Forum Idea

In the Buy/Sell/Trade section maybe we could possibly have a drop down option when entering the tread topic with wanted, or for sale? Kind of like in the hardware section where we have a drop down menu for the type of hardware eg, macbook, powerbook, etc.

Just a thought...

If you go to advanced search, you can choose to limit your search (Powerbook, MacBook, etc) to only search through one part ofthe forums like the Buy/Sell/Trade threads.
Because people sell a lot more than Apple gear and more than one type of item in a thread, having a limiter like you mentioned would not work IMO.
Good idea though.

bry, I don't think the OP is asking to offer the option of WHAT you want to buy or sell, but rather the options of "Buy" "Sell" and "Trade" which could help those looking to buy things by limiting their searches to the "Sell" category.

That makes more sense. DUH!
Still, there are gray areas that won't get addressed that way. For example if a seller will accept $$ or trade or if a seller changes their mind a week later to include trades.

I'm not saying it's a good idea, just clarifying what the OP was saying. I personally like the system as is.

You better have my back Kash. Yea, I know you were only clarifying the OP suggestion.

bryphotoguy said:

Still, there are gray areas that won't get addressed that way. For example if a seller will accept $$ or trade or if a seller changes their mind a week later to include trades.

Click to expand...

That's true there will be gray areas but then there are gray areas in pretty much everything.

I had a think about the issue that you have brought to light above and have given it a bit of thought. It might be good to have sell/trade and wanted as options. This indicates if the thread is about someone who has something to get rid of or if somebody is looking to purchase something. The issue of how the person is looking to get rid of an item can be addressed in the thread as usual.

I think that this would be an improvement to the site. It's looking to strike a difference between two distinctly different themes which have been agglomerated into the one topic. The advantages of this system are already notable in the 'Apple Notebooks' topic as well as others. Notebooks covers a number of different products. A problem with a PowerMac may have a different solution to the same problem on a MacBook Pro. Therefor the user is asked to show which model there are talking about in the title. This helps distinguishing between a vitally important area bringing more clarity to the forum. Sure there are gray areas here, what do I do if I have a very old notebook that is not in the list? But despite this, it still works.

To associate this with the trading section of the site. Someone who is selling something will go to the trading section to place a sale add. And if someone is looking to buy something they will go into place a wanted add. Two fundamentally differing themes with no clear distinction asked for.

Look at professional trading sites. For example autotradder. The user is required to say whether they are buying or selling and that it's a clear system as to what the intentions of the add are. One we should adopt here.

Frankly I would much rather buy a new laptop etc from here rather than ebay. This would be a great area of our site to improve to provide a great service to a great group of enthusiasts. At the moment it's a bit of a mash of threads with little clarity to the intention. If I had my way then I'd have lists for things like, type of product (eg. Laptop, Desktop, other) model, a box to clearly enter a price into and a currency! But I think that I'll just start with the topic of this thread!

And what's an OP?

Cheers,


Andrew

I also notice that people are sort of starting to do this themselves so there is a want to distingue two subjects.

Every one puts FS FT WTB in the title. That's good enough in my opinion. If I want to by a MBP I just search FS MPB. All you're doing is adding is more complication to a system that works nicely as it is. No need to fix what's not broken.
OP- original poster.

But not everybody puts FS and there are a good few variations for wanted. It's not exactly overcomplicating anything. It's working well in other parts of the forum. If you're taking the attitude that your expressing then why don't we get rid of it in the notebooks and desktops sections. Surely it's over complicating them as well.