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#2 No destroying the historical record
I've got into the habit of editing the title to "." to stop sold/withdrawn items appearing in searches and make it clear from the summary pages, which threads aren't worth viewing. I close threads to stop them getting dredged three years down the line, which has been the recommended practice.
If...
nothing is ever deleted.
... and we have the good & bad traders threads for feedback then I don't think these revisions add anything and seem contrary to your usual "light touch" approach.
The value (no pun intended) of past adverts in determining current prices is questionable (did it sell at the advertised price; how skint was the seller; how desperate was the buyer) and most trades don't involve uniquely identifiable items and/or publicly disclose uniquely identifiable information (ie serial numbers), so the forum doesn't generally provide much in the way of (public) provenance.
However the forum could provide more in the way of user provenance, by requiring the creation of a unique user name before a (classified) thread is created: it's much easier for "User xxxx" to behave poorly and not be recognised the next time around, than it is for "Scilly.Suffolk".
The reintroduction of the nursery would provide some user provenance too.
Whatever the rules are, it is apparent that many advertisers simply don't read them: have you considered having them appear when an ad is created, with a "read & understood" tick-box?
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No destroying the historical record
Guilty.
I was having a tidying up binge, and it was mostly for some 'one-weekend only' sales to coincide with trips to London, so threads were deleted and locked to stop questions after the trips. Plus, like a hormonal lemming, I saw it done elsewhere and thought that's what the cool kids did.
Agree that it can be useful to see stuff sold previously, not just for prices but also for 'real life' pictures and opinions of bikes and parts (as compared to retailer's photoshopped images and bikeradar's 'never knowingly under 4 stars' reviews).
I think it can be used appropriately for tidying up and merging sales threads sometimes, but it can also be easily abused and is starting to get more and more common, so I'm good with stopping it.I do agree with @Scilly.Suffolk about locking threads to stop dredging though, but agree that time should be allowed for buyers leaving follow-up information if necessary. I leave a month or two at least.
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One of the forums' most prolific sellers is still erasing all his sold prices:
{Stealth Edit}
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Scilly.Suffolk
Philbythesea
Vince
@Velocio
For the first time in about 6 years I've updated the rules to explicitly cover two things that were already being enforced.
#1 You really can't use non-standard formatting in your advert title.
Which means no:
Why? To keep the forum readable, and to not make the classifieds a race to who can use loudest titles out there.
#2 No destroying the historical record
Which means no:
Why? Aside from the more useful thing about provenance of items and establishing fair prices, LFGSS helps the police a fair bit with stolen goods. We're really good at getting items back to original owners as well as giving statements to police, providing evidence based on our logs, etc. It's a general pattern in those cases that people are either idiots, or they try and cover their tracks. So this rules is really dealing with that.
It's worth pointing out, nothing is ever deleted. Nothing at all. All revisions of all comments as well as the IP addresses are always stored. The rule is about making it harder for anyone touching stolen goods to hide, and to make it all more transparent and just a hostile environment for those selling items of dubious origin.