Deleting Your Old For Sale and Want Ads

[Kent]

I'm trying to clean up the classifieds.... I've just solved the limitation that prevented you from deleting an ad, if someone else had replied to it. Now, you can delete the ad, but you must delete each of the replies or follow-ups first. Just delete them, one-by-one (it only takes a second) and then you can delete your original ad.... Please delete all your old ads that aren't needed any more -- I have no way of knowing! I'm thinking of adding a program to automatically delete the ads after a certain amount of time. How long do you think they should remain? Some of the old stuff is still accurate, but much of it is not... What do you think -- as a seller, listing the item for sale? How long should it remain? What do you think as a buyer, looking for things? How long should these old ads remain? Thanks for your input, as always! Kent

[dymondclay]

Hello Kent, With all the ads and such I feel that 30 days would be plenty. The reason that I feel this is enough time is that whom ever is selling or wants an idem can always repost either of them after that. It would then keep everything up to date and not take up so much space when they are no longer needed. Just my what ever's worth, >>->happyjack<-<<

[KenW]

Kent, How do I delete my old ad, I saw where to place a new one but not to delete. Thanks...Ken Williams

[MPH]

Kent, 2-3 weeks seems plenty long to me, I don't every often look back more than about 3 pages. Does this fix work on the diccusion also? I 've tried to delete one that been solved and seems if there is a reply I couldn't delete. MPH

[dymondclay]

I would think 30 days for either "sell" or "want". If the seller or seeker is still interested, let them take their time to revise the ad, description and price. I probably haven't done my own housekeeping, but I'll do it right now. Thanks for the reminder..... ** Just tried but can't delete. I'll log-off, come back and try again.

[Guest]

The 30 days sounds good. Patricia

[Kent]

Thanks for all the feedback. 1) I haven't implemented the delete capability for the discussion. My thoughts were to leave the questions, though they were answered, so that someone else can perhaps find the answer to their questions.... 2) You should see a Delete This Reply link at the top of each reply to an ad. Delete each reply, THEN you should get a link to delete the original ad. If you're logged in, and the link doesn't show up for you, let me know. This one was hard to test, and there may still be a bug or two in it....

[mowerman1193]

Kent,awhile back I changed my user ID and I have a want ad with the old user ID and I can't delete that one?The message ID is (527) for wanted ad for a hood and grill for 717. I think that running ads for 30 days would work out good. Thanks, mowerman1193

[JeffG]

You can filter/search your own for sale / want ads by entering your user ID. That makes it very easy to delete your own old ads. Lets see how it goes with everyone deleting their own outdated ads. I'm sure I've had responses to want ads and for sale ads well beyond the proposed 30 days. One advantage to the old ads is to be able to go back and see what particular items have historically sold for (good for the buyer and seller). Just some things to consider. Jeff

[Brent_Baumer]

I got an inquiry about a trailer I still had for sale after at least 6 months. The guy never showed up. Still have the trailer, 4x8 two wheel, 1 7/8" ball hitch, not in greatest shape but roadworthy. East central Indiana. $75 and you pick up. Usually 30 days would be fine for posts. Just deleted my old ads as well. Thanks, Brent

[Brent_Baumer]

Kent, I just tried to delete my ads again..... no luck! I'm logged-in, tested my cookie (okay), and edited my profile.

[carter]

Kent, I'm in the 30 day maximum camp on for sale and wants. Discussion however is extremely valuable when you want to look up a specific topic. Two month old information is still useful if one has a problem. I've sorted the discussion pages a number of times for help that would otherwise have required a new repeat queston. I'd say at a minimum that we keep 6 months of discussion. Ron

[JP]

Et All, Normally I would agree on 30 days, I don't want to get off on a rant(to coin a phrase) BUT, Seems as though if you sell it, ya take the ad off. My reasoning is from experience. If the people who sold their item would clear off their ads, I'd get to the people who want to sell what I'm lookin' for. Instead of wasting time sending an e-mail or calling to find out it's been sold. In all fairness, that's the kicker. wasting the effort to find out they sold it (?) quite a while ago. SO, to me, IF YA SELL IT, DELETE it! In turn, IF ya found it, YA DON'T WANT it anymore. (sorry, get a little carried away) On the Discussions. I enjoy the ability to back and find all the Carb problems or OHC problems, to see what someone did to resolve their issue. (Thanks to all for posting. YES, I do look at all. May not answer, I look) 4 cents worth! JP

[McGill]

Well, I just used a search to find a price for a yeoman. I had to go back about 5 months to find one listed. So... Maybe an archive of old values would be nice.

[MPH]

Just me again, I thought that in the beginning having the forsale and want ads was to of course sell and post what someone needs. I know its alot of work to go back and try to sort things out that should or should not be saved for viewing later down the road in the discussion section alone but to try and save the ads for review at a later date is really going to be alot of work for someone if at all possible. What would stay and what should go in the want ads or forsale ads would just in my opinion be mind boggleing. Yes I feel it has some value but at what price in storage for the club and trying to keep it for later use. I also feel that out of about 2000 members just how many have posted for sale or a want ads and have not been active for a month-2 months- or what ever thinking the ad would just take care of itself??? I do hate to see some stuff go but??? :) best to all, >>->happyjack<-<<

[JB]

Kent.......to get some of the adds from the running program,could you archive it and members access it through a "search text for" window?...........JB.

[SmilinSam]

2- 4 weeks is a good time frame. By the end of 30 days most around here have had good chance to see what there is to see. I usually give up on my ads after two weeks anyhow. On saving a asking price list, Asking prices are pretty much a purely arbitrary thing. Much of the time they don't really reflect what the piece really sells for anyhow. I don't want to rain on anybodys parade, but it would be more beneficial to save the space for solving problems on the discussion page - just my opinion- I hope you all can see where I'm coming from. Stay Happy & Keep Smiling, Sam.

[TomF]

I would agree with Sam. 30 days is plenty! I would also prefer an auto-delete at that time. We all get busy and forget - especially if you're away from the website for a while. I'd rather save the disk space for discussion. It's invaluable as a problem-solving forum. I, too, have gone way back in a search and found the answer to a problem. Kent, thanks again for a great website! Tom

[SmilinSam]

I skimmed through the responses last night, but didn't have time to review them before writing this just now. I don't agree with the majority on this. Frankly, your content in all three forums, even if it contains a lot of junk threads like, "Hey, call me at..." or "Thanks, much, Bob" is totally valuable, especially to new members which you are hoping to add. For example, I want to put together a 5-gang reel mower. I found a guy who posted a for sale add over a year ago on your site, but he still had the item I wanted. I also wanted a front loader and found one in another message also several months old. Given the current rate of responses (no criticism, just realism given rarity of items) to Want Ad postings, if you had expunged this guy's ad, I'd be sad out of luck. Both the Want Ads and For Sale Ad history is valuable because Want Ads might contain a response thread that the original poster never went back to check. Deleting *anything* from the Discussion forum would simply make your site less useful. I realize you can't focus on satisfying the 1% need at the expense of the 99% who might feel inconvenienced, but unless and until the message history actually causes you a memory storage concern, I say keep it all. It's not as though the number of messages is slowing download times or hurting anyone's eyes. You've got a perfectly good search routine to allow someone to narrow their view. Given the majority of entries are tiny text strings and you are currently in the low thousands of messages max, I can't see this being a problem (although maybe it is). Furthermore, although I'm exactly the same way in my desire for order, I don't think you should be worrying about trying to comb the old message entries. Sure, tell users to do so themselves, but don't sweat it if they dont. I worked for Microsoft for 8 years and if we wasted our time deleting resolved bug reports from our bug databases you'd still be waiting for Windows 98. Furthermore, an old report will save your hide once in awhile. Your site is absolutely excellent and well organized. I compliment you on that. But, please don't delete useful historic content. I know relatively nothing about my B-112 and if you delete even some obscure conversation from January 2000 about, say, the bevel gear box then I and other new users lose out. Your experienced old-hands (which it sounds like most of the responses to this come from) then have the added annoyance of answering the same intruductory how to change oil question over and over again. Sure, even now people more often than not don't check for prior discussions before posting a question, but this will become even more prevalent. One possible alternative that might also help you generate site-supporting income would be to archive the old messages at a regular (preferably long) interval and then burn this onto a CD and make available for a fee. There is an old Dodge enthusiast site (www.sweptline.com, or was it dodgepowerwagon.com) that does this evidently quite successfully. Nothing is lost, but you keep your current server load acceptable and make a small amount of cash on the side. So again, keep up the work on your excellent site, but don't worry about it if the posts people make under your well defined structure include some slop. Its relatively harmless. I'm sure there's a counterpoint I'm not thinking of at the moment, but... P.S. In the long term, as the number of messages increases, it would be really nice to have your search routine allow searching on all or any of more than a single word (such as Ebay functionality). Right now, this isn't a necessity and I fully realize what a time consuming task web site construction and maintenance is. Thanks - Jeff

[Kent]

Jeff, You raise some very good points. This "cleanup" was prompted by a few things: 1) Complaints from some members about old ads and the items being long gone, or the person not responding... 2) Potential impact on the "response time" for the site. The physical size of the database is not an issue, but the time to query it (it's in Access) is an issue. Everything but the chatroom (a commercial product) and the calendar (a shareware product) is stored in several inter-related tables inside one Access database. 3) It's spring -- isn't it time for housecleaning? 8o) Again, thanks to everyone for your input. The whole idea of this thread was for everyone to discuss their thoughts and opinions....

[JeffNemes]

I agree with the other Jeff - at least archive the old ones so that new comers will still have a chance to search for that once in a lifetime find. This equipment is too old and varied and good to not get matched up and "recycled" with a buyer/seller. And the day that every Simplicity owner has a computer and learns how to use it and internet and the time to find and explore this site has not arrived yet. The internet is a great tool to join these together but it is still growing. We very rarely sell items within 30 days - perhaps a seasonal deal would work out.