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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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Philbythesea
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.