When the revolution comes the football thread will be first against the wall, and the polo forum will be holding the rifles the wrong way around, arguing about who gets to shoot first, what size the goals will be and whether foot down or tap outs are allowed.

.

IMHO-
Judging by the amount of reponses hilary gets for road bike equipment and how quickly stuff can sell your userbase must consist of a large number of fixed gear owners who are road(geared) bike users and owners as well.

Even a nominal once payment of £5 pound per advert where the item(s) total more than say 100 pounds is not asking alot really considering how quick stuff sells on here if its priced right.....

Free Ads for items totalling less than £50
£5 pounds upfront for items totalling more than £50
£10 pounds upfront for items totalling more than £500

Have thought about that, still not sure I like it. I'm not sure what I think about making a core part of the site a donors only feature, though I do like that the gold stars can be earned just by being on the site long enough and participating... this means that I dislike the thought that forcing people to donate would dilute that status and benefits derived from it... I'm also against forcing donations (each to their means and derived value is what I prefer).

I basically want to re-think classifieds though to make them more useful, less noisy, clearer and simpler.

Perhaps the donation is not the way forward but the idea originally behind the classifieds was to sell to one another, correct? It used to be a way of clearing the stuff out from projects that got delayed or cancelled for whatever reason. Less so these days.

I don't mind the more frequent sellers on the site but it is the infrequent ones who tend to clutter things up. We do see lots of....

"For Sale: some stuff
#of posts: 5

of friends: 0"

I'd like to see the Classifieds as a more meaningful part of the forum rather than something that badly clogs simple search results.*

I think that the answer is fewer classifieds. The mechanism is really irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

• Yes - I know you can filter prefixes in the Advanced search
  

Do other forums charge for classified adverts? None of the ones I go on do. I'm just wondering how widespread it is?

Do other forums charge for classified adverts? None of the ones I go on do. I'm just wondering how widespread it is?

Do those other forums have ads and/or have a paying membership base (i.e. CTC)?

The Kids That Were Crap At Proper Sport At School Thread

Says the man who is clearly a natural athlete.

When the revolution comes the football thread will be first against the wall, and the polo forum will be holding the rifles.

The football thread has lead to The Football Stadum rides, which are one of the best forum rides that I have been on.

Do those other forums have ads and/or have a paying membership base (i.e. CTC)?

A few have adverts, though it's never that intrusive (e.g.Retrobike), others don't have any adverts.

I like the idea of having visible voting/rep only on mechanics and classifieds.

I also think you shouldn't think about offloading geared bike ads to another place purely because then you will have to police it and it will become a pain in the arse. It also makes no sense given that a lot of sales are off-topic anyway, and a lot of road bike parts (frames, cranks, bars etc) get used on fixed gear bikes.

As for the font, don't leave it to the browser to decide the size. Counter-intuitively it's bad for accessibility. Text is easiest to read in a smaller size with max-width columns of about 800px. Set it in the body at 80% or something then size everything else in Ems. You get it spot on for the majority of readers whilst still leaving everything resizeable.
Also do not just leave it to the user to change the font size in their browser. Give them an obvious interface - a slider at the top of the page or something.

Classifieds are the reason I'm not very happy about following LFGSS on Twitter. It's crazy how many twit-twuts appears daily and it's purely stuff for sale or wanted.

Separate Twitter account for Classified alerts?

~~I am an, albeit unsuccessful, rep whore. When posting, I try to post things that might attract positive comments. I also seek to avoid anything that might attract negative comments. ~~

Actually, I'd better not say that.

'You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to cliveo again.'

To be fair Benders do make terrible bikes.
I've had words with Mr Bender about this and he assures me he'll try harder.

http://www.fahrrad-bender.de/

IMHO-
Judging by the amount of reponses hilary gets for road bike equipment and how quickly stuff can sell your userbase must consist of a large number of fixed gear owners who are road(geared) bike users and owners as well.

And bike nuts who can never have enough bikes.

'Some kinds of bikes
The possibilities are endless
And for me to miss one
Would seem to be groundless ...'

Reputation/Comments

I'm thinking of abolishing the current system which is too cliquey and instead replace it with reddit/digg style upvote/downvote buttons.

In doing so I'd remove all limitations on the use of it (no more "spread your love" messages) but will take the sum of upvotes and downvotes per comment to do something else... the something else would be that individual posts that receive an abnormally large number of downvotes would have the font size reduced and the font colour faded closer to the background, and the ones upvoted would have the font size increased slightly.

I'm wondering whether this would help encourage the good posts, and discourage the bad. To allow the community to show through the rendering of posts which ones it collectively think are good, and to allow those reading the threads to spot the ones that everyone finds most helpful whilst skipping quickly the ones that are less helpful.

I'd obviously work to add some intelligence to this to prevent it being gamed, and obviously I wouldn't tell you what that was (so that you couldn't game it).

I like this, and I'd suggest having two systems--the personal comments system (which I like in the same way that Will describes) and the comments system to rate/value posts, just to give people a way of voting on posts without it getting all personal and as a halfway house towards the 'no asshole' rule. That might make things more cluttered, but to me the current system has value in itself.

I'm not sure the larger/smaller font idea would work for me; I generally find too much variation in font sizes quite ugly (e.g., newspaper headlines these days--I think newspapers used to look a lot better before sub-editors became able to play around with variable computer font sizes).

It's cluttered. Really it is, and it doesn't flow well on smaller screens. And it looks bad on mobiles as the font size is fixed. And the subtle changes in white/grey backgrounds doesn't show on LCD screens, which most are... so it looks washed out. Some parts of the page just can't be seen (like thread titles). There are inconsistent form elements. The layout of posts can feel a bit cluttered. Forum listing metaphors are all mixed. The typography is pretty poor as the font appears to be quite dense.

It hurts my poor eyes.

And even so, it looks a lot better already than every other forum I've seen (not that I've seen many, but the default forum software packages around seem to make things horribly cluttered on other forums). Still, I don't have the vision you have for a better design, and I'm looking forward to being pleasantly surprised.

Well, I'm anti-change and newness so I obviously think these are all terrible ideas. Same as last time things changed.

And the time before that.

SO SO so like - to use a facebookism!
I followed lfgss to get ride info and general banter, character assassination but just get bits for sale that I cant afford and stuff I dont like also!

Classifieds are the reason I'm not very happy about following LFGSS on Twitter. It's crazy how many twit-twuts appears daily and it's purely stuff for sale or wanted.

Interesting note on classified threads (and ideas for thinning them out): I've tried to bump classified threads when they're dedicated to the same topic. In fact, I did it yesterday, and got one PM and no replies (looking for road shoes/pedals/cleats). I then started a new thread (which covered one aspect of the bumped thread, but was more specific - SPD SL pedals) and got 15 replies.
It seems to me that the classifieds section is one area where new threads, on the same topic, should be allowed.

It is. The classifieds don't get merged unless they are literally one user reposting the same thing.

Classifieds. They're swamping the site, and whilst useful they are noisy.

What I think I'm going to do:

[]Filter classifieds out of the searches by default UNLESS you've selected to see everything in your UserCP.
[]Make it so that ALL classifieds must have a prefix, it won't be possible to create a thread in the classifieds forum without one.
[]Make the quick searches more prominent, but also give a "Create New For Sale Listing" on the For Sale search to make that more obvious.
[]Massively simplify the rules, put them in one place, encourage use of PayPal (non-Gift) if not meeting face-to-face.

Awesome.

I do think non-fixed stuff should remain ok. There are a lot of singlespeeders and roadies on here as well as other random interest items..

^ +1 to the above.

Classifieds:

Re age of posts. I like the idea someone suggested of threads just being locked after 6 months so no one can bump them. Altho I'd suggest 6 weeks is better.

Re who can sell.

...For too long people have been coming on here just to sell shit because eBay charges and LFGSS doesn't. For regular active members of the forum selling should be allowed and welcomed but not for people to use the site as a free selling service to a captive spending market.

...

[*]You have posted for over one year on over 50 different threads, you are unrestricted in classifieds

[*]You have posted for at least 6 months on over 50 different threads, you can sell up to 3 times

[*]You have posted for at least 3 months on 25 different threads you can sell once

[*]You are a new poster and yet to have posted you can only see and buy in classifieds

[*]Single selling credits can be bought for a one time only donation of £10

[*]3 selling credits can be bought for £25
....

^ I actually think Dovs got it spot on here. Both the idea and numbers.

Much as I like the idea of randoms signing up to offer us great deals, it rarely happens.

Altho wiganwill makes a good point....I'm espcially thinking of varno here. I'd of loved deals like this when I first joined.

I think if someone comes on here to sell something at a decent price, with a well layed out ad and a system of paying/collecting that you can trust then I don't care what else they do on the forum; people want to buy stuff, other people coming on here just to sell stuff are providing a valuable service. If they avoid charges then so what? The forum, as I see it, is still gaining from their presence. If they want to donate, again, that is up to them.

The problem with this is that new members who want to use the classifieds clutter up the site with content-free bullshit posts to get their post count high enough.

I just don't think that ppl could be arsed to do that with the numbers Dovs used. Plus as soon as they start they'd get pulled up.

Rep etc.

I don't really care that much, but this:

I like this, and I'd suggest having two systems--the personal comments system (which I like in the same way that Will describes) and the comments system to rate/value posts... That might make things more cluttered, but to me the current system has value in itself...

Also in terms of rating threads, we can already do this. But it might be nicer if more ppl did it with the useful ones.

...and I like the idea of having visible voting/rep only on mechanics and classifieds.

I'm not sure the larger/smaller font idea would work for me.....

+1 - although it would be nice if rubbish comments got faded into the background.

It is. The classifieds don't get merged unless they are literally one user reposting the same thing.

Cool. I had merge-fear when posting. You see what you've done to us, Hippy?!

If we are banning geared bikes will we also ban anything else non fwss bike related?
Should the name be changed to lfwss?
A fixed gear means the wheel is jammed on a fixed wheel or ss bike

Repost.

No.

Seperate "Geared" section is better than getting rid all together. Picked up some great tips here on that subject

Unless it's to represent it on Rapha rides! ;]

There was a fixed team. We smoked them.

Get.

It.

Says the man who is clearly a natural athlete.

Fuck off, I was High Jump Champion at my school 3yrs on the trot!

The football thread has lead to The Football Stadum rides, which are one of the best forum rides that I have been on.

pint waiting for you Clive