How much is too much? I'm sure opinions will vary on this topic. If you want yours to matter, please vote in the poll.

How often should Private Classified forum threads be bumped?

 

I think daily is a little too much.

 

I think daily is a lot too much.

 

well, i think that once in 24 hours is fine. people wanna sell their stuff and there's a lot of stuff for sale in the classifieds section. no one wants their FS thread to disappear into the nothingness.

i think more than once in a 24 hour period is excessive.

 

^^After selecting the classifieds section, people can use the search function.

The seller needs to use a well written description of what they're selling. I think there's enough categories to cover nearly everything.

One of the bike sites i'm on, the rule is once a week, so I bump my threads on either a saturday or sunday afternoon for max exposure. Looking at my web logs, I still see hits all through the week.

 

Thanks for the input and votes. Keep it coming.

 

true.....but they wont/dont

 

I think it depends on the situation. Some ppl might need to sell something small and quick for an emergency and might need to bump more often. Some ppl with high dollar JDM parts should just let them sit there and bump once a week or so. It doesn't bother me at all what ppl do to sell their items.

It's actually more annoying to me when vendors bump their 20 ads daily, but their paying so I'm sure that wont change. I get it 100%.

 

i think daily because certain times of the day you don't see any action at all

 

This is dealing strictly with member classifieds. Vendors pay top dollar for the right to advertise their products here so that is a completely separate issue from normal forum members.

 

Say I'm in the market for some lowering springs, I wouldn't just hit new posts and stop there. I would go into the classifieds subforum, and dig around to probably 1 month old threads. So just because it doesn't show in new posts doesn't mean your thread is gone.

 

If you're looking for a certain item, you should click on that particular subforum in classifieds (wheels and tires for instance) and then search for what you want specifically ("Michelin" or "Volk" for example) and only threads with those terms will be shown. That's Searching 101. Your thread doesn't need to be or have the right to be on the first page all the time to be effective. IMO bumping a thread is mainly to let potential buyers know the item is still available.

 

I tend to agree with Ryan... I understand it is not going to change, but I am more annoyed when I click 'New Posts' and I see two full pages of the same vendor's threads. I don't care how many non-G's are on Vossen wheels. I don't care to see the same part listed five times by five different vendors. But I get it and I know that's how forums work. I deal with it. If certain vendor threads are so dead that, legitimately, the only posts in them are from the vendors themselves, then that is saying something, too.

If we can tell people that searching is necessary if they want to buy an item from a private party, then it should work just fine with vendors, too. Like Sam said, if I'm in the market for something, I am going to seek it out, whether it is from a vendor or a private party. Vendors bump their threads for a reason. The regular members, whose contributions to the forum, in most cases, are more than monetary, are discouraged from doing the same? I'm sorry. I don't agree with the logic there.

Bottom line... I guess I don't see the big deal at all. This is a forum. If bumping classified threads really bothers people, then maybe they're spending too much time on internet message boards. With all the other crap posted here, I would think bumping a For Sale thread once every couple days shouldn't really put a hair across your @$$.

 

Wow. Nobody said it is a big deal. I just asked for your opinions about one very specific thing. I thought it was pretty simply stated.

I'm asking specifically about member classifieds postings. I am NOT referring to vendors at all. Vendors are a completely separate issue and I'm not asking about that now. You can feel free to state how you feel about it, but it isn't relevant because that's not what I wanted to know people's opinions about. But if you feel better getting that off your chest here, then OK. I guess it didn't hurt anything.

Since more than one comment has been directed toward that, I'll briefly address it before hopefully getting back to the topic at hand that I actually asked about. Members don't get to dictate how business is done on the forum. Just like you don't get to pick what commercials are shown during your favorite TV show or how often they are shown. You can watch the show or you can skip it if the commercials are a problem for you. You can send and email to the network if there's one you have a problem with for what that's worth. At the end of the day, the sponsors pay for the content to be provided to you for free. Just like here on this forum. So they tend to have more sway than a viewer/form member. If they want to pay to post an advertising thread that you choose to ignore, it's their money being spent. I'm pretty sure thought that if everyone found them so obtrusive and ignored them and they weren't effective at driving sales, they'd spend their money elsewhere.

The logic you don't agree with is erroneous - nobody has said members can't bump their threads. I believe you have jumped the gun. As I said, I just asked members' thoughts on frequency of bumping private classified threads so that you for that part of it.

 

I realize you are not asking about vendor classified threads and, as I stated, I know that is not going to change regardless of how annoyed we are when we hit 'New Posts' and see that a particular vendor decided to spend five minutes on the G forum today just to bump all 45 of his threads. However, you did say that bumping a thread daily is too much. My position was that vendors bump their threads every day because they think there is some benefit to doing so. Or else why would they do it? So, if vendors see it as a useful way to generate business or traffic to their threads, why should we discourage a regular member from doing the same? That's all... Is it really that big of an inconvenience?

I don't really care and I do not need to get anything off my chest. I did not create this thread. I overlook the annoying vendor threads in the same way I disregard the bumped-daily private classified threads in which I have no interest. At the same time, I do not think that, regardless of how much someone "contributes" to the forum, whether it be in a dollar value or in the way of helpful posts and/or thoughtful, inviting conversation, there is any harm in bumping a classified thread daily. Just my $.02.

P.S. - I voted for '2 to 3 times a week'.