, and it would probably require a level of effort equal to switching over to using tags to get people to use the right subforum... which means people would still do it incorrectly to this day

Another thing is, who would check the ebay forum? Probably not many people... they'd rather just go to ebay.

Also, I have offered items in the swapshop, then updated the thread (after giving it a week or two) to say they're posted on ebay... and seen many others do this, too. With a subforum, people would have to create a new thread for that, cluttering things up more.

Overall, I think it is a good idea but not really feasible or needed at this point.

While you both have valid points, I must dispute these for the following reason:

Ebay is a separate medium from Dakka Swap Shop.

If users choose to cross-market their ads, then these should be kept separate from regular Dakka ads in order to prevent the already obvious spam they are creating.

Other forums keep Ebay separate, I am curious why would a rule enforcing Ebay threads to be posted in a separate sub-forum, and the provision of said sub-forum would necessarily be a negative?

AvatarForm wrote:Other forums keep Ebay separate, I am curious why would a rule enforcing Ebay threads to be posted in a separate sub-forum, and the provision of said sub-forum would necessarily be a negative?

Because it adds to the workload of a very small moderator team, who already cannot convince people to follow some very simple guidelines for formatting, for a very minor benefit to users as a whole.

I would be just fine with a "No eBay threads" rule. As mentioned above, if I want to browse eBay I'll do just that. Mentioning that something is going after it's been offered otherwise wouldn't bother me, but I like the opportunity to barter/not have to deal with eBay crap. Extreme opinion I know, but I don't see what the eBay threads add to the site to begin with.

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:Extreme opinion I know, but I don't see what the eBay threads add to the site to begin with.

At a minimum, it's a second source of trust - eBay transactions are often faith-based, and it's nice to have an alternative reference to eBay's (nearly useless) feedback system.

Also ebay sellers can easily abuse the system in place now. All they have to do is list their sale and the day before or day of ending bump their thread to the top. It doesn't matter that it's locked since the sale will be over before the thread will drift to the bottom of the page.
To me the problem is there is no way to effectively enforce the rules of the swap shop on listings meant for ebay. If an ebay listing is in violation of the rules it should be deleted and the person listing the item should be warned and then, if neccessary given a vacation.

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:I would be just fine with a "No eBay threads" rule. As mentioned above, if I want to browse eBay I'll do just that. Mentioning that something is going after it's been offered otherwise wouldn't bother me, but I like the opportunity to barter/not have to deal with eBay crap. Extreme opinion I know, but I don't see what the eBay threads add to the site to begin with.

Actually, your "extreme" opinion would satisfy most of the criteria.

Less work for Mods once the Rule was set in place. Certainly, you may have a lead/lag time til the message got out and threads would be deleted. However, afterwards, it would considerably slow down the turnover in threads on the front page, leading to significant improvement in search returns.

Afterall, in the time between bumps I have found one of my threads 6 pages back!

How is that good for anyone? Especially when the Ebay listers have low post counts and only use the Swap Shop and do not use Dakka for anything else.

Any chance of having a seperate US/Europe/RoW sections/sub-forums?

Phototoxin wrote:Any chance of having a seperate US/Europe/RoW sections/sub-forums?

Think this was already addressed in another thread. The request requires extra Moderation clicks, so is a no go...

However, if everyone titles their threads appropriately, the search still works.

This is about removing the Ebay spammers from the Swap Shop.