For sale!

Dear Moderator and fellow members,
I wish to bring to your notice two issues which concerns me, 1) aggressive "for-sale" postings and 2) repetitive queries. I know these issues have been discussed in the past, but I would still urge you to take notice of what I would term as a dilution of the forum's objectives.

1) Aggressive "for-sales": Recently there has been flood of for sale items with blatant disregard for the guidelines suggested and driven purely by commercial interests. There are plenty of forum members who are "dealers-distributors" who must be lauded for being helpful (often suggesting equipment they have no commercial interest in) rather than aggressively marketing their own products. Similarly, members upgrading provides newbies/others to pick up equipment at great vfm. Others on the other hand seem to be only interested in selling and finding potential buyers and provide absolutely no insights about anything.

Note: Just to make my point clear, I agree that its great to have a for-sale/wanted section, the problem however is the deluge.

2) Repetitive queries: "Wanted music system/HT under Money(k)". Every forum member's time is precious and the help they provide is invaluable to people spending Money(k) or who simply want to learn. People join in, hardly read, post, grab the replies and disappear.

If all we are going to do is ask the "serious audio/video-philes" the same questions over and over again, sooner or later they would stop being regular members as they would spend time doing something else. Like one senior member mentioned to me, "whats the point?". And I am sure, at least some members would have noticed the decrease in the number of postings by senior members.

Suggestions:
1) There has been a great suggestion in another thread where (a) purely commercial vendors are charged (someone somewhere is spending money on the forum im sure, so why not?) or ask the purely commercial people to open a new forum where they can post all day long and we would visit to find out about equipment when we would like to, instead of "for-sale" posts being shoved down our throat.

2) Is it possible to start a wiki (im sure there are some free ones available), where we can keep all possible options available for Money(k) posts. Forum members can update whenever they feel a new option is available. And this forum is used for "exceptions". Would be glad to help here.

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I am a relatively new member to this community, and I cannot amply describe in words the help I have had from this wonderful forum in learning more about AV. The sole point in posting this is my concern for the av-phile community which is in any case quite small in our country. Please lets not dilute it.

Thanks for reading.

Regards,
Saikat.

Good posting and makes a lot of sense.
I am also a relatively new member in this forum though quite seasoned in other forums and owning a decent hifi system. I had a similar experience when one honourable member here pursued an item I had put for sale and at the last moment declared that he was a dealer!!! I am sure there will be at least a few people here like me who are not commercially inclined but spend a sizeable portion of their disposable incomes to build a high end system purely for the pleasure of listening to good music.
As you say rightly, repeated discussions running into several pages on similar subjects and items often become boring and so too some people's exuberance to exhibit their knowledge, especially when trying to belittle known facts. True, empty drums make the loudest noise.

> murali

Thank for your feedback. We are looking into seperating classifieds from the forum. We also plan to make the classifieds paid.

One more suggestion. How about a separate "members' systems" forum where those who wish can mention their components and accessories being used? People can share the information which I am sure will benefit those who try matching components and accessories and avoid repetitive questions and answers.

> murali

Is that the only way out? What about members taht don't have commercial interests but want to make a sale due to an upgrade or something...

I would like to add my 2 cents (Re. 0.98) to this discussion:

I completely agree that "For Sale" should be in the Classifieds section only rather than in the main forum. However, I humbly request that they remain free of charge. As kindofblue rightly points out, many esteemed forum members put up personal items for sale and this should not suffer. Or perhaps an allowance of "x" free postings per month be given for benefit of non-commercial members).

I only hope that classifieds rules will be strongly enforced. Ads not stating expected price (most important) or product history and details must be deleted right away.

I do have another suggestion: Could we have forum-wise filtering on the homepage? For example, I have absolutely no interest in Video, Car, or Home-Theater threads. I would appreciate it if I could view only Stereo or Music related posts on the homepage. If this is possible it would make browsing much easier.

Hi,

I am a relatively very new member here, but still, would like to throw my 2 cents.

Its useful to have dealers posting for sale ads, we do come to know atleast rough price range a particular product falls in. Also, a dealer being good for long time is valuable to the members. People do get good rates from some of the dealers.

I also agree that sometimes aggressive marketing becomes painful and new members could be misguided into buying a product that a dealer is trying to push. Here are a few suggestions for this:

1. At the time of registration, each member will have to declare if he's a dealer or not. A warning can also be put that a dealer can be disqualified from the forum if he does not declare that.

2. He should also put the brands he sells in his signature. This way, in every post, its indicated that the person sells the particular brand and the reader of the post will atleast be aware of this fact.

3. For every new thread initiated by a deler in the "For Sale" Section, "Sale From Dealer" can be put in the header, probably automatically.

4. Maybe in the classifieds section, the "for sale" can be divided into "For sale by individuals" and "For sale by dealers" categories.

As for people coming and going, I dont think it can be helped. I also understand those guys perspective, if I want to purchase a new car, I will go to the relevant forums and ask questions. Once my purpose is solved, I might not visit the forums again as I am not really interested in the cars like some of the people on those forums are. If I am not passionate about something, I wont go there often as I would find it a waste of time. I am passionate about music, so I visit these forums.
I do agree that people should atleast read the old posts first to find the relevant information and if not found, then only post new questions. I would do that for my car purchase

Even if people are taking help in buying equipment and disappearing, atleast there can be some satisfaction of helping someone buy a better system, and making the audiophile community grow...

No offence to anyone.. Just my 2 cents..

A very relevant post. I suggest you branch out commercial venture as Hifisale.com.

Most of the for sale listing are just not classifieds. Classifieds are generally for used stuff to enable the one time seller(not in the business) to find buyers.

I suggest if you have the manpower "to review before allowing listing of the item for sale. A purely commercial one needs to be charged.

Thank you all for your suggestions. We are looking into implementing some/most of the features here. However in the meantime I would like to see the response from Distributors/Dealers in India to my announcement at http://www.hifivision.com/announceme...ision-com.html

In case there is no response to the above announcement we may consider charging for all classifieds posted here.

Guys,
Mr. Moderator has come up with a nice plan and maybe your suggestions can help in fine tuning the policy.

Could we all please comment on the +'s and/or -'vs?

Thanks and Regards,
Saikat.