Please, please put your country in thread titles.

[PNE Mike]

This is a great forum for finding equipment for sale and I have used it myself for purchases.

However, my continued frustration is that most users fail to put their country of residence in thread titles which makes it harder to find the right threads if you are short of time.

Please note this from the sticky thread:

Include your country of residence in the title, even if you are willing to sell outside that area. Within the post, please provide an indication of where you live.At the time of writing, 88% of ads on the first page had failed to put their country! By typing an two extra characters, you would make it easier for all of us. ;)

Rant over.

To the admin team:

There is a vBulletin facility where a prefix can be added to the thread title from a drop down menu. Perhaps this would be the way to go. If my memory is correct, this can be made mandatory for the thread to be posted.

[Seanzky]

I put my city (NYC - New York City) which should suffice. I also agree with this. I find it frustrating sometimes to find out the seller isn't willing to ship to US (from AUS/CA/UK/EU... etc.)

[Froggeh]

tbhh the big problem is all the threads saying FS instead of FS (US) as it's an international forum, but most US members seem to be too arrogant to bother putting it in, or lazy, or.....

possibly not arrogant, but it feels that way when it's overwhelmingly the case. It's sometimes true that AUS/CA/UK/EU people won't ship to the US, but they're not normally the people who don't label their country of sale!

[Seanzky]

There's no need to get defensive. I never said that other countries do it a lot, does it more than US members, or that I've gotten many instances of such incidents from non-US members.

I do agree it's mostly US POTN members but there were those rare times from other countries. Also, it's not most of us that are arrogant. Just a few.

[Mk1Racer]

tbhh the big problem is all the threads saying FS instead of FS (US) as it's an international forum, but most US members seem to be too arrogant to bother putting it in, or lazy, or.....

possibly not arrogant, but it feels that way when it's overwhelmingly the case. It's sometimes true that AUS/CA/UK/EU people won't ship to the US, but they're not normally the people who don't label their country of sale!

Strong words don't you think? Could it be that they just forget that this is an international site? And I've seen overseas ads that didn't have the country in the thread title. So maybe just relax a bit.

[ed rader]

This is a great forum for finding equipment for sale and I have used it myself for purchases.

However, my continued frustration is that most users fail to put their country of residence in thread titles which makes it harder to find the right threads if you are short of time.

Please note this from the sticky thread:

At the time of writing, 88% of ads on the first page had failed to put their country! By typing an two extra characters, you would make it easier for all of us. ;)

Rant over.

To the admin team:

There is a vBulletin facility where a prefix can be added to the thread title from a drop down menu. Perhaps this would be the way to go. If my memory is correct, this can be made mandatory for the thread to be posted.

that's what i call a personal problem. good luck trying to get everyone to conform to yours "needs" :D.

ed rader

[phigment]

Also, I think it's difficult to modify the thread title after the fact. Isn't that only accessible to the moderators?

[Froggeh]

Well, I did exclude those members who aren't ;)

Seriously, it's a massive issue for those of us in other countries, and as the site is run by Pekka (who is presumably Finnish), I'm always surprised that this is left to lapse so much. - think it is only editable by moderators, but perhaps it's not wrong to call people's attention to the fact that they've misnamed their posts? Especially when the stick (read before posting) tells them exactly what to do? Possibly the only way to moderate it is a standard delete message until people get to grips with why the requirement is in place.

[Seanzky]

It's easy to edit titles. Many moderators have mentioned this before. I just can't remember where.

Go to your thread. Edit the first and original post (your ad). Click on 'Go Advanced'. Edit the title.

[Seanzky]

Lol. I surrender. All the new posts have no country code whatsoever on the title and unfortunately for me and my fellow Yanks, they're selling in US only. Hahaha.

[phigment]

I just tried editing one of my thread's titles. While the first post title was modified, the thread title that shows up in the forum listing, did not change.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong.

[rooftopsuicideclub]

usually i just read the thread before i buy something.
but i seem to be the minority here.
:-P

[Tarzanman]

Even though this is a world-wide site... the bulk of the visitors are in the USA.

What you should ask, is for people from YOUR country selling stuff to list it somewhere in their post.

No reason to put it in the title. Just use the search and limit it to the classified section

[RAW-Shooter]

usually i just read the thread before i buy something.
but i seem to be the minority here.
:-P


Are you suggesting to read the add before making a commitment to buy the item?

Wohoo, what a concept...

:D

[bauerman]

Too many "chiefs" in the buy and sell forum........lots of forum policing going on.

Looks like Froggeh has actually taken it upon himself to spam a bunch of the current for sale ads with his rants for country of origin.

Having been a member of this forum "from way back" - the buy and sell board here works pretty well for MOST people 99% of the time. If you have to click on an ad to see the country of origin, I think that the time spent is negligible in the whole eternal scheme of things.

[n1as]

Yea, I wish country code were included ... but something else is far more important.

When you sell an item, please do NOT remove the price from the ad. You put the price in there to start with so it wasn't a secret. Leave it there afterwords so that we can have some history of (asking) prices for items.

Not including a country code is an inconvenience. Editing out the price to say "SOLD" is tampering with evidence !!! LOL!

IMHO

[bauerman]

Yea, I wish country code were included ... but something else is far more important.

When you sell an item, please do NOT remove the price from the ad. You put the price in there to start with so it wasn't a secret. Leave it there afterwords so that we can have some history of (asking) prices for items.

Not including a country code is an inconvenience. Editing out the price to say "SOLD" is tampering with evidence !!! LOL!

IMHO

Could not agree more with this post, and I agree that it is more important than country of origin in the thread title. Past prices for similar goods act as a record of the value of a product. Removing that pricing info lessens the value of the historic for sale posts here.

Fred Miranda's site has a great feature that displays past versions of a for sale post.......that is a great answer for what we are talking about here.

[alduin]

Could not agree more with this post, and I agree that it is more important than country of origin in the thread title. Past prices for similar goods act as a record of the value of a product. Removing that pricing info lessens the value of the historic for sale posts here.

Fred Miranda's site has a great feature that displays past versions of a for sale post.......that is a great answer for what we are talking about here.

+1. No reason to edit it out, is there?

[Pete]

Putting a country of residence in your sale ads isn't mandatory and it's not something that we (as moderators) enforce rigourously.

Basically, it's a guideline designed to help both sellers and buyers understand where items are located and where the seller wants to sell them. To be honest, if that information isn't present, it's easily enough to clarify with a PM or a question in the thread.

We also don't enforce the naming of a price. If people don't give enough information, they're only making it harder for them to sell their gear.

As stated -=HERE=- (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?p=7235303#post7235303), Pekka will be making changes to POTN's forum "engine" and the marketplace system might well be looked into as a part of those changes.

Your feedback and suggestions continue to be monitored and considered.

I hope this answers at least some of the points raised here.

[n1as]

We also don't enforce the naming of a price. If people don't give enough information, they're only making it harder for them to sell their gear.

Agreed, if they don't want to list a price, that is fine. My "beef" is that if they do list a price, they should not edit it out once the item has sold.

Thanks for listening mods!

[::John::]

Agreed, if they don't want to list a price, that is fine. My "beef" is that if they do list a price, they should not edit it out once the item has sold.

Thanks for listening mods!


aaarrrrrrrrrr - no worries - we've been listening all along.

We just can't force people to put a country code in the subject line and we can't stop 'em removing the final sale price. This subject used to come up all the time. Just not as often these days.

As Pete pointed out - it's their loss as they run the chance of losing the sale if they don't target their audience.

I've bought a couple of things from the sell forum - but, in my case, I was 'lucky' that the sellers put the country code in the titles and I went straight to the sales. Both items were sold within a very short time of being advertised - so it does help.

[GoneTomorrow]

Off-topic to a degree, but very much relevant: along the same lines, I think a larger problem occurs with sellers not locking their threads once their sale is complete. Even writing "SOLD" in the thread itself isn't sufficient. Makes browsing a lot more time consuming whereas threads marked locked with the appropriate icon are easy to disregard in the the thread list.

[Skip Souza]

Agreed, if they don't want to list a price, that is fine. My "beef" is that if they do list a price, they should not edit it out once the item has sold.

Thanks for listening mods!

You are absolutely right. It is very bad form to remove any information from a starting post, especially price.

[cdifoto]

You are absolutely right. It is very bad form to remove any information from a starting post, especially price.
Prices sink like the Titanic every day so I don't see how historical selling prices are relevant.

[Jeff]

Prices sink like the Titanic every day so I don't see how historical selling prices are relevant.

I wouldn't care what a 20D was selling for a year ago but I might see what they were going for over the last month if I were in the market for one.

My 2 cents, since this has turned into a gripe-fest, is why you're suppose to ad "FS" in a "FOR SALE" thread and "WTB" in the "BUY" thread. Let those be the default and if you want to trade, auction or other ad FT, FA, ect in the title.

BTW, rules say you should list the currency too. Anyone ever do that???????

[cdifoto]

I also wish people would change their underwear before posting a new FS thread.

[Jeff]

I also wish people would change their underwear before posting a new FS thread.

You assume they're wearing underwear. ;)

[Tarzanman]

I have a suggestion... no one can sell gear (especially L lenses) without sending it to me to inspect and test out first!

[jms_uk]

BTW, rules say you should list the currency too. Anyone ever do that???????
I think most people do, although writing £ or € is a bit more obvious than $, especially if a seller doesn't have a location in their profile [CDN, US, AUS...]

[asysin2leads]

I have a suggestion... no one can sell gear (especially L lenses) without sending it to me to inspect and test out first!

Tell you what, I already have to test all 1D and 5D bodies and all L glass 300 mm and above that want to be sold. You can have the rest.