I'm gonna chime in here just a touch.
With trade going on the forums we've consistently seen several types of complaints. Usually it's people "bumping" posts too often or the Mixed content you often get when people are posting large numbers of items, "That belongs in Rares Trade/Non-Rares". You guys don't get to see these post reports, but what does it mean when the same complaint or issue pops up over and over? Usually it means there is something that needs improved.
With the later common complaint, it's often because the Trade Boards aren't really categorized well, and to break things down further we'd have to look at either adding a ton of Sub-Forums to act as Categories or a Lot of Pre-fixes. For example, how many basic categories of Rares are there? Sever Birth, Unique Items, Global Event Arc items, EM Event Items. Some of these like the EM Event Items can be broken down further between the Vending Machine Drops and the Limited Count drops. Non-Rares? You have resources, crafted items, decorations people selling houses, pets etc.
Sure you can search for a specific item you are looking for or randomly browse the posts, but how many are going to be active threads, or closed. Was there not a buyer and the seller got rid of it in game?
The idea behind this Classifieds System is to allow someone to create a sell offer, stick it in a category, and then just wait for the most part. The listing gets 7 days then has to be renewed, active and closed sells are separated and can't be bumped back to the first page by someone asking a question, and there is no need for the seller to bump the listing at all since it's clearly marked if it's active or not.
For buyers if they know they are looking for a specific type of item, be it Jewelry, they can go and with one click see only active listing for jewelry for sale. The same would hold true for Armor, Weapons, Resources, Pets, Houses, various categories of rares as well.
When it came down to it, the other option which was to tighten up and rules and create more categories through forums and pre-fixes would have ended up not solving the more common issues we have reported, and only increase the amount of oversight required of the Trade Boards, and of course quite possibly resulted more punishments being handed out to the community for breeching the tightened rules the Classifieds system will make unnecessary.
