Limited Sales period

[thirdcrank]

Only guessing but I fancy quite a lot of advertisers join for that purpose only then don't linger. I can imagine that getting a belated cash offer for some heirloom you had given up hope of selling might be an occasional pleasant surprise but I suspect there would be more cases of would-be buyers vainly trying to contact somebody who had no further dealings with the forum.

There's a wider problem here of matching unwanted junk with potential new owners. If there was a magic way of cataloguing and locating all the too-good-to-throw-away stuff everybody had hidden away somewhere and displaying it in a form which was quickly accessible by others, people like me would quickly have more room.

[gaz]

Can anyone say exactly why the posts are deleted?

At present those are the terms and conditions and that is reason enough for the posts to be deleted.

As a Seller if I post an item in the expectation that "Once a topic has become inactive for 30 days it will be automatically deleted", that is exactly what should happen.

Should there be a future change then good manners would dictate that For Sale ads posted before that date continue to be deleted in accordance with the rules in force at the time that they were first posted.

[Cyril Haearn]

Maybe they could be archived, and still accesible
Could be fascinating to read 10-year old sale offers when one has nothing else to do

[thirdcrank]

Maybe they could be archived, and still accesible
Could be fascinating to read 10-year old sale offers when one has nothing else to do

The possibility of decades-old FOR SALE ads being resurected must surely be enough to sway this in favour of no change.

[reohn2]

This is the way we lost the long-running Primus clip thread which began life as an ad, although I cannot remember whether someone had one for sale, wanted to buy one, or whether the item in question was something completely different.

Ah,yes,the Primus stove thread,very good for the laughing muscles

I've no objections to extending the the for sale time.

[gaz]

The possibility of decades-old FOR SALE ads being resurected must surely be enough to sway this in favour of no change.

Whilst in favour of "no change" perhaps there is a way to "Auto-Lock" threads after 30 days inactivity rather than auto-deleting them, preserving their content for posterity whilst preventing resurrection.

It would still be possible to PM the seller to see if the item in the decades-old ad remained available for purchase .

[horizon]

There might be a mis-perception here in that items offered for sale are common or commonly illustrated on the web by manufacturers and retailers. The fact is that owners often provide excellent photos (for obvious reasons) which the retailer doesn't. The For Sale section is really informative and a good reference point for details and likely prices.

Ebay is another source of such information but our forum is a specialist site with almost all ads being relevant to the forum. And yes, ebay deletes its photos and then its ads quite quickly.

I'm still not quite sure what the problem is except for a seller who may wish to retain some privacy.

[drossall]

Only guessing but I fancy quite a lot of advertisers join for that purpose only then don't linger.

There's a lot to be said for buying from people with loads of posts, and often with whom you have had discussions on varied topics, so you "know" them at least virtually.

There's a wider problem here of matching unwanted junk with potential new owners. If there was a magic way of cataloguing and locating all the too-good-to-throw-away stuff everybody had hidden away somewhere and displaying it in a form which was quickly accessible by others, people like me would quickly have more room.

There is "Offered for free". Anything more systematic would imply people hanging on to stuff indefinitely, until it were needed, which rather goes against your aim of disposing of it quickly, I think.

[thirdcrank]

I've generally given stuff away, but in response to WANTED ads, rather than actively advertising it. I only remember putting a price on something once and that was a BoB Yak trailer in good condition. I've usually asked for the cost of postage to be donated to charity. A couple of recipients have insisted on paying me and one bought some second-hand hymnbooks for the church where he was the organist when I declined dosh for something that was no longer any use to me (a set of roofbars specific to a particular model of car.) A couple of times when I've advertised for hard-to-find stuff on here, or previously in the CTC mag, generous people have given me their stuff. It's sometimes weird how people act. Their was a WANTED ad for a LH crank of a particular model and I replied saying I had a brand new one which I would give away and I never received a reply. And once I received quite a snide PM in response to another offer.

In reality, I'm wary of selling stuff online to avoid the hassle.

More recently, matching memory to stock has been more of a problem. A couple of years ago, somebody advertised for some Campag cones of a type which I'd had an NOS pair stored unused since the late 1950's. I coulddn't find them so they must have gone in one of my sporadic clear-outs. Last year, it was the fittings for an unused Thule folding roofbox I couldn't find. And so on.

On reflection, I don't really know why I posted on this thread. As ever, my only concern is to minimise the work for the forum team and I'd vote to support that.

[Graham]

I'm still not quite sure what the problem is except for a seller who may wish to retain some privacy.

At present I receive a low, number of requests/queries :
"How do I delete my Small Ad?" or
"Please delete my Small Ad - item sold now."

These are from people who are either not familiar with the auto-delete facility and/or who have not read the instructions.

An OP cannot delete a topic once someone else has replied. It is either a manual delete by a Moderator or the auto-delete function.

I prefer the auto-delete.
I prefer not to have an endless accumulation of historic small ads.

[horizon]

Am I right in thinking that threads in People, events and rides are deleted after one year?

Are there any other auto-deleted sections?

[Graham]

Am I right in thinking that threads in People, events and rides are deleted after one year?

Yes, again, much of this content becomes redundant after a reasonable period.

Are there any other auto-deleted sections?

I don't think so.

[gaz]

Are there any other auto-deleted sections?

The Test board.

The Charity Rides / Not-for-profit organised rides board also had auto-deletion, until the board was permanently deleted.

There wasn't much for sale on 14 Sept 2004.

[thirdcrank]

I'm still not quite sure what the problem is except for a seller who may wish to retain some privacy.

At present I receive a low, number of requests/queries :
"How do I delete my Small Ad?" or
"Please delete my Small Ad - item sold now."

These are from people who are either not familiar with the auto-delete facility and/or who have not read the instructions.

An OP cannot delete a topic once someone else has replied. It is either a manual delete by a Moderator or the auto-delete function.

I prefer the auto-delete.
I prefer not to have an endless accumulation of historic small ads.

This gives a clue to the potential frustration for would-be buyers as an ad for an apparently unsold item grew older. Even with the auto-delete, we see the occasional grumble when a successful advertiser has not updated the thread. It's best, of course, when they update the thread title. Whether that annoyance leads to more work resolving complaints I don't know, but I could see the likelihood of more and for very little communal benefit. Unless the software were to be altered in other ways, I see other concerns eg once you have posted on a thread, it's obviously included in your list of threads. Just one more thing to disentangle when searching for something you posted and cannot find. (I once posted something witty about the differeance between a pedlar and a hawker in response IIRC to a someone's spelling being corrected over the difference between a pedlar and a pedaller. It disappeared, presumably through the auto-delete and the world is no poorer for the loss.)

On the matter of other old stuff not being auto-deleted it's not usually so dependent on the continued forum presence of the poster ie, if you want to know if honk's bike is still for sale, you generally need honk to reply, even if that's only so he can be admonished for not updating his ad. If you want to query his method for removing cotter pins (probably more Baz than Honk) then others might well be able to help.

[horizon]

I feel myself repeating myself so for the sake of argument I would like to propose that the auto-delete is extended to 90 days - a poll on the matter would be appreciated. I would like one year but I don't sense much support for that. This is as a compromise as it doesn't really satisfy either party wholly but it's not bad IMV.

Now back to the issues:

thirdcrank: I concur with many of your comments and I can see the downsides of retaining small ads (some not so small by the way and others though small, potentially very interesting). OTOH it's a mine of useful information and illustrations. I don't know of a way of retaining that while getting rid of the clutter - maybe locking the threads after one month? To my mind, it's a section that is vastly more useful than others and I would happily see thousands of posts deleted on other sections (not my own of course ) rather than these. And as a riposte to the problem of disappearing thread owners, once their posting has gone so has the information - they aren't going to be coming back with that picture of a rare 1950s tourer and neither are they going to respond to requests as they are no longer on the forum.

BTW, although I have raised this issue now, it's been simmering for a long time having often just missed what I was looking for (not necessarily actually to buy but even that sometimes). I certainly value the discussion and would prefer it not to be dismissed as "that's what we do here".