I Forgot To Read The Rules

latzke · September 2, 2005

Moderator edited the title of this thread to read "I Forgot To Read The Rules" and stripped the (my) content from this post. I ask, "What rules?" I looked in the places I thought would cover rules/etiquette/etc...

- forum terms and conditions

- Buy And Sell Forum Specific Rules

- Help

...and was unable to find anything about restrictions on posting to the buy/sell forum. Given that I didn't receive an email to verify my email address (which I'm used to forums doing to keep trolls/bots/etc away) I reasoned that maybe there was an issue along the way with such an email (sending failure, cought by SPAM filter) and that was the issue.

I didn't see any restrictions on new memebers, heck the Buy And Sell Forum Specific Rules section says the following, which implies the opposite:

If you are a new member to the LOC and are trying to sell something please be as specific as possible to every detail possible of the product.

If you're going to have rules (whatver they are, it's your right to have them), please at least make them easy to find and obvious. Good car forums I'm familiar with, like NSX Prime, do a pretty good job of making any restrictions obvious.

I would suggest following suit and putting whatever rules you have about classifieds into the threads I linked to above...unless you like making it non-obvious so you can put people like me in their place (which would be a rare mindset for a forum admin/moderator).

Regards,

Craig

Edited September 3, 2005 by latzke

timothy · September 3, 2005

If I had the money I would buy it. car looks great, seems like a good price. That car should sell. Good luck!

Timothy

dcfish · September 3, 2005

You should clear this kind of advertising with one of the moderators here. I think you have to have over 20 contributing posts on these forums or you have to be a gold member to sell.:whistles:

VERY RIGHT

Edited September 3, 2005 by SKperformance

bartkat · September 3, 2005

Damn, I was gonna refer that car to someone at the AF Academy, but I didn't copy it down. :blink:

latzke · September 3, 2005

You should clear this kind of advertising with one of the moderators here. I think you have to have over 20 contributing posts on these forums or you have to be a gold member to sell.:whistles:

Too bad they fail to mention this anywhere where I think it would be obvious. Hopefully they'll start per my suggestion.

latzke · September 3, 2005

BTW, I did see this rule...

We enforce a very strict policy regarding solicitation of our membership by Forum participants except in those Forum sections where advertising is expressly permitted.

...but it was a little hard to post in the buy/sell forum. I figured my post would likely be moved (without leaving shadow) to the buy/sell forum and not completely censored. This is the first time EVER, on ANY forum that I've had a post censored/edited by a moderator/admin. Seemed a little overboard.

- Craig

latzke · September 3, 2005

Damn, I was gonna refer that car to someone at the AF Academy, but I didn't copy it down.

←

Well, you could PM me to ask for info, but I wouldn't be able to PM back:

Sorry, an error occurred. If you are unsure on how to use a feature, or don't know why you got this error message, try looking through the help files for more information.
The error returned was:

You are not allowed to use the messenger feature on this board

Looking in the "help" section, as suggested by this error message, I'm not able to determine why I'm not able to PM. Another suggestion to admin/moderators would be to edit these types of error messages so they're a little more useful. With no documented reason (that I can find) I'm inclined to think the board is broken.

SKperformance · September 3, 2005

You know how you couldn't post in the buy and sell section,did that not tip you off that a new memebr cannot post there?

Then the header on the page

If your status is New Club Member then you are not allowed to post in this forum. You must make a contribution to the forums before you can post here. When you have made enough posts, your status will change, and you will be allowed to post. This has become necessary due to the number of people registering purely to sell, and not contributing to our community

So latze you are here to sell a car, unfortunatly that kind of membership is not wanted.

Either contribute as a member or become a gold member to bypass the restrictions.

Otherwise .....i am sorry find you local auto trader and list your car for $30 .

latzke · September 3, 2005

Otherwise .....i am sorry find you local auto trader and list your car for $30.

Done (original post linked to one of these online classified ads). I just thought someone here might be interested in a rare car at a good price. I'm not sure why it's such a bad thing to have people registering just to sell cars (people do it on NSX Prime all the time...and we like it cause it helps us find good deals on the kind of car we like), but that's your choice.

BTW, I did go back and scan for the text you posted above in red. Sorry I missed it (must have thought it was part of the banner ad). My suggestion to include this info in more than one place (help, forum rules) is still one I would make.

Thanks for your help.

SKperformance · September 4, 2005

thanks for the feedback ,i will see how it can be made to be more noticable as it is somewhat blended into the banner.

Speaklife · September 4, 2005

thanks for the feedback ,i will see how it can be made to be more noticable as it is somewhat blended into the banner.

←

Hello Mr. Management LOL! I like this forum. You guys are very informative. Being a woman, and not know a whole lot about cars, this will now be the first place I come to ask before I go shopping for stuff for my new 2005 Lexus ES 330. It looks like you guys have been here a long time. Thanks again for this forum.

steviej · September 6, 2005

Well, you could PM me to ask for info, but I wouldn't be able to PM back:

←

that is not quite right either. it would be pointless to PM you, because you wouldn't be able to access the function to even read the PM. Post count must be above 20.

As for this site allowing people to just sign up and sell would be like handing out a complimentary member list complete with email addresses upon your electonically signing the membership registration agreement.

We would not do our members like that.

Members can sell when they have made a suitable contribution to the site, as you will find out. You want to join and sell.........try eBay.

steviej

latzke · September 6, 2005

that is not quite right either. it would be pointless to PM you, because you wouldn't be able to access the function to even read the PM. Post count must be above 20.

That's quite fine/OK. It's an uncommon choice in my experience, but your choice none-the-less. It's your board and thus (rightly) your rules.

My real beef is that these things are poorly documented (this thread, and others like it, are the only places I see the 20-post-count limitation mentioned). The PM Section of the Help area doesn't document it, the error message given the user does't document, nothing about it in the For Visitors and New Users area, etc.

Had I been able to find this information, I would never have posted this topic/thread, and never (wrongly) accused of "forgetting to read the rules."

As for this site allowing people to just sign up and sell would be like handing out a complimentary member list complete with email addresses upon your electonically signing the membership registration agreement.

Profiles can be viewed by members and non-members, logged in or not. I don't think it would be difficult to harvest contact information (email addresses from MSN messenger field, home page URLs, IM information, etc) that people have made available in their profiles with a few simple scripts. I assume that being able to send someone a PM or email through the board doesn't give the sender the email address of the recipient. While annoying (one could send emails to people), that is much different (and not inclusive of) revealing more personal/contact info than looking at profiles.

SW03ES · September 7, 2005

Everything thats done on this board as far as posting guidelines and rules go comes from past experience. The restriction on posting items for sale came from people joining for the sake of selling something then dissapearing leaving our contributing members out their money with no way to contact the sellers. When contributing members sell they have their image to consider, as well as their placement in a community they value. People who post just for the sake of selling have no such considerations.

The PM restriction came about because people would joint just to spam PM everyone on the board and it became an issue for our contributing members.

I think we've been more than open about this whole thing. If you'd like to stick around and become a member of our community you're welcome to, but I'm personally growing tired of hosting an open discussion about the grievances of someone that has never posted on our forums before, and probably never will again. We run our site our way, and it works for our 20,000 some members.

If you want to send comments to the administrators feel free, you can email us all through the forum system. If not, then I believe our relationship is concluded and you should head back to NSX Prime.