To start with, the rules on the trade forums will be handled largely at the discretion of the Trade Forum Mod . . .
Just some FYI, the moderation revision took us 3 weeks from initial drafting and passing it back and forth with staff members.
Wow, that is some interesting info. So
@Captn Norrington, the prodigal son of the trade forums, returns to Stratics within the last twenty-four hours, and this policy took three weeks to draft? So the trade forum moderator had very limited input in the policy, yet the rules will be handled at his discretion?
This new policy (which I think is chock-full of problems, and is not sustainable nor appropriate for the users of this dying forum) reeks of a complete disconnect to its user base
Users may not bump a thread more than 1 time every 48 hours.
Well, that seems pretty arbitrary. The old 24 hour rule made a lot of sense- people only need to see your thread once per day. But for 48 hours, what possible justification can there be for this in lieu of the old, tried-and-true 24 hour system?
Updates to a thread restart the 48 hour timer, for example if you update the bids in the initial post 8 hours after the thread was created, you must wait 48 hours from this point to bump the thread.
Ah, this is also nice and arbitrary, and horrifically bad for both auction runners, and auction buyers. Often times I already find myself making an entry on my personal calendar for the end-times of auctions I care about- solely as a result of the strict bumping rules. With this rule being literally doubled, I'm further discouraged from participating or holding any auction, as any auction that doesn't receive bumps in the form of bids is out of luck. Unless it seems prudent enough to break the 48 hour rule, receiving a strike, as one strike is worth your auction being seen and as a result money being made.
Updates must be meaningful and/or considerable.
Have I said the word arbitrary enough, yet? This may be the worst offender. I'm glad there are clear guidelines as to what the
moderators find
meaningful or
considerable.
No more than 3 active auctions/sales adverts in any one section of the Trade forums.
Wow, an actually reasonable change, albeit that it was targeted at single-digit users, this is probably a good change. Except for people like Brian Freud (a staff member who just yesterday said he plans to make more auction threads, instead of less, to reduce the clutter and 100+ item overload as seen in his previous auctions) and Lord Nabin who often run many large auction threads simultaneously.
But once again, even with this generally decent rule change, we're left with an obvious question- what on earth does
"active" mean? Active as in posts being made, or active in terms of
meaningful or
considerable updates/bumps/edits made by the thread's OP?
In essence, these rule changes act as if the board is inundated with so many threads, auctions, updates, and bumps, that the forum moderators cannot keep up with the deluge of posts that are taking time away from other forum activities, in which their time would be better spent. But that's not the case. Trader's Hall has something like 50 active sellers/buyers (I'm being generous with that number, with active qualifying as someone that posts once a week in actually selling or buying something, not just bids), and the Rares Collector forum has probably half of that number.
In the few weeks that Norrington was gone from the trade forum, which I assume left these forums with an interim moderator (from which I saw no posts), I never once had the need to report any post or thread for rule-breaking. With much stricter rules, what would my necessity of reporting be- a negative number?
Perhaps take a moment to self-examine, and realize that these forums represent a skeleton crew of active players, not some bustling hub for thousands of traders.
The things these new rules incentivize are:
- Posting on alternative accounts on a VPN to bump your posts more frequently, with posts disguised as questions, inquiries, etc.
- When an item sells, getting the buyer to post a meaningless post in your thread with something like "Thanks " in order to get your thread to the top, as there has been an update in the items for sale, but you the buyer are not allowed to make a new post informing prospective buyers of that, given you are likely already on a 48 hour cooldown.
- Sellers replying in-thread to posts to could easily be addressed via PMs, ICQs, etc., giving themselves another defacto bump.