Market Rule Change - Asking Users to Post on Threads [Clarified 4/5/2015]

http://www.sythe.org/showthread.php?p=14503906#post14503906

Just to raise awareness of a rule change. Do not ask people to post on your Gold/Item thread with anything other than a vouch. This rule is currently being enforced in the Gold/Item Exchange, but has applications across the market. Asking users to post spam your thread is Excessive Bumping / Spam and will be dealt with accordingly.

To clarify, order forms are still allowed. You may not, however, require or request an order form to be placed. You may include the order form on your thread, at which point customers can post it under their own volition.

Bottom Line: If you are asking other users to post useless information on your threads, you will be infracted.

 

But asking for a vouch on said thread is still a way around the 8 hour bump rule, and those businesses that are selling gold every couple of minutes will still be the same 4-7 threads being bumped more then once an hour easily. When you could be asking for vouches where they belong on the vouch forum only?

 

This was discussed, but vouches posted within their relevant threads provide Sythe users / browsers with important information. It's not spam, it's a real review of the service advertised.

If vouch threads are simply combined into one, then they become much more commoditized. A vouch for a Bond trade becomes almost equal to one for a 1,000M RS3 trade. It can be difficult to navigate around vouch threads and separate relevant feedback from irrelevant feedback.

That being said, we do not want users to be dominating forums simply due to their status or activity. If it appears that certain users' threads are dominating (always @ the top) by abusing this rule, then we will adjust it to allow for a more equal playing field.

 

What happens in the instance that someone posts an order form on one of my business threads, but I didn't ask them to do so. How can I proove that they did that without me asking them to do so?

 

You don't want users dominating the market by their activity/availability? Why not? It's a common technique by high-end franchises that allow their service to be available for 24 hours like McDonalds for example. You're trying to create an equal playing field by undermining the hard work and success these big businesses accomplished.

It's interesting that you would allow vouches to bypass the limit, considering both are equivalent in their purpose.

 

I feel like this is going to be hard to enforce. As TBGH mentioned, people are really dumb. Even if the first line of your thread says "DO NOT POST ON THIS THREAD - ADD MY SKYPE INSTEAD," plenty of people will post on the thread anyway. And then there's the issue that people will just ask their customers to post nooby things like "is this you talking to me on skype?" on their threads, which you can't really blame nooby users for. Lastly, they may just ask people to post "trading 100m" and count that as a vouch just to bypass the limit (and to get more vouches, even if the trades go wrong).

 

A vouch is for a completed service. If we don't have proof of the OP asking for the posts to be made, we can simply remove them without infracting if they are spam. It will become very obvious who is abusing the system. Also, by removing the spam posts, there is little incentive to try this strategy.

Report the Spam and moderators will deal with it accordingly. Our job is to remove irrelevant / useless posts from the forum. The posts I am discussing right now are 100% Spam by any measure. They contribute nothing to the forums and are used purely to circumvent bump timers + build post count on threads.

We're also going to be enforcing this only on forums where it is currently a problem. Mainly Gold/Item, Upgrades section, and perhaps some LoL Markets. We don't want to interfere with newer users using the forums to interact.

We're just removing posts which contribute nothing to the forums. Vouches serve as a guide to other users on which services to use. Posting "Talking on Live Chat" 100 times a day does absolutely nothing.

 

I've seen people using vouches for one thing on a different thread. Is this allowed? Reading through what you wrote, this probably shouldn't be either. ie using a bond vouch to bump a goldselling thread.

 

This is not allowed either. We will delete the posts if they are reported, and if a user is constantly directing users to vouch on the wrong page, we will infract.

 

Is this going to be moved or announced on gold buying | selling section?
i doubt majority of gold merchers swappers etc, visit the market section.

 

People post on my threads without me asking to saying "added on skype" or "talking on skype about...."

I cant do anything about that :s

 

It's stickied on all the Gold/Item Forums. I agree an announcement may help with communicating the message.

You will not be punished for people posting on your thread, unless you specifically are asking them to. If it gets out of hand we will just remove the spam.

 

a good, common sense update. nice =)

 

Would it be possible to add something that only the creator of the thread could bump it?
and if it is would it only work on new threads or this is something that can't be done?

 

What's to stop good shops from just taking the infractions and keep doing it? If they don't stop will you just pile them with infractions, or maybe just temp ban them?

 

Infractions quickly lead to temporary bans, it will not be worthwhile.

 

You say it may be enforced in other forums, but is this rule only valid so far in the gold/item exchanging forums?

 

Finally something to clean up the market section, it's so full of spam lol. Great addition R2.

As of right now I believe it only pertains to those sections, I hope it is implemented to others soon.

 

You shouldn't be asking your customers to make useless posts on your thread, period. Confirming identities should be done through PM.

 

1) Is this going to be enforced on other sections which are less active? Such as questing/torsos or fire capes capes etc.

2) If vouches are the only way to circumvent the 8hr bump rule without being punished, what's the point in vouch threads? Everyone would be better off not using a vouch thread. If it's enforced in my section I will definitely consider abandoning my vouch thread.

3) I have the format on my thread for customers to fill in because it prompts them to give me all the info I need about their order without having to manually ask them a number of questions. Would I have to remove that (I work in the questing/torsos section)?

4) I don't really understand this point. A vouch thread contains nothing but vouches whereas a sales thread contains everything pertaining to the sale, it's not that difficult to read through it and find the meaningful vouches. Sythe.org has always had the mindset of "You look for the quality of a seller's vouches, not the quantity", why is this mindset not being applied anymore?