cv_rider
Junior Member
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2008
- Messages
- 819
- Reaction score
- 3
- Points
- 0
- Location
- Danville, CA Bay Area
So I was posting up a classified ad of my bike on Craigslist, which I've decided to sell. My writeup was fairly lengthy, discussing the general merits of the FZ6, some details around the mods I'd done, condition of the bike, some competitive analysis of what similar bikes people may consider, a bit on why I'm selling it. I'm in marketing, so I guess it is in my blood to be wordy, although I felt everything I had written was fair, valuable, interesting, and useful to a prospective buyer.
What I found was that Craigslist has a feature where readers can "flag" ads they don't like, and if enough of them do it, the ad is automatically removed. I suppose the original intent was to flag people abusing with scams, spammers, etc. But it has evolved to there being an unwritten convention of what a Craigslist classified ad looks like, and if you end up straying from that format, users rise up against your ad and delete it. This behavior is apparently particularly prevalent in the motorcycle classifieds.
So I got an automatic note from Craigslist saying this had happened, and it pointed me to a FAQ and forum for more information. You can post questions to the forum (which is just volunteer users) and ask why it might have been deleted. I did this, and numerous volunteers flamed me in quite a rude manner for being so wordy. I was happy to at least get an idea of what was wrong with my ad so I could repost it.
But I did walk away from the whole experienced sort of puzzled by what the Craigslist community is all about.
* First: why does anyone care if my ad is wordy? If it's too long, don't read it. It's to my own disadvantage if I write so much that no one bothers to read it through to the end to get my contact information. It's not like my wordy ad is crowding out some other ad, as a large ad in a newspaper might do. But the Craigslist community seems offended by wordy ads.
* Second: who are the people in this forum that helped me understand why my ad was flagged? I was grateful to them as they enabled me to keep using the site, but I couldn't understand why they would bother. They were rude to me, and from the tone of other threads about other posts, it looked like in general, the whole forum was some kind of flame-fest and pretty contentious. How much fun is that? Are these people that get off on being more knowledgeable than the questioner and denigrating them for it? It was the only answer I could think of.
So I did learn some things about Craigslist, and discovered a whole new usage model of the internet community. Nothing like the fine folks who inhabit this site!
What I found was that Craigslist has a feature where readers can "flag" ads they don't like, and if enough of them do it, the ad is automatically removed. I suppose the original intent was to flag people abusing with scams, spammers, etc. But it has evolved to there being an unwritten convention of what a Craigslist classified ad looks like, and if you end up straying from that format, users rise up against your ad and delete it. This behavior is apparently particularly prevalent in the motorcycle classifieds.
So I got an automatic note from Craigslist saying this had happened, and it pointed me to a FAQ and forum for more information. You can post questions to the forum (which is just volunteer users) and ask why it might have been deleted. I did this, and numerous volunteers flamed me in quite a rude manner for being so wordy. I was happy to at least get an idea of what was wrong with my ad so I could repost it.
But I did walk away from the whole experienced sort of puzzled by what the Craigslist community is all about.
* First: why does anyone care if my ad is wordy? If it's too long, don't read it. It's to my own disadvantage if I write so much that no one bothers to read it through to the end to get my contact information. It's not like my wordy ad is crowding out some other ad, as a large ad in a newspaper might do. But the Craigslist community seems offended by wordy ads.
* Second: who are the people in this forum that helped me understand why my ad was flagged? I was grateful to them as they enabled me to keep using the site, but I couldn't understand why they would bother. They were rude to me, and from the tone of other threads about other posts, it looked like in general, the whole forum was some kind of flame-fest and pretty contentious. How much fun is that? Are these people that get off on being more knowledgeable than the questioner and denigrating them for it? It was the only answer I could think of.
So I did learn some things about Craigslist, and discovered a whole new usage model of the internet community. Nothing like the fine folks who inhabit this site!