I have never understood why everyone here gets so bent out of shape about the for sale ads. Scrolling down is really,
really easy. And now that the sale ads are highlighted, you don't even have to read the title unless you're looking for something. Yeah, if one seller posts 30 ads at a time it's a little annoying, but it seems to me it would be easier for an administrator to send that individual a PM if there are complaints directed at them.
Closing the ads after 30 days of non-activity makes sense. That way only Gold members could keep an ad running unless there was interest or the price was changing.But really, it would be a piece of cake for me to save the original text/pictures/links of a for sale ad onto my hard drive and re-list it any time it got closed. That just means you could have multiple threads for a single item, some closed, some current. Just extra threads. That not only doesn't de-clutter the recent posts page, it adds memory requirements to the server.
No bumping for anyone seems overkill. I'm sure there are quite a few members that are Gold because they're sellers, and
only because they're sellers. If they can't bump ads, they could drop their Gold memberships without any big consequences to their listings. Especially with the "conversations" allowing a running back and forth under one conversation.
Realistically, we ALL need parts sooner or later. I've bought a bunch of stuff here, and have gotten some great deals. Make selling too inconvenient and the sale items will all just move to eBay, most likely with a price increase to cover the fees eBay charges. Same with charging a fee for an ad here, it would just move the parts for sale elsewhere. And I like buying here vs other sites.
Could the classifieds forum be changed to be by subscription like the "news and politics" forum? That way people that are really upset by sale ads could "opt out" without effecting those of us that want to see the ads? I always need parts. Even if I don't need parts I still sometimes buy them.