New Classifieds Feedback and Bug Hunting

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, Wo1f said:

...stuf.........There’s is NO disadvantage to a more refined choice.......... more stuff

 

I beg to differ sir. I often have no idea what gun I want, or even if I want a new gun, so browsing only three sections is MASSIVELY easier than trying to browse 137 different ones. Search function wouldn’t help, I don’t know what I’m looking for 

 

rdb

[Duff]

19 minutes ago, rocketdogbert said:

 

I beg to differ sir. I often have no idea what gun I want, or even if I want a new gun, so browsing only three sections is MASSIVELY easier than trying to browse 137 different ones. Search function wouldn’t help, I don’t know what I’m looking for 

 

rdb

 

I remember a youth mispent reading the laminated book of dreams....

[Wo1f]

16 minutes ago, rocketdogbert said:

 

I beg to differ sir. I often have no idea what gun I want, or even if I want a new gun, so browsing only three sections is MASSIVELY easier than trying to browse 137 different ones. Search function wouldn’t help, I don’t know what I’m looking for 

 

rdb

But you can’t design a ‘store’ to that customer. If it’s all ordered it benefits the 90% who know exactly what they want and the 10% who don’t can just hop between categories.

 

For the most part (excluding pistols that are used by everyone and springers) airsofters are either gas or electric. If you know you want electric, you’d have aeg, ebb? and sniper/DMR to have a look in. If I know what I want I have to go through page after page of crap. There might be my dream gun, but it’s buried and not allowed to be bumped for 7 days, at which point it’s 10 pages back. 

[Guest]

18 minutes ago, Wo1f said:

If it’s all ordered it benefits the 90% who know exactly what they want and the 10% who don’t can just hop between categories.

 

Again, I beg to differ.  Currently, we do have it “all ordered”, just in a way that differs from what you would like.

 

Would you mind referencing your 90/10 split please? I’d very much like to go over the statistics.  Typically, I would expect to see some percentage of respondents replying as “can’t decide” and/or “no preference” rather than a straight split between two options. 

[Wo1f]

5 minutes ago, rocketdogbert said:

 

Again, I beg to differ.  Currently, we do have it “all ordered”, just in a way that differs from what you would like.

 

Would you mind referencing your 90/10 split please? I’d very much like to go over the statistics.  Typically, I would expect to see some percentage of respondents replying as “can’t decide” and/or “no preference” rather than a straight split between two options. 

How is it ordered? Until the other day I had to wade through 30 we g18c’s just to find a GBBR, never mind a gas sniper or shotgun. 

 

Im going to assume like most airsofters you are a male. Now I may be old fashioned but every man I know knows what he wants, finds it and buys it. Some of these things are really expensive purchases. Not many people go “I have £1000 and I have no idea what I want” they decided what they want after researching and then search for that one thing. 

 

I just don’t get the against argument. If it stays as it is you get to look around aimlessly and people who know what they want can’t find anything and look elsewhere (which is why people are using Zeroin at this very moment ). Or you can have a bit of structure and make it easy for people who know what they want and have no effect on you whatever. You still get to aimlessly prowl through listings, but now all of the similar things will be together.

 

Oh look! There’s now 4 of the gun I want in one section on one page! Now I can easily see which is the better deal! It’s like magic!.... 

 

i love this forum, I really do.. I spend hours a day on it as an active memeber trying to help and have a laugh. This is my one major gripe with it and it’s the reason me and others still venture to other places. I have whatsapp messages from yesterday or the day before asking where the best place to advertise because they knew it wasn’t going here. I’ve copied the sales links from here and posted them elsewhere (FB) and they’ve gone within the hour. It didn’t work because of the larger audience; there’s more people looking here than Z1. It worked because I posted it in a specific page that specialised in that brand of gun, because most people people want specific things. They don’t want to trawl through combat machines to find their Tm recoil. 

 

make it easy and convenient and people will use it more and other sites less. And when they’re used less they’ll die off and AF-UK will be ‘the’ place to buy and sell. 

 

Its not fucking rocket science

[proffrink]

So essentially your argument boils down to marginally reformatting the categories and decreasing bump time form 7 to 3 days?

 

I certainly agree with the first point, but I don't understand the second: If everyone is able to bump every 3 days then it's no different to 4, 5 or 7 day bumping periods as everyone is able to do it. Really the solution is - to me - randomising 'new' (i.e less than 3 days old or 7 days old?) listings on the front page so everyone has an equal chance at being at the top and - importantly - allowing people to see more information concisely through the thumbnail method currently there (which will allow one to reasonably easily scroll through and give a cursory glance to about 50 different listings in roughly 30 seconds.

 

Not sure if you've actually looked at the new classifieds but we've already added two sections that we never had before. I believe the only thing we're missing from your requests would be something like a support weapons and gas sniper rifle section I suppose (unless you want a complete mirror of ZeroIn's?).

 

You will likely always sell things faster on FB and ZeroIn - they have far bigger followings than we do here. I don't see that changing any time soon. Our classifieds really serve as a pipe for getting contributing members onboard - we cannot compete against the unscrupulous masses of Facebook or the sheer volume of clicks that ZeroIn gets. I'm just not sure that we're behind because we're missing a couple of subforums and don't allow people to spam up the front page with bumps.

 

I'm happy to put all of this down to a vote for sure. Could you maybe list what classifieds sections layout you'd like to see?

 

 

[Guest]

17 minutes ago, Wo1f said:

 ....Wo1fies very own excellent opinion....

 

I will neither agree, nor disagree, but in order for us to have confidence in your new assertions, can we please see the reference for the statistics you originally quoted? 

 

Mod note: Moved your post as it was in the wrong thread

[Wo1f]

3 minutes ago, proffrink said:

So essentially your argument boils down to marginally reformatting the categories and decreasing bump time form 7 to 3 days?

 

I certainly agree with the first point, but I don't understand the second: If everyone is able to bump every 3 days then it's no different to 4, 5 or 7 day bumping periods as everyone is able to do it. Really the solution is - to me - randomising 'new' (i.e less than 3 days old or 7 days old?) listings on the front page so everyone has an equal chance at being at the top and - importantly - allowing people to see more information concisely through the thumbnail method currently there (which will allow one to reasonably easily scroll through and give a cursory glance to about 50 different listings in roughly 30 seconds.

 

Not sure if you've actually looked at the new classifieds but we've already added two sections that we never had before. I believe the only thing we're missing from your requests would be something like a support weapons and gas sniper rifle section I suppose.

 

You will likely always sell things faster on FB and ZeroIn - they have far bigger followings than we do here. I don't see that changing any time soon. Our classifieds really serve as a pipe for getting contributing members onboard - we cannot compete against the unscrupulous masses of Facebook or the sheer volume of clicks that ZeroIn gets. I'm just not sure that we're behind because we're missing a couple of subforums and don't allow people to spam up the front page with bumps.

 

I'm happy to put all of this down to a vote for sure. Could you maybe list what classifieds sections layout you'd like to see?

 

 

Sorry, I wasn’t suggesting we change the bump time as well. What I do we getting at is with everything in one place and a bump time of 7 days it’s very easy for a fresh add to be swallowed and vanish out of sight. 7 days would be more than fine if we had better categories. 

 

I dont think they they need to be as extensive a Z1 as a lot of them are redundant, but the gas/electric sniper is a good shout, and I see gas pistols and rifles are already separated now which I really like. I just don’t see the harm in a couple more. 

 

I would have 

rifles

aeg

gas

(possibly ebb? Tm recoils have quite the following)

 

pistols

electric

gas

 

sniper rifles

spring

gas

electric (or combine the two?)

 

shotguns/grenade launcher (maybe lmg? But I’m just as happy for them to go in the aeg section). 

 

Cant think of anything else vital from the top of my head. I think that’s perfectly reasonable. 

 

[Jedi_Master]

14 hours ago, Wo1f said:

There is no downside to extra categories. Sure some are redundant like gbb lmg or HPA pistol, but for the most part they work great.

 

If theres enough variations of a catagory, there’s no reason not to have one. There’s is NO disadvantage to a more refined choice. We’ll get better and more competitive prices and easier searches without having to have the bump police out in force, because things won’t get buried after a day. 

 

I dont know if this this is an option due to the nature or layout of the forum. I don’t know how they work on the technical side, but let’s not kid ourselves and say it’s better to look through 20 pages in the hopes that we find what we’re looking for.

 

Just for the sake of accuracy the following are the number of pages (on a PC / iPad) that you need to look through:

 

Electric = 7, Gas = 5, Spring = 2, Parts = 5, Gear = 2, and Swaps = 1.

 

So even a dream AEG is no more than 7 pages away.

 

A search for 'shotgun' in Gas takes 30 seconds to type the word into search bar, and brings up four results. Not hard to see what is for sale.  Having some set filters could help, however, the bigger problem is the seller themselves not giving a clear title for their sales topic to help buyers search.

 

Because 'TM' is only two letters it cannot be used as a search term, the minimum length for searching being 3 characters. Therefore, it does make sense to have a separate section for TM guns, and specifically TM recoil guns because they are the best, and it would keep them all in one place so that you could ignore all the cheaper crap guns.

 

There was a suggestion a few years back to list all sales by make so that you could ignore anything that was not TM or Krytac, and allow others to go straight to their favorite Double Eagle and Nuprol guns.

 

With sales topics now locked to OP only, there is no requirement for policing of early bumps because they will no longer occur; just a check on duplicate topics for those sellers who try to cheat the system by listing the same gun in different ways.

 

[L3wisD]

I've noticed a problem with the new classifieds.

 

I listed some bits 4 hours ago and they still haven't sold.

Sort it out guys.

 

3/10 would not advertise again  F-

[Duff]

 

Why do you get two threads for one listing?

[Gepard]

22 minutes ago, Duff said:

Why do you get two threads for one listing?

 

Probably because there's two active classifieds. If you posted in just one a user could miss it if they only browsed the other. 

 

You should charge your phone btw 

[Duff]

1 hour ago, Gepard said:

 

Probably because there's two active classifieds. If you posted in just one a user could miss it if they only browsed the other. 

 

You should charge your phone btw 

 

Nah I always let it go to 1%, better for the overall battery life. It can stay on 1% and still manage calls for like a day. It's quite miraculous.

[Guest]

Ahhhh, I have a suggestion. I really don’t like the way members can delete everything, including pictures, on a for sale post as soon as they have sold the item.

It might be completely legit, but I don’t see why you would want or need to.

Personally, I’d be much happier if members where not able to edit their classifieds. It works very well on a couple of other forums I’m on.

rdb

[Duff]

21 minutes ago, rocketdogbert said:

Ahhhh, I have a suggestion. I really don’t like the way members can delete everything, including pictures, on a for sale post as soon as they have sold the item.

It might be completely legit, but I don’t see why you would want or need to.

Personally, I’d be much happier if members where not able to edit their classifieds. It works very well on a couple of other forums I’m on.

rdb

 

This ^ when I bought my Glock I was 99% positive it said the fps was sub 300, of course the advert details were long gone once I found out it was nearer 400.

[Gepard]

31 minutes ago, rocketdogbert said:

Ahhhh, I have a suggestion. I really don’t like the way members can delete everything, including pictures, on a for sale post as soon as they have sold the item.

It might be completely legit, but I don’t see why you would want or need to.

Personally, I’d be much happier if members where not able to edit their classifieds. It works very well on a couple of other forums I’m on.

rdb

 

We only have about 250mb of image storage. I can understand why a user might delete the photos after a sale. I agree that text shouldn't be edited though.

[Guest]

36 minutes ago, Gepard said:

 

We only have about 250mb of image storage. I can understand why a user might delete the photos after a sale. I agree that text shouldn't be edited though.

 

 I host all mine on imgur, so limit didn’t cross my mind, doh!

[Tackle]

no dramas, no technical issues, just don't like it, maybe it's cos I'm old & everybody knows us old cnuts don't like change, but tbh just felt it worked fine & didn't need fixing.  

[Duff]

Is there a feature that could be added that shows the sellers feedback below the listing?

[New2Airsoft]

The seven days limit to listings with the 'countdown' clock is a backwards step.

It is often an advantage to a buyer to be able to view and respond to an 'old' listing - and hence to get a better deal. And for a seller, at least they get a sale, eventually.

A seven day deadline for sell or disappear is way too short. Potential buyers may well need longer than that to browse, compare prices, make a decision and negotiate a sale price.

Buyers should be able to buy at (relative) leisure, not while being hurried along by an artificially imposed ticking clock.

Second gripe - the bullet-pointed short headline descriptor of each listing next to the thumbnail image, as you browse through, is way too short. A few characters is insufficient for you to know at a glance what it is that's being advertised (unless the seller has the sense to name what it is they're selling in the first few characters of their ad title).

You end up wasting time clicking on ads so you can actually read what's being sold, only to find it wasn't something you were remotely interested in anyway. Annoying.

[Duff]

1 hour ago, New2Airsoft said:

The seven days limit to listings with the 'countdown' clock is a backwards step.

It is often an advantage to a buyer to be able to view and respond to an 'old' listing - and hence to get a better deal. And for a seller, at least they get a sale, eventually.

A seven day deadline for sell or disappear is way too short. Potential buyers may well need longer than that to browse, compare prices, make a decision and negotiate a sale price.

Buyers should be able to buy at (relative) leisure, not while being hurried along by an artificially imposed ticking clock.

Second gripe - the bullet-pointed short headline descriptor of each listing next to the thumbnail image, as you browse through, is way too short. A few characters is insufficient for you to know at a glance what it is that's being advertised (unless the seller has the sense to name what it is they're selling in the first few characters of their ad title).

You end up wasting time clicking on ads so you can actually read what's being sold, only to find it wasn't something you were remotely interested in anyway. Annoying.

 

The reason is because if the item is not actively for sale, then after 7 days it will close. If the seller wants it to remain active, they renew it. This way there is no need for the "still for sale" notifications no one really needs to receive or read.

 

I like having the Feedback stat on the forum profile and posts.

[proffrink]

On 4/7/2018 at 7:49 PM, Tackle said:

no dramas, no technical issues, just don't like it, maybe it's cos I'm old & everybody knows us old cnuts don't like change, but tbh just felt it worked fine & didn't need fixing.  

Fair enough.

 

2 hours ago, New2Airsoft said:

The seven days limit to listings with the 'countdown' clock is a backwards step.

It is often an advantage to a buyer to be able to view and respond to an 'old' listing - and hence to get a better deal. And for a seller, at least they get a sale, eventually.

A seven day deadline for sell or disappear is way too short. Potential buyers may well need longer than that to browse, compare prices, make a decision and negotiate a sale price.

Buyers should be able to buy at (relative) leisure, not while being hurried along by an artificially imposed ticking clock.

I can see why people wouldn't like this. What would you think of 'expired' items not removing themselves from the classifieds, but instead just showing up buried deeper down that current ones? Would make expiry more akin to bumping.

 

2 hours ago, New2Airsoft said:

Second gripe - the bullet-pointed short headline descriptor of each listing next to the thumbnail image, as you browse through, is way too short. A few characters is insufficient for you to know at a glance what it is that's being advertised (unless the seller has the sense to name what it is they're selling in the first few characters of their ad title).

You end up wasting time clicking on ads so you can actually read what's being sold, only to find it wasn't something you were remotely interested in anyway. Annoying.

I completely agree. I'll have a go at this.

 

15 minutes ago, Duff said:

 

The reason is because if the item is not actively for sale, then after 7 days it will close. If the seller wants it to remain active, they renew it. This way there is no need for the "still for sale" notifications no one really needs to receive or read.

 

I like having the Feedback stat on the forum profile and posts.

Well this was my thought to but in hindsight it's probably still a good idea to let people browse expired stuff in some form or another. Dunno.

[Duff]

1 minute ago, proffrink said:

Fair enough.

 

I can see why people wouldn't like this. What would you think of 'expired' items not removing themselves from the classifieds, but instead just showing up buried deeper down that current ones? Would make expiry more akin to bumping.

 

I completely agree. I'll have a go at this.

 

What about a notification to the seller that their ads have expired, giving them say... 48 hours to renew it before it is automatically archived. Also give the seller the ability to relist arcived posts.

[proffrink]

That's already in there (bar the 48 hour notice). One click and it goes back up.

 

It's whether those listings get 'hidden' when they're expired or not.

[Duff]

Ah cool, wasn't sure as I don't have any active listings at present.

 

I must say the forums really are improving over the last few weeks, great to see new leadership working out. Kudos to all you guys wroking hard in your free time.