Currently it's entered by the thread starter. It will be automated later, but that's not done yet. Probably just create separate sale threads. Also... just FYI for everyone, I made a change so threads that have a specific end date assigned are moved to the top of the forum (under stickies) during the last hour of their sale.
I'm not talking about giving away review copies. I'm talking about the buyers who want to leave positive or negative feedback in the thread either to recommend the seller or warn others of a bad deal. iTrader is extremely limited. There is not enough room to leave details when a deal goes wrong. iTrader is not a form of review, it's just limited and general feedback. And when people want to leave real reviews, now unfortunately they have to take an extra step if the OP chose to have the thread closed. So I was simply telling them how to go about it so we don't end up in a situation where people get scammed and have no way to tell people in the thread about the problems when iTrader won't suffice. It's not quite the same as when the OP asks us to close a thread for them. In that case, the moderators make a decision about whether or not to close it. For example, an OP can't get a thread closed because they're getting negative reviews and want to stop them. We'll simply say no in cases like that. But in either of those scenarios, people could always ask us to re-open them, and we will re-open them for users to post feedback on the deal. That aspect is nothing new. We're just going to see more of that forced now as more threads are closed.
Another idea would be to not immediately close threads that are set to auto-close. We could auto-close them like 8 or 24 hours after the sale ends instead of immediately?
Might work if there were some kind of announcement automatically, but otherwise it would really do nothing to solve the problem. If those who took part in the thread don't know it's going to close (like seeing the announcement in the thread through their subscriptions), then they'd have no idea they have to leave feedback that quickly. And not all deals are finished that quickly - it would be irresponsible for any member to leave quick feedback in a thread when the deal could still either go wrong (after positive feedback) or be worked out (after negative feedback) since they have the limited edit window (which is a good thing). Even with an announcement of some kind there's an issue of subscriptions so they'd notice -- if they're following the BST rules, a lot of people wouldn't have responded in the thread at all, so they'd have to remember to manually subscribe to each deal thread to see that announcement (pain in the ass if you follow the rules while taking part in a lot of deals).
Thanks for a great response. But my condition is different. Suppose there is a scenario like this(I assureI don't do it ever) : I first open a thread and ask ppl to do forum posting (this catches the eyes of ppl a lot and within a day I get 50 posters). I make some fake reviews via friends. Then ask the Mods to close the thread. Now, the forum posters realize they r scammed. But they can't leave a review. So whats their backup??? And the thing abt reviews appending to the first post was not just for review of the product. It could also be reviews about the service. Like forum poosters give +ve or -ve review to them, PS: Don't think I am totally into forum posting. Its the only thing I can remember rt now
The people you scammed would report the thread and have a mod re-open it so they could leave their honest review about your scammy services. At least that's what I've gleaned from the above! PS. To the admin, really nice stuff you've been doing.
There is a field called "Additional comments: Visible to buyer, seller and staff only" and it has a lot of room for big reviews. Now if this is made public, itrader will be a lot more useful
If that were made public and made more easily accessible like automatically attaching them to the threads publicly as comments or something (since many people know iTrader's a joke anyway and don't go checking them all now - which is actually smart since it can be ridiculously misleading when people have built up dozens of iTraders with cheap crap just to look good via iTrader), then yes, that would solve the problem.
Hey. This is an awesome implementation dp. Do you know if you can bring back the thread bumping? I don't see that many sales going through in the forums because they all get buried... Btw, I'm not the only one who sees this trend. Anyways thanks for this. its really great.
I agree, thread bumping should be allowed but only once... anything more than that is pointless because whatever is being sold is obviously not wanted.
Shawn please consider my request to in Marketplace under webhosting,now members can open a topic daily to sell there hosting pack make this feature that member can open a one topic only in 7days,mean time they cant able to open a topic untill the 7 day finishes thanks for giveing such a great forum
Wow, I just noticed this yesterday in the Marketplace & I'm so happy with everything that's been added so far! I'm so excited with the changes, I can't wait to try them out myself. Hmm, suggestions? It would be great if replies to Marketplace threads have the option to specify if it is a review (probably a radio button in the quick reply box that we could just "check"), then if specified that it is so (of course, specifying is only optional) - we get to choose from a drop down list with the following choices: "Positive, Neutral, Negative". Then, the title of the review / reply would probably have a thumbs-up icon automatically added. But it doesn't matter if it adds that^, the point is, it would be great if the total number of positive & negative reviews for that certain thread gets reflected on the first / original post. Usually, negative reviews only come on the 3rd & latter pages of a certain thread, & our members usually don't browse that far or read an entire thread so they end up buying rip-off services & products just because they didn't see the bad reviews (& most likely the OP had a really convincing sales pitch). So maybe, if the number of positive & negative reviews were shown on the OP itself, people would immediately have an idea of the product's quality & seller's reliability. Maybe if the thread gets more negative reviews than positive, it would automatically have a really noticeable warning message on the OP, something like: "This product's negative reviews outweighs its positive. Be interested at your own risk." LOL Edit - & Omg, we could sort MP threads based on quality. Yesyesyes! (That should totally be the default thread sort order. Should I hold my breath?)
Bad Idea, people will misunderstand the function and think that their comment counts as a review, even if they haven't bought the product. And there's no way of distinguishing b/w fake reviews and credible ones :/
I don't think so, I assume only those who know what they're doing would use the function, after all, it is only optional, and anyone who has no idea what it means (or is stupid enough to think that his reply counts as a review even without purchasing) won't use or even see it (if their brains are that disfunctional). Besides, it was never there to begin with, so nobody in this forum has hands accustomed to clicking radio buttons before submitting a post - which means by default, they won't do that. & Even if they do click on that radio button by mistake or stupidity, by default the selected choice from the drop down list would be "Neutral", so it won't affect the thread whatsoever. It will not count as a positive or negative review. Whoever chooses his post to be a review by mistake or stupidity, & then STILL does not get it that he, by all means, still continues to tamper with the drop down list, & choose between the "Positive" & "Negative" options (without thought?), & the fact that he happens to be browsing in the Marketplace given that he is that stupid, FOR SURE is a once-in-a-blue-moon kind of user.. Either that or he has never been on DP before in his entire life and is an 8-year-old on his father's computer. I know that we have a lot of stupid people here, but have faith in man. Especially those who browse the Marketplace, we have seen too much "Any review copies available?" not to know what a review means. Perhaps I am just naive, but I think I am right. That would be a problem, yes, but that never a hindered us from using iTraders. We have the same problem with fake itraders, yet the system still works & does work.