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As to why Stephen gets the input I would assume it's because he now owns the suite. The decisions are his to make.
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The notion that someone can 'own' a forum is silly. Let the owner take his cut for the hassle of running the place. But for the forum members, who are in many cases individually, and certainly collectively, much more knowledgable than the owner, to be shut out of the decision making process is.....archaic, to say the least.
 
oops, Make that 100 Messages

oops, Make that 100 Messages

kevin m said:
Yes we will; it's 100 messages now.


But lots of people here aren't shooting Leicas, and aren't really making any money on what they sell. The classifieds on this board seem more like a swap meet between friends on most occasions. Between the software glitches that keep ads from appearing promptly (my last took 14 hours to show up) and the hassle of being nickled and dimed every time you want to get rid of an FSU lens or a couple of filters, this policy isn't particularly friendly.


Why can't the members of the forum have some say in something as minor as classified ad policy?
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You are right, 100 messages. I never had premium membership, being a sponsor. I incorrectly thought it was 50, so the inboxes will be upgraded to 100 messages.

Classified ad policy is not minor, as it is one of only two avenues of revenue for RFF. First you were complaining that you only paid your membership yesterday, now you are complaining about the ads not being free after your membership expires in a year.

And thru all of that RFF you seem to think that RFF is somehow responsible for how much money your make or lose with your ads. I don't think so. Looks like trolling to me. And since you were selling Leica gear not too long ago, and complaining in this thread about the high cost of $2 for people who don't sell Leicas, your comments look more than a little odd.

Stephen
 
First you were complaining that you only paid your membership yesterday...
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No, I was making a joke at my own expense.

And thru all of that RFF you seem to think that RFF is somehow responsible for how much money your make or lose with your ads. I don't think so.
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That's your interpretation. What I said is that this forum is a friendly place, and people often use the classified section as a defacto 'swap meet' for items that might not otherwise warrant a "pay" ad. It would be a shame to lose that.

Looks like trolling to me.
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No. This is a forum, Stephen. Where, within reasonable limits, people can freely exchange ideas. Unless I'm missing something.
 
Egads

Egads

Stephen - welcome to death by committee where no good deed goes unpunished. You could hand out golden eggs and someone would complain that they weren't platinum.

I hope you're the patient sort. 😀
 
CameraQuest said:
$2 is an incredible bargain compared to Ebay. Whether you advertise a $5 filter or a $5,000 Leica, your RFF ad cost is the same, with no final value fees and longer ads. If anyone prefers the free ads on other forums, that is your choice, and always has been.
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Some of us won't sell on eBay, because of the hassle involved, margin or principle.

Like everyone else who opted for premium membership, I paid for it for the additional benefits, not status.
I wished to continue unlimited free classifieds, previously *FREE* on RFF, to clear out my unneeded gear.
Other RFF members benefit from my bargains, and I benefit by getting some cash to put back into the hobby.
Of course I prefer my stuff go to fellow RFF members, but how much do you expect me to lose on every transaction?
You are in effect driving me out of your marketplace. Such strongarm tactics could drive some of us out of RFF entirely...

Christopher Platt
 
I imagine it's purely a financial thing. Look at how much revenue is created by people taking out the extended membership compared to how much dosh can be made if the ads were each charged at $2. Factoring in a possiby reduced number of ads following the introduction of the charge.

It makes Stephen's life easier too, he doesn't have to worry about subscription reminders, mailing lists etc.

I imagine Stephen's worked out which side his bread is buttered, hence the change.
 
The ads have never been "free" as such. Premium members have paid $25 for "free" ads. Under the proposed rules, once your premium membership runs out, you will be better off financially if you post 12 or less ads a year. It is only if you want to place more than 13 a year does it become more expensive. I may be wrong but there are only a very few members who post more than 12 a year. Of these few, about half have a very low or zero post count on the main forum. In other words, they are using the forum purely as a "shop" front.

So the reality of this change is that 2 perhaps 3 members may end up paying more for selling their items here. It could be considered that if you are selling more than 12 major items a year, it is not just a redistribution of forum assets. 😉 Nobody is going to lose the size of their message box and it will mark the end of the 2 tier system that many disagreed with.

What would be a shame is if it meant the end of the "closet clearance" type offers such as spare filters, hoods, flashes etc. I am sure this is not insurmountable and I will discuss it with the other mods and Stephen in another forum.

Kim
 
Hi Kim

Hi Kim

That is the case if someone did the premium thing solely for the ads and not the other benefits, or simply to donate and help the site out when it was asked for.

I think Stephen, having bought and taken over this huge responsibility of running this site has every right to try out his ideas, and alter when or as needed, but I think it will go much smoother with a lot of input up front rather than later.

Like if we discussed the 1Mb -> 150Kb file size discussion up front, we might have come to this 300Kb thing sooner rather than later.

I personally feel that individual sellers on GAS type gear sites prefer pay per period plans than pay per item plans, but it's definitely within Steven's realm to try out his pay per item only option plan.

I agree that at whether $0.25 per item, or $2.50 per item, there will be less filters, parts, cases, low-end items being sold one at a time, more in lots, which I'm OK with, but I know other folks like the small stuff that you can do on a non pay per item plan.

Other schemes out there that folks have preferred over the big sites are pay only if sold, and a % of total, often capped at a reasonable fee, or pay a fixed fee per period for unlimited or large # of ads for frequent traders.

On file sizes, a fairer plan IMHO would be x amount of storage, and y amount of bandwidth. I don't use the gallery much, but would like to, in areas that I do post images, post high res printable images on occasion, yet still use less space than the average gallery user here. With the fixed size limit on all images, that doesn't accomodate me.

I'm glad Steven and Jorge and the mods are listening rather than just doing the changes, and reacting to the fallout. Thanks for listening.

PS: Jorge, do you have a preference for George or Jorge? Thanks.

Kim Coxon said:
The ads have never been "free" as such. Premium members have paid $25 for "free" ads. Under the proposed rules, once your premium membership runs out, you will be better off financially if you post 12 or less ads a year. It is only if you want to place more than 13 a year does it become more expensive. I may be wrong but there are only a very few members who post more than 12 a year. Of these few, about half have a very low or zero post count on the main forum. In other words, they are using the forum purely as a "shop" front.

So the reality of this change is that 2 perhaps 3 members may end up paying more for selling their items here. It could be considered that if you are selling more than 12 major items a year, it is not just a redistribution of forum assets. 😉 Nobody is going to lose the size of their message box and it will mark the end of the 2 tier system that many disagreed with.

What would be a shame is if it meant the end of the "closet clearance" type offers such as spare filters, hoods, flashes etc. I am sure this is not insurmountable and I will discuss it with the other mods and Stephen in another forum.

Kim
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Kim Coxon said:
The ads have never been "free" as such. Premium members have paid $25 for "free" ads. Under the proposed rules, once your premium membership runs out, you will be better off financially if you post 12 or less ads a year. It is only if you want to place more than 13 a year does it become more expensive. I may be wrong but there are only a very few members who post more than 12 a year. Of these few, about half have a very low or zero post count on the main forum. In other words, they are using the forum purely as a "shop" front.

So the reality of this change is that 2 perhaps 3 members may end up paying more for selling their items here. It could be considered that if you are selling more than 12 major items a year, it is not just a redistribution of forum assets. 😉 Nobody is going to lose the size of their message box and it will mark the end of the 2 tier system that many disagreed with.

What would be a shame is if it meant the end of the "closet clearance" type offers such as spare filters, hoods, flashes etc. I am sure this is not insurmountable and I will discuss it with the other mods and Stephen in another forum.

Kim
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I guess that's me Kim. I have posted over 40 adds but my post count is somewhere over 800. Most of the cameras I have posted were sold and let's put it this way. I aint getting any richer from it. The high dollars items I posted ( high value to me ) didn't sell here. They went on ebay or else where. So most of the stuff I have sold here went from 20-50 bucks. It was cost effective and easyer to do with the membership.
 
Hi John,
I was thinking of you being on of the few to lose out. I didn't think of you as one who has next to no input on the site apart from the ads. Those few have perhaps less than 10 posts!.

There are likely to be changes, it is the nature of things. I believe Stephen is listening and has started to announce changes before they happen. Beyond that, I am not in a position to speak for him. With any change, they be be somme who support that change, some who dislike it and some who are ambivalent. However the discussion does need to be based on fact rather than supposition. There were a number of posts saying that those who had supported the site with premium membership would suddenly have to start paying for ads and would therefore be worse off. That simply isn't true. They will be able to place free ads until their supscription runs out and thereafter, their total annual bill is likely to be less than it is now apart from a very few exceptions like John.

As to PM limits, noone will suffer under the present proposal and very many will gain. You can always elect to receive messages by email and you email address is not visible to the sender. As to file size, it is a difficult call. From my experience on my website, storage is not too great a problem but bandwidth is especially on such an active forum. I have no wish to stifle discussion on the matter but was purely pointing out that the changes to the ads were perhaps being "misrepresented". 😉

Kim

flashover said:
I guess that's me Kim. I have posted over 40 adds but my post count is somewhere over 800. Most of the cameras I have posted were sold and let's put it this way. I aint getting any richer from it. The high dollars items I posted ( high value to me ) didn't sell here. They went on ebay or else where. So most of the stuff I have sold here went from 20-50 bucks. It was cost effective and easyer to do with the membership.
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To clarify, I joined RFF because supporting my community
is the right thing to do.
Free classifieds was an enhancement I only recently
started to take advantage of.

So now the only ones supporting the RFF community
will be those selling stuff?
What kind of community is that?

Christopher Platt
 
ChrisPlatt said:
Really? IIRC advertisers only came along recently in RFF's history.
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Only recently, yes. However, they have something to add to the site as well. I don't see why the presence of advertisers should in any way jeopardise rff. It could happen, sure, but I doubt it will. If it happens, people will be leaving, which advertisers are loath to see. And sofar I have yet to see any interference by the advertisers with the running of the site, the contents of the forums or the opinions and comments of the visitors being censored in any way on instigation of the advertisers.
 
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