Cross posting coffee gear

#1: Post by **BuckleyT** » August 5th, 2018, 6:36 am

(This post was edited by another_jim to delete mention of the item on sale)

I get it.
By posting my gear for sale on HB and ebay, i was cross-posting.
I incorrectly assumed that cross-posting involved only redundant coffee sites, but I see that non-coffee sites are also mentioned in the guidlines.
Along with the injunction against self-promotions on HB.

However, I belong to another niche organization, insightcentral.net. We own the original Honda hybrid hypermileage cars and similar.
There is a special forum category "ebay auctions" that has evolved to include craigslist and the like.
We have found that alerting our fellow members to the incidents of the rare sales of these cars and their parts is a valuable service that we can provide each other. For instance, how often would an HBer in Dultuth, MN check the craigslist site for Arlington, VA for the emergence of a classic Gaggia machine sale? I know there are search strategies to address this, but a general heads up to the membership is a lot more effective.

The universe of espresso gear is unlike the above in that sales in total are nothing 'rare', and HB states that they wish to keep clutter to a minimum. How much of an administrative inconvenience would it be to create a 'seen for sale' category that would self-purge its older posts? The key would be to have an auto-accceptance that limits posters to one post per interval, and you already vet new members against multiple registrations, so would this not foil any misuse by spammers? I think the possibilty of clutter could be confined to this one category, the self-expiring of posts would keep the data storage from becoming an issue and the benefit to members would be considerable.

Buckley

#2: Post by **yakster** » August 5th, 2018, 3:14 pm

Are you talking about posting links to your own eBay auctions or other's?

I'm not sure I understand your point above.

#3: Post by **OldNuc** » August 5th, 2018, 9:23 pm

I have experienced many forums with the --lookie what I found for sale/auction-- subforum. In my humble opinion it is both a nuisance and a slow moving disaster for the forum proper. There are several niche forums where the mere mention of any of the major for sale sites will get you thumped with the BAN Hammer. There are multiple websites that already provide this function as their standalone money generating endeavor.

Parts, machines, accessories for sale by owner or wanted subforum is a different item altogether

#4: Post by **another_jim** » August 5th, 2018, 10:06 pm

Buckley's post is about gear he has on sale on Ebay, which he also wanted to post for sale here. That violates the sales forum rules. The intent of the rule is to prevent drumming. I'm sure Buckley didn't intend this; but the rule stops people posting a for sale here at an inflated price, and in the copy inviting them to bid for the same item on Ebay.

#5: Post by **wsfarrell** » August 5th, 2018, 10:39 pm

Probably the best forum I've ever participated in is OmegaForums.net. It has two sub-forums for sales: one for private individuals and one for dealers. Private individuals need 200 posts (or permission from the mods) to put up a listing; all listings are free.

The best feature though is a thread, not a sub-forum, called "recommended vintage Omega watches on eBay." This thread gets updated (and thus pops to the front page) once every couple of days. Given that there are > 22,000 Omega watches currently for sale on eBay, and given that a fair proportion of them are fake or problematic, it's a huge benefit to have experts recommending authentic and reasonably-priced Omegas.

I've found several watches through this thread that would have slipped under the radar otherwise. It's an invaluable resource for people like me, and requires zero setup/maintenance from forum admins. Could someone abuse this and post a link to their own eBay watch for sale? They could, but common sense says they'd be better off posting the watch at OF and avoiding the 13% eBay fees.

#6: Post by HB » August 7th, 2018, 9:00 am

BuckleyT wrote:The universe of espresso gear is unlike the above in that sales in total are nothing 'rare', and HB states that they wish to keep clutter to a minimum. How much of an administrative inconvenience would it be to create a 'seen for sale' category that would self-purge its older posts?

Years ago, there were threads that called out "seen for sale" items. Some members liked it, others complained that it thwarted their efforts to find a deal as the exposure would often drive the final price up much higher than expected. After much back-and-forth, we discouraged such postings. There are occasional threads of eBay/Craigslist items in the "rare air" category; since these are more about discussing a unique item than a seller trying to boost their sale, moderator intervention is unnecessary.

In the majority of cases, cross-posters to the buy/sell are sellers wishing to promote their eBay or CoffeeGeek or Craigslist sale. Usually it's unnecessary, as most items sell in days, if not hours. The items that don't sell are usually overpriced or unpopular. I am not interested in helping to promote such items, though sellers always have the option of a paid [AD], which bypasses all the buy/sell limitations for the nuisance fee of $10 for items less than $1000, otherwise $20 (interested parties should contact me offline if interested).

All the above said, I would not be opposed to creating an exception for loyal contributors to this site. For example, if a member has over a year with the site and has 30+ non-trivial posts (i.e., "+1" type posts would not count), they could bypass the cross-posting rule. That'd be a nice way of rewarding those who really helped make this site successful.

August 7th, 2018, 11:20 am

Your thoughtful response is appreciated.
B