Please, don't delete all data from finished listings

[fdonadio]

I’ve see people here deleting [almost] everything from a listing (an ad) after the sale. Personally, I find this attitude unhelpful.

Photrio classifieds is a place where I (and possibly others) usually research prices for equipment, both when I intend to buy and to sell. It’s a nice reference to have.

I would suggest sellers to use the labels (sold, etc.) and maybe stick a big “SOLD” at the start to the thread subject, but to keep item details in the ad.

 

[koraks]

We are aware of this issue but we currently do not have a rule against this, nor do we want to impose technical limitations to this effect as it would also affect people's ability to modify e.g. asking price or remove items from a combined listing once sold.

On occasion we have brought this up with sellers who removed content from listings, but the reception of basically the same suggestion you outlined was quite fiercely negative, so we basically gave up on it. Sorry.

 

[fdonadio]

We are aware of this issue but we currently do not have a rule against this

Oh, I am not blaming Photrio or anyone specifically. And my post is mostly a suggestion.

If people want to be secretive about the deals they make, or if they want to avoid messages for gear that is already sold, it’s their right. I just think it’s overkill, but…

 

[koraks]

Thanks; to be clear, I didn't interpret it as blame, but did want to indicate we're aware of this and have considered doing something about it, but it was tricky, so we left it as it currently is. I'm personally not really sure why people dump the contents of ads. Most people don't; it's only a select few who do. I suppose there's a commercial argument underlying it ("you listed this exact same lens 10 years ago for $50 less so your asking price today is excessive" etc.)

 

[fdonadio]

Thanks; to be clear, I didn't interpret it as blame, but did want to indicate we're aware of this and have considered doing something about it, but it was tricky, so we left it as it currently is. I'm personally not really sure why people dump the contents of ads. Most people don't; it's only a select few who do. I suppose there's a commercial argument underlying it ("you listed this exact same lens 10 years ago for $50 less so your asking price today is excessive" etc.)

No hard feelings, I was also just trying to be clear.

Anyway, whatever people want to do in their right, I can’t object to!

 

[BrianShaw]

For the listings that interest you, have you ever tried PMing the seller and asking the details, or why they feel the need to remove the details from the thread? A proactive approach might be, well... proactive.

 

[fdonadio]

For the listings that interest you, have you ever tried PMing the seller and asking the details, or why they feel the need to remove the details from the thread? A proactive approach might be, well... proactive.

Sometimes one can’t even know what they were selling. But I will keep this in mind for the future.

 

[beemermark]

I've never understood why people have to delete the selling price when the item is sold.

 

[grant.goodes]

One reason for deleting details is that high volume sellers may be concerned about tax liability and by removing proof of their sales and amounts are just being paranoid and cautious. Not defending the practice!

 

[Sirius Glass]

I’ve see people here deleting [almost] everything from a listing (an ad) after the sale. Personally, I find this attitude unhelpful.

Photrio classifieds is a place where I (and possibly others) usually research prices for equipment, both when I intend to buy and to sell. It’s a nice reference to have.

I would suggest sellers to use the labels (sold, etc.) and maybe stick a big “SOLD” at the start to the thread subject, but to keep item details in the ad.

We are aware of this issue but we currently do not have a rule against this, nor do we want to impose technical limitations to this effect as it would also affect people's ability to modify e.g. asking price or remove items from a combined listing once sold.

On occasion we have brought this up with sellers who removed content from listings, but the reception of basically the same suggestion you outlined was quite fiercely negative, so we basically gave up on it. Sorry.

There should be a change in the rules. Closed ads provide a historical source of offering and selling prices. Please change the rules to stop ads from being deleted.

 

[gbroadbridge]

There should be a change in the rules. Closed ads provide a historical source of offering and selling prices. Please change the rules to stop ads from being deleted.

There's this thing called the internet ...

Things are worth whatever people are prepared to pay.

 

[koraks]

There should be a change in the rules. Closed ads provide a historical source of offering and selling prices. Please change the rules to stop ads from being deleted.

I'm not sure that we will, honestly.

When people post stuff on a forum, there's always an inherent question about who 'owns' the content. On the forum proper we work on the assumption that if people share their knowledge/views/opinions/banter, they do so because they somehow want their words to be seen by an audience. Also, we assume that people are aware of the nature of a forum on which information is persistent. Finally, most people participate here for free, i.e. they do not have a paid account.

For the Classifieds section, the situation is slightly different:

• It takes a paid account to post there. This is something we require (as opposed to posting on the forum proper, where a paid account is a personal/free choice), and it kind of makes sense we grant certain privileges in return.
• If someone posts an ad, there's a reasonable argument to be made that the information has a temporary validity. Other than e.g. technical advice w.r.t. development times for film etc., the sales offer for a used camera expires at some point. Also, as indicated earlier by me as well as by others, there are reasons why a seller might want to remove data once it ceases to serve its primary function.
• The audience for the information in the Classifieds is primarily 'the market', which is a different subset of people from the audience for the content we see on most of the forum. I don't think it's a far-fetched idea that there would be a difference in e.g. retention policies. Think also of the fact that ads can contain clues or information about someone (cf. also the tax argument provided earlier) and I can imagine that someone might want to expose that information only for a limited period of time.

In short, I believe that we should not automatically extend the same policies we apply to the forum, to the Classifieds section. That still leaves the question whether it would be feasible to have a retention policy for Classifieds ads. In principle, this is possible. But as I indicated earlier, when we discussed this with one or two sellers, the response was rather empathic, so we dropped the subject.

Sometimes, we can't have our cake and eat it. Tough cookie, but there it is.

 

[loccdor]

While it is nice to have a historical record, I like that it's up to the user how much they want to contribute to that record.

If someone really wanted to, they could write a program to save the original text of each classified ad without too much trouble. Lots of video games that have a text-based auction market have bots scraping the item names and numeric values so that the going rate over time can be graphed and tracked. These games have a much higher volume of sales than Photrio, most people wouldn't bother for a site like this, not enough data points.

 

[c.d.ewen]

Just a small observation - the price in a closed listing is not necessarily the selling price. Any time I ever sold anything, I always got a "would you take $XXX dollars less" message. Sometimes i accepted.

Charley