FS/WTB Forum Fee (in General)

FS/WTB Policy:
If you choose to start a new thread here anyway (either because what you have to say isn't easily translated into an auction, or because you Just Feel Like Posting), you will be automatically assessed a fee of $5,000.


$5,000 is no longer sufficient in my mind as there have been a plethora of threads lately which really should have been placed in auctions. It's time for an increase of at least x5 to motivate us all to use auctions.

Let the flaming begin :p

You want it 25K? That is a bit extreeme now, I would consider 10K to be good so that more than just elite players can pay and not only be massive USD sales

I'm with you G, I'm both tired of seeing all these FS posts, and tired of the seller changing the rules 40 times.

Though i think a different, more restrictive, way of going about could work. Possibly fining people for selling things that are commonly valued less than 1 million (though this would require both enforcement and would be a judgement call) would work.

Simplest solution would be not to read them if you don't like them. Sometimes sellers would rather sell for USD, CB1, Yen, Monopoly Money, whatever. Heck, maybe someone will accept trades for their item. How can that be implemented into auctions? I'm all for maybe upping this to 10k, but 25k is going too far.

separate the forum into two. one would have small items for sale and keep the 5k fee, another would have a higher fee to use, but guarantees that people are serious about what they are selling - nothing that is as frivolous as recently it seems.

but i don't know how that would get enforced... (or if it would sort itself out?)

5k is to much as it is. 25k is overkill. if you don't like FS posts here is a thought don't read or reply to them only use auctions.

Taxes on merchants always gets passed on to the buyer. The people hurt buy this is the small businesses and the buyers. Personally, i have no problems with paying 25k because i can afford it. I just feel sorry for the players that don't have a lot of money and newbies as well.

I think the $10k on CB1 is a good standard.

the 5k is too low imo and makes many stupid sales nowadays.

25k however would be a bit much imo also so a figure of 10k would be good.

most items that now are bundled in FS forums generate much more money to make a fee of 10k worth the fee to make the thread.

if you make a sale that is going to take longer than only 2 days and have to make a new post, that's your own issue and is your choice.

if you just want the flexibility of people doing insta's or payment plans then you would just have to abide by the fee that is involved with it.

Past few weeks there have also been a number of FS hijacks or attempts to hijack, people that try will get fined for it sooner or later

5k is starting to get way to low anyways for the people who sell a lot of things. 25k is way too much. 10k seemed to work in CB1, without emptying the pockets of the smalltime salesman.

10-15k is a good amount for a FS/WTB ad, in my estimation.

So, because people are using something for it's purpose you have a problem with it?


How... I'm at a loss for words here.


I will start with odd.

this also brings up the trend a while ago to put annoying little ****** or ##### or whatever in the thread titles... at what point do you draw the line? if people now seem to be posting a lot of things in FS/WTB that should be in auctions instead, what does it affect other than having to look through more threads?

Why it sucks:
1. Clogging up the forums
2. Server space
3. Getting burned then players ask admins to fix it
4. FS: H4rd 134th3r 4Rm0R +5!!!!!!1111111
5. I'm just checking to see if anyone wants my left overs...don't know if I am going to sell...

Why it's still around:
1. Payplans
2. Something that can't be auctioned other than low end leather, etc. (Characters, souls, etc.)
3. Bundles
4. USD

Bundles bother me. It something that seems like it would be SOOO easy to implement in the auction system. Instead of selling item X, sell item X,Y, and Z. Set it up just like it is now, minimum bid, buy now. Fee would be based on combined NW, plus all small fee for each item after the first, higher based on increased NW. IE: And ELB and ELS sold together in auction, each having a NW of 2.5 mil, would have their NW factored into the auction equation as

(NW1 + NW2)(100% + 1% * number of items sold)

For the ELB + ELS it would be:

( 2.5 + 2.5 ) * (100% + 1% * 2) or a NW for the equation of 5,050,000

Where as two chunks of leather valued at 5k a piece would get shoved into the equation with a NW of 10,100.

Undertow: how will the server determine the sale value of an individual item in a bundle? If it's just the average price, then a bundle elbow+whip will seriously affect the transfer and auction fees for whips (and we don't want to see that, do we? ;)

It doesn't make sense to sell bundles in auctions anyway, as individual items will always have more supply and demand.

Max, you forgot to mention also instas and item exchanges.

Why does the server need to know the value of an individual item in a sale?

Come on, who REALLY uses that odd stat in item metastats? 90% of CB doesn't even know what it is.

that 90% of yours is quite a lot lower. i often see people using that stat to aid them in trying to buy or sell items, especially newbies ask about it when looking at the page and always find it useful for seeing which items are the really good (read: expensive) ones.

A little point: many people pay for their supportership or a new supporter item using CB2.
And, usually, they are quite poor (CB$ wise).
If Jonathan decides to raise the FS/WTB posting fee, I think he should make supportership requests exempt (as was originally planned when the posting fee was introduced in CB1).

*Copy of my comment in the poll*

Why charge to post?

Why not have a higher fine, stricter rules for the forum and fine those who break those rules.

From selling items that could and should be sold in auctions to highjacking threads.

Why should someone have to pay, whether it's 5K, 10K, 25K or above to make a WTB post?

GL, it is very difficult to determine what constitute "highjacking threads".
For instance, posting that a certain item is overprice (and why) would be considered highjacking? Some sellers say that it is (since it spoils their game), while some of the buyers might find the information useful, and therefore appreciate the input.

Another point: refusing to sell for the min bid, or retiring one's offer, should be against the rules or not?

Finally, I think that if the posting fee were eliminated, the forum would become full of sales of junk items with flashy titles, overwhelming the interesting ones. (I mean, we would have tons of * * * LeAtHeR FoR SaLe!!!! * * * for every serious post).
This is what is happening with e-mail: since sending e-mails is free, spam overwhelms true e-mail.

Too Low!

Manta;

Against your first two points, I questioned something similar in CB1. What constituted a 'deal' as per the fs/wtb forum rules.

It seems ok to post an item for sale, and once an auction finishes, before goods are transfered, terminate the sale.

Is that breaking a deal?

If the forum rules aren't clear cut, for everyone, people will be caught out by them honestly, and some will try to exploit them.

As for your last point, if the rules of the forum are clear cut, and the '* * * LeAtHeR FoR SaLe!!!! * * *' types of post deemed against the forums rules, then swift and harsh fines would deter the posting of such threads. Maybe more so than an increased posting fee.

An increased fee for people trying to not push purchases aggressively by CM ing everyone that has the item they want. But then deals by CM cut out the posting fee anyway and an increased fee would push more sales that route.

oh yeah, because everyone LOVES rules that have to be manually enforced

i think that if you want people to use auctions you simply make them better, you don't make the FS/WTB forum harder or more expensive to use. if you do people will just be upset.

;) Probably not the people that have to manually enforce them Jon...

and neither do the idiots who don't bother to read Policy before posting, which is 90% of the newbies, it seems.

hell, _I_ probably wouldn't bother reading it if it got any longer.

I think the FS/WTB fees are too low, also. But instead of a blanked rise in fees, why not make the FS/WTB fee be dependent on either your Net Worth or your PR/MPR? Make the fee, say, 4% of your MPR or $5K, whichever is greater. So if someone has a 300K MPR, their FS/WTB fee is $12K. If someone is 10K MPR, then they're still paying the same as now.

I'm sure Jon can come up with a better formula. If you make it NW dependent, then you have to worry about rentals or loans. That might be easy to filter out, but maybe not.

Or, perhaps, you could have the fee dependent on how many FS/WTB posts you've made that month - free for the first couple, $5K for the next two, $10K for the next, and so on.

There are lots of solutions, but I honestly think that nothing worth under $100K should ever be in FS/WTB. It's obvious the fees are still too low from the amount of little items for sale in the forums. I don't consider it a big problem, but I wouldn't mind if some of those posts went away.

either the item is worth the fee, or it's not

this is true regardless of the fee level; no need to add a confusing sliding scale

Maybe 2 separate FS/WTB forums, one called "junk and supporterships", with no fee, the other "serious sales" with the current posting fee?
One could choose to either post for free among the junk, or to pay the fee and post in the "elite" forum...

Max:

1. Clogging up the forums

OTOH, it avoids clogging up other forums because it keeps those posts out of General. Clogging up Active Threads, you mean? Exempt FS/WTM from the Active Threads list, or put it in its own Active Threads list.

2. Server space

Non-issue. Posts there are closed after two days and purged after six months. If it were an issue, six months could be shortened drastically.

3. Getting burned then players ask admins to fix it

Make FS/WTB a complete "caveat emptor" zone. Admins will not "fix" anything related to a FS/WTB deal gone south, and will assess a fine on thoses who ask.

4. FS: H4rd 134th3r 4Rm0R +5!!!!!!1111111

Red herring, that. Looking over the 1000 threads in FS/WTB, I see very little of this. If it happens, cope. Long term, players who tend to "communicate" in that idiom get their own rewards.

5. I'm just checking to see if anyone wants my left overs...don't know if I am going to sell...

FS/WTB is not a contract. Binding FS/WTB is spelled "auction". Again, cope. If it's really that offensive to the community at large, people won't respond to them after a period of adjustment. Communities tend to be self-adjusting like that.

Frod, communities (and I mean large ones, like this one) tend to be self-adjusting if the people who go against the wishes and interests of almost every other people get punished. If your idea, which seems to be that FS/WTB forum should not be policed (correct me if I misunderstood you) were implemented, we would see a minority of morons (well, I should say egocentrics) making it useless for almost anybody else.
See for instance KoL: notwithstanding the universal despise, there are quite a few scammers, precisely because they can get away with it.
If FS/WTB forum were made a "caveat emptor" zone, newbies (and sometimes veterans too) would be scammed on a daily basis.

As I said before, e-mail is another good example of what I mean: being loathed by the whole world does not stop spammers from clogging your e-mail.

Frod, communities (and I mean large ones, like this one) tend to be self-adjusting if the people who go against the wishes and interests of almost every other people get punished.

Agreed.

If your idea, which seems to be that FS/WTB forum should not be policed (correct me if I misunderstood you) were implemented, we would see a minority of morons (well, I should say egocentrics) making it useless for almost anybody else.

I understand what you're saying, but I think you underestimate the effect of reputation in CB. Not every punishment is implemented via game mechanics. For example, there are around four players in CB who I will simply not buy from or otherwise deal with, based on previous actions in CB1. Nothing personal to them, but I just don't see them as good risks.

Of course, the correct rebuttal is that newer players don't know this information. There isn't an easy answer to that, unfortunately, within the current CB world.

If FS/WTB forum were made a "caveat emptor" zone, newbies (and sometimes veterans too) would be scammed on a daily basis.

Once each, I think. I was scammed early on during my CB days, and it hasn't happened since then.

I'd want to see something like this in the policy, of course:

Aside from removal of off-topic or non-PG posts, the FS/WTB forums are an unregulated marketplace. You make and accept offers in this forum at your own risk.

If you're new to Carnage Blender, or you're not comfortable evaluating offers here, auctions provide a much better alternative--they're easy, safe, and guaranteed.

Don't get me wrong: the best situation for the game would be to continue to police FS/WTB. But if it really is too large a task for the admin crew (through no fault of their own), I'd rather see it acknowledged as such than removing the forum or implementing tricks that may have a second-order effect that reduces scamming.

As I said before, e-mail is another good example of what I mean: being loathed by the whole world does not stop spammers from clogging your e-mail.

I understand the point you're trying to make, but I think this is a poor analogy--email spam proliferation is very heavily dependent on the ability to cloak the offender, which isn't feasible in CB forums.

" and neither do the idiots who don't bother to read Policy before posting, which is 90% of the newbies, it seems.

hell, _I_ probably wouldn't bother reading it if it got any longer. "


i dont think the problem has anything to do with fees. but the problem does start with N and ryme with fees : p

noobs - hard to live with, hard to live without.