Thanks & good riddance to that ad!

Sorry about that Upfromone. Also checked here, no PM.

We try to immediately delete the posters who don't meet rules. I urge you all to NOT purchase goods from those who have not been actively involved in the forum and who do not follow the rules.

Makes for a better community for all of us.

Best, PP

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Cervelo R3, Campagnolo Chorus/Record mix... pastatrails.blogspot.com
And you can call me Macktastik Honey Pete Kicks, thank you.

Sorry for chiming in a little late, but this forum has been crashing the display driver on my netbook ever since those new popup ads made their appearance.

PP, that is simply not true.

There are several members who keep posting in the for sale topic that have a zero post count, or a way too low post count. Their posts may get deleted, but their account remains.

The same thing happened here.
This guy actually managed to rip off another member a few weeks earlier (new member, can't remember nick, or where he posted about it)

I mentioned this (maybe even more than once) when I reported one of his several posts in the for sale topic, but apparently it took until now for his account to be deleted.

Also the mods should take a good look at all the rules, and note that there's a rule against commercial offerings. Yet I see people like daytona89 and ferrarista (I've seen him post 13 for sale topics at once) flood post whole shop inventories, without repercussions.

Lastly, I would consider raising the bar. I have seen plenty of people that go into the Gallery forum, and just post "nice bike" in as many threads as it takes to get to 30. I don't think 100 posts is too much to ask, quite frankly. Or, what would be ideal, is if you had to wait a month after your 30th post, to post a for sale topic (no idea if this is technically possible.) But for starters, just make it impossible to post in the for sale forum with an insufficient post count. It is easily implemented in the forum software. I have no idea why this still hasn't happened.

Sorry for going off topic, but now that my display driver doesn't crash I figured I'd make the most of it

Actually, parameters can be set for certain forums.
Since the For Sale section is actually a forum (f=5 in the url), perhaps parameters can be set specific to that forum.

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Exp001

Case in point;

dj8jan

5 posts total, 5 posts in the for sale topic, and many more removed.
This has been going on for months now, and yet his account remains active.

I'm amazed how many educated people still fall for that "such a good deal!" type of stuff... just do the research, and, most importantly, don't rush. Another example - recently, here was a Look 695 frameset posted for sale for an excellent price, but the seller didn't have any posting history on WW whatsoever (I think, his name was told to be "Ben Marcelo" while email was bmcnine9 at yahoo or smthg like that). First, I googled for that email, which revealed another posting on other forum with an MTB listed for sale, but nothing more, which made me already alerted more than usual. Also, there were some Facebook profiles with name "Ben Marcelo", but none would correspond to a bicycle frame seller, but I'd guess, nowadays, just about any person active online has some stuff on social networks which shouldn't be kept too secret when a deal of 1500 GBP or more is about to be done.

So I dropped him an email with some more detailed questions which, at first glance, he answered pretty thoroughly (such as saddle to BB drop etc). Then, I asked for some more pictures of the frameset, as only one was provided in the sales topic, and, preferably, with a newspaper in the background, which would indicate the pictures are new ones (another way is to look at EXIF info of jpg's, these actually can reveal quite a lot whether the picture isn't simply stolen from the web).

When he replied "do you want to read the newspaper or buy the frame", it was all clear to me and I simply stopped the communication.

Unfortunately, it looked like someone else here still did fall for that, as it was posted later that "Ben Marcelo never ships the frameset".

Just don't let the rush take over your judgment, guys.

Just an idea from another forum I'm a member on, if you want to sell anything you have to include a picture with a piece of paper stating the days date along with you username. A good way I think of proving the item is available and indeed genuine.

@Mackers, apologies for not getting back to you sooner. Fair enough on the users. I did say we try. Sometimes it takes a while (the user in question, dj8jan is now banned by the way).

As to some of the posters that one might consider as posting "commercially", we usually reach out to them to ascertain how they came into possession of the goods. Sometimes we allow, other times we ask them to take their sales posts down.

We also do delete nonsensical posts/pm/warn/ban a number of posters involved in trying to get their post counts up.

Again, I concur that modding is an imperfect science and does not always work out the way we would like.

All meant in a constructive and non-polemic spirit (as was your post, for which I thank you).

We certainly can do better, and attempt to do so.

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Cervelo R3, Campagnolo Chorus/Record mix... pastatrails.blogspot.com
And you can call me Macktastik Honey Pete Kicks, thank you.

So why is there no post count based posting restriction on the for sale forum?

The forum software supports it, and it would definitely stop 99% of the nuissance posters.

Was not aware of this, looking into it. Thanks.

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Cervelo R3, Campagnolo Chorus/Record mix... pastatrails.blogspot.com
And you can call me Macktastik Honey Pete Kicks, thank you.

@Powerful Pete,

set it to 100 minimum post count, problem fixed.

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Noted, but not sure we have the modding rights to do that (very long story). We are looking into it.

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Cervelo R3, Campagnolo Chorus/Record mix... pastatrails.blogspot.com
And you can call me Macktastik Honey Pete Kicks, thank you.

You will need admin permissions.

Admin is Florian, who isn't around much... if at all. It takes a while to contact him and get him to do some work on the forum.

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Exp001

sorry, but that 100 number seems arbitrary -- some users have been around for a while and just don't post as much (but do a lot of admiring), can't we do some combination of registration time + post count? it seems way too easy to game that by posting a bunch of "nice bike!" comments without actually contributing much...